I had a lot of fun with this week's project. At first I struggled to come up with an idea that matched my theme, but then I had the idea to make chairs and immediately knew that's what I had to make. After all, designers often obsess over chairs as an example of all the ways you can create new forms to do something so simple, and while some may say it's not absurd I would argue otherwise. With my object set, I now had to figure out how to make them. I managed to find a good piece of scrap wood in the Fab Lab and set about sketching out the chairs.

With all my other coursework I wanted to strike a balance to not spend too much time in the Fab Lab, so I opted for a simpler design with many 90º edges. After the sketch my first step was to cut pieces of wood that would eventually turn into the chairs. First I cut my wood into two havles, then clamping a stop block to the compound miter saw I cut six pieces of 3.5' by 1.5' pieces of wood.

After I had my pieces of wood I chose to cut the chair back and seat next. In hindsight, I should have cut the chair legs out next, but I knew if would be the hardest part of the object so I opted for the easier cut for now. Using the pre-made wooden bandsaw track I clamped a piece of wood with a 0.25" gap before the saw and cut six chairs (one I used to test all the cuts first). I then moved the stop block to cut a cube off of each piece.

Next using the bandsaw again with a 0.25" stop block, I made cuts for the legs however it did little to cut out the bottom of the chair. Nonetheless I made the cuts for the legs before consulting the shop staff and the best options for removing the excess wood. Audrey Oh suggested using the small bandsaw to diagonally cut the excess wood and once I removed as much as possible to use the dremel with the metal head to even out the bottom.

After carefully using the small bandsaw and a lot of dremeling, All of the chairs looked like chairs. My hand was sore from. trying to be precise with the dremel and prevent myself from accidentally removing wood from the chair legs. The dremel also caused the most uncertainty and unevenness in the objects. While they all had the same dimensions, each had their own imperfections. All in all, I enjoyed this project and something about the tiny chairs brought me a lot of joy. Especially seeing how other people reacted to them or would come by my work table just to stack them up. It may lead to a change in my theme, but I haven't decided yet.

- Matt Blanco