Stand

Stand was my first project for ME365, Sand Casting. The assignment’s goals were to create a sand-casted part that served as a container. Having grown up with an interest in watches, and being something of an amateur watch collector/enthusiast, I decided to create a display stand for some of the watches that I’ve collected over the years. The central sand-cast part is deliberately reminiscent of a tree’s branches, as I very much enjoyed the connection between a wooden base and a metal stand that supported watches like leaves on a tree.

The main cast part is made from sand-cast silicon bronze. The pattern that was used in the casting was made from obomodulan, a synthetic wood analogue. I used a ShopBot CNC wood router in order to carve the design with an attached runner/gate system to feed into the pattern. Once cast, the front face was brought to a semi-polished finish, while the back was sandblasted to a matte finish. The wooden base is made from black walnut, and was cut mostly by hand before being sealed with boiled linseed oil.

I found this project to be a lot of fun as a quick exercise in casting fundamentals. Getting the metal component of the design to rest inside of the wooden base without the use of fasteners or adhesives was a great challenge in playing around with balancing components.