To make the letters I welded wire into a square, 3.125" high X 2" wide. I then cut the wires for the letters and fit them into the wire square to make sure they were all the same height and width. The B's S's and R's are the hardest because they all have curves.
Below you can see the names after they were installed in the sculpture. I made sure that I added them first so I had plenty of room for them, and I didn't weld myself into a corner, so to speak. When somebody comes in to his office, they will have no doubt of who this sculpture belongs to, or where they are.
To also reinforce the idea of a lawyers office, I also constructed a "scales of justice". This element interacts with the marbles. The right side of the scales has a permanent number of marbles. The right side of the scale does not lose or gain any marbles (unless you change it by hand), it is the counter-weight side. The left side will have a track to feed it and when the left side has one more marble than the right it will tilt down to the left and drop the marbles onto the large receiving plate below. There are a couple things that made this tricky. One is that I had to come up with some way to make the left side tip the marbles out when it dropped down to dump the marbles. To do this I attached a 1/16" wire to the back of the left plate. When it gets full (one more marble than the right side) and drops, this wire catches after a couple inches of downward travel and provides the lift needed at the back to tip the marbles out the front. The ring that is around the chain is there to keep the left side from swinging around too much after the marbles have rolled out. It would be bad for it to swing around too much and catch one of the ball pick-ups on it's way down.
6 comments:
The scales of justice look really cool and tie in well with an rbs I think.
The scales of justice look really cool and tie in well with a rbs I think. Anxious too see the final result.
CB
Me too! I am just about finished with tracks one and two. I'll try and post some photos today or tomorrow. Thanks for the compliment!
It might also look cool to have a tipping arm that looks like a gavel or whatever the little hammer the judge uses to call order is called.
CB
That's a great idea. I have one more tipping arm that I am going to install and a "gavel" look would be pretty cool. Especially since it will be on the track that will have 3 marbles in a row, effectively hammering 3 times in a row. : ) Thanks!!
Incredible.. can't wait to see the finished scuplture. What kind of chain are you using for the lift?
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