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Class in the Spotlight
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Wood fabrication students ‘cut corners’
 Photo by Dennis Burnett Furniture design professor Richard Prisco (left) explains how to use a spray gun during a March 5 class in the spray room at the Gulfstream Center for Furniture and Industrial Design. By Monique Bos Published: Friday, March 9, 2007 As winter quarter draws to a close, students in Savannah College of Art and Design furniture design professor Richard Prisco’s Experimental Wood Fabrication course are learning techniques to help them finish the cabinets they’ve been building throughout the quarter. The three graduate students enrolled in the course each are creating a cabinet-type piece that must include at least one drawer. Within those parameters, however, their designs reflect diverse approaches and ideas. Melissa Liszewski is incorporating a variety of materials into her entry table. “It has a curved aluminum, base, and the outside shell is heat-formed plastic,” she explained. “The piece inside that houses the drawer is bent wood.” Classmate Rahel Anael is building a bathroom cabinet. “It’s all made out of curly maple and aluminum,” she said. “The drawer section inside features changing heights.” For her project, Louise Books is developing a living-room cabinet that can house new music technology items, such as an iPod, an MP3 player or XM Radio. She’s including a drawer and a swinging door and said she has designed the piece to be both functional and aesthetic. “There’s a centerpiece aspect, more like a tribute to technology,” she said. “It’s the idea that these things are portable and we take them everywhere we go, but at home, we want to enjoy them as well.” Books said her concept developed after an assignment to research vessels. “My end result was that a vessel is also a form of communication, and music as a vessel jump-started the idea,” she explained. “What I wanted to do then became about technology, conceptually as well as functionally.” On March 5, Prisco demonstrated sanding, lacquering and drawer construction in the wood shop and spraying booth at the Gulfstream Center for Furniture and Industrial Design. Some students from his Furniture Design Studio courses, which meet at the same time, joined the group for the demos. Most of the students are getting ready to assemble the outside, or carcass, of their pieces by gluing them together. Before they do so, however, they should have the interior sections “100 percent” finished, Prisco told them. He showed them how to prepare scraper blades by using a metal file and then a stone to develop a burr on the edges, and then to hone the burr into a small hook using a piece of hardened steel as a burnisher. He explained that scraper blades work well to remove nicks, scratches and other flaws from the wood’s surface before sanding. He also demonstrated how to use a hand plane, which works well for shaping, he said. Unlike scrapers, with a hand plane, it’s important to follow the grain of the wood uphill. Going the opposite way is “like petting a dog tail to head as opposed to head to tail,” he explained. The result of hand planing is “almost like a glass finish — very, very smooth,” he told students. Prisco next demonstrated sanding, discussing the need to purchase quality sandpaper, the different degrees of coarseness and reasons not to fold sandpaper but rather to wrap it around a small block. Then he demonstrated sanding a board. “The trickiest thing is to remember to get the ends,” he said. “You always get the middle really well, but remember the ends too. The quality of your finish is only as good as the quality of your substrate, or your sanding.” Then he advised students to do something they probably don’t hear often — “Cut corners,” he said. Explaining that lacquer won’t go around a 90-degree corner, he showed them how to sand corners down a bit to reduce the sharp angle. After showing students how to scrape, plane and sand their pieces, Prisco led the group to the Gulfstream Center’s spray room, which includes two small booths and a larger, enclosed area, each of which has its own fan. In this facility, students can use a spray gun to apply lacquer, paint and other finishes to their projects. Prisco showed students how to set up and clean the spray gun and how to arrange their pieces for the most effective coverage when they spray. “When you lay out the parts, spread them out so you don’t overspray them,” he said. He prefers to spray about six coats of lacquer on his projects, he said; after the third and last coats, he lightly sands the pieces to remove bubbles, paint drops and other surface disruptions. “The first coat never looks all that good,” he told the students. “It looks blotchy when it dries ... If you don’t use enough lacquer, it looks uneven. If you use too much, it drips. If it drips, let it dry, and then scrape or sand it.” The next step in the demo was drawer-making. Prisco and the students returned to the wood shop, where he passed out a handout about various options for drawer corners and joinery. “You have to use the method of joinery that is appropriate to your design,” he said. For example, both Liszewski and Anael will be creating pocket drawers for their pieces. He also discussed elements every drawer needs, such as a running surface, an aligning surface and a kicking surface — which control how the drawer moves in and out of the carcass, how well it fits and where it stops when it’s pushed in, respectively. “The tighter those are, the better it looks and the more satisfied you are,” Prisco said. “If it’s looser, it’s just a sloppy drawer.” He provided the students with further guidelines, including the way wood grain should face on the bottom and sides of drawers, that the back part needs to be a little lower than the sides, and that the bottom should be about a quarter-inch above the carcass. After the demonstrations, the students returned to their workbenches to practice what they’d just seen. Prisco visited their spaces to answer questions and provide additional instruction, as needed. They have a lot to do before the end of the quarter, but they’re excited about the projects and they’ve enjoyed the learning process, the students said. “It was a challenge to wrap my mind around this,” said Books, who had to consider issues such as wires and “breathing space” for electronic equipment in developing her project. “I had to re-approach the design aspect several times until I was able to let go of the technology and focus on the design, then I could apply the technology. It’s completely different than where I began, which is cool because it’s for good reasons.” “It’s a lot of new materials that I’m glad I’ve been able to use,” said Liszewski, who is in her second quarter of graduate study. “It’s turning out really well, so I’m excited.” Anael, who also started graduate studies in Fall 2006, agreed. “This is my second piece that I’ve built, and I’m having fun right now — stressed, but fun.”  |
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