Thursday, March 20, 2008

Into the Workshop

Today in sculpture class our teacher, Stephen Nochella took us all into the workshop to learn how to weld, bend metal, and cut it. We had to wear protective clothing and the welding visors, etc. It was fun, though I think some classmates were a bit intimidated by all the stuff as you can really mess yourself up if you don't do things right and safely.

I got to learn how to weld something and did a great job, it's fun and I look forward to doing it on the last piece for the class. the pic above is of my classmate Fran using the saw to cut the metal pieces we all had to take turns doing. Next we used the arc welder to weld the two pieces together.
This is our teacher Stephen showing us how to use the Acetylene Torch to heat up the rebar to bend it. You do have to do things in order and the right way with this stuff or you could blow yourself up or seriously hurt yourself as you are dealing with flame, electricity and gases under pressure in tanks with the welding and torches. But that said, I think this should be fun to work with metal and see what we can creat, the assignment is to create a sculpture that is about "personal space".

1 comment:

Sid Dhar said...

Ya, I know. Its total fun to work with metals and welding torches. I am currently doing my undergraduate education in engineering and we had to take a workshop class in our freshman year. We did carpentry, welding and metal works. It was awesome. When you put on those protective gears and take the torch in your hands, you can really feel the power coming out of it.
Best of Luck to you for your metal creations. :-)