The Tulip chair is coming along nicely. Over the past couple of weeks i have lathed the leg and spent a lot of time sanding and filling to make it perfectly smooth. I then moulded and cast it in fast cast; this made the leg heavier and stronger so it will be able to support the seat.

I was struggling finding a way to make the actual seat for the Tulip. I have spent days staring at a Rhino screen and trying different ways to make the shape, but in the end i decided (and Paul agreed) that time was too tight and i would just buy a ready made 3ds Max model which i could then import into Rhino and get 3D printed. Some people might see this as cheating, but in reality, in industry i would probably not be making the computer model anyway;  i would either have it given to me at the start of the project or someone else would do it first.

Once i had the drawing, it became clear it would be a perfect 3D print job, although there was some talk of needing to cut it in half to fit it in and use less powders, but in the end we managed to do it all in one go. The whole job cost me £14 with the Rhino model costing $20.

Whilst this was going on, Paul mentioned a guy in Ireland who 3D prints using paper and P.V.A glue. He decided to ask if this company would be able to print the whole chair for me. The main purpose of this is just to see what it would look like; originally i was going to mould from this if our 3D print didn’t work or broke, but it turns out the paper one won’t be here for a couple of weeks because their machines are down.

Once i had the printed model, i needed to strengthen it as the powders make it very fragile. I used superglue to begin with because this is supposed to be a lot stronger, but after using over 25 tubes i reverted to thinned down resin.

I also did a layer of the fine fibre glass tissue just to strengthen it a bit more; this means i can use this chair as the final one and i won’t have to waste time moulding and casting it.

First thing’s first… it’s been a while. Quite a lot has happened in this project since the last time i posted, which i think was about three weeks ago.

The chair I’m making first is this one:

The Pastil chair was designed by Eero Aarnio in 1967, having taken inspiration from his earlier piece; The Ball Chair.

The Pastil was designed to be the same diameter as the hole in this chair as Aarnio felt there was a lot of empty cushioned space inside the Ball chair.

The pastil is made from fibre glass so is perfectly smooth on the outside with one seam line running round the diameter. This should essentially be quite simple to make, but it’s never that easy!

I started by working out the diameter and then trying to build a 3D model in Rhino; this took a while as i had a lot of problems getting the seat section cut out of the ellipse. But finally, this is what i achieved.

Using the dimensions from this model i used a fine yellow foam to lathe the two halves of the ellipse. The foam is really nice stuff to machine, but it’s so messy!! I’m still finding tiny pieces of it everywhere… The idea was to put these two halves on the CNC machine and let it do all the hard work as it looks like ‘the perfect CNC job’ according to my tutor; however, the CNC can only machine material up to a maximum of 100mm and the top half of my ellipse is 110mm. This meant i had to do it by hand and had possibly wasted a bit of time creating the drawings in the first place.

I started by marking out the area that needed to be cut and then hacking away at the foam with a curved chisel. It was very slow and tedious work, but eventually it started to resemble the chair I’m attempting to make. The stage i was at this morning was the top half was shaped roughly and the bottom half was marked and ready to be hacked away at.

Because the foam is so soft, it is really easy to sand and creates very crisp and smooth edges very quickly. I smoothed off the bottom half and then stuck them together using contact adhesive, i then need to sand them both down together to make a smooth edge for the seat.

Due to damage to the flat side of each half during lathing, the inside seats edges don’t quite meet as smoothly as i would have liked. To get around this, i am using poly filler as it is very soft and will sand down just as easily as the foam.

The next stage once the edges are all smoothed into one, is to cover the whole thing in resin in order to seal it and give it a completely smooth surface to mould. I will then use fibre glass to create the mould and then the cast.

I’m struggling with this… probably not a good sign as this is only my second post on this topic. I’ve actually been working on it for a few weeks, i just don’t have too much to show for it.

I’ve been to London to see the Panton and Tulip chairs at the V&A museum. Janavery kindly showed me round and let me take photo’s and measurements of the chairs.

I’ve now confused myself though. I thought i would be able to draw the chairs up in Rhino in order to get measurements from them; like i did with the phone. It’s not working though… I found 3d models of the Panton and Tulip armchair on Google Sketchup so i put them into Rhino to see if i could do anything with them. Because they’re made of ‘meshes’ i can’t take any dimensions from them which is really what i need.

I’ve now come to a bit of a standstill. I think i will be able to make the base of the tulip without too much trouble. I plan to lathe this in MDF or chemi wood and then make a fibre glass or jesmonite (non-toxic) mould and fibre glass into it. The other alternative is to make it out of metal (like the original base); however i think to get a piece of metal that size will cost me quite a lot of money… I guess this is something i need to discuss with Susan from MODIP to see what she wants.

The Panton is causing me more problems… I’ve got the basic shape and profile (without the ‘leg’ base) but haven’t been able to get any further than that. My options for making this one are to use profile curves to sculpt with chavant clay and the mould that, or machine the whole thing out of wood and mould that. I think the clay will be more time consuming but more accurate as the wood option will be very difficult to machine everything exactly right. At least with the clay i can add more and take some away a lot easier. Chavant is also a technique i haven’t used before so it is tempting. I need to speak with my tutors and see what they think.

As for the Pastil chair, i am unable to see this one for real as it is part of a mobile exhibition currently in South Shields… Luckily, this one doesn’t look too complicated and i think i should be able to replicate it without too much hassle. The main body can be lathed using the wood lathe. I should be able to do this out of yellow foam quite easily. The top section (the piece with the seat in it) will be more difficult as i’m not 100% sure of the seat dimensions or how i will shape it properly. i think the best way would be to lathe it in foam or wood, cut it in half and shape each section separately before putting it back together to mould. I’m going to start work on this one as soon as i get back to give me some time to think about the other two and work them out.

The Museum of Design in Plastics (MODIP) is based at the Arts University College Bournemouth (AUCB). It is open to all students and displays many items from the last century, all made from plastic.

I have been asked to create replica’s of 3 iconic chairs. They need to be small scale to enable easy storage, but still be large enough to make an impact.

The chairs are:

The Panton designed by Verner Panton.

The Tulip chair by Eero Saarinen.

And the Pastil by Eero Aarnio.

I have decided the scale will be 1:2.5.