Kelly Hoppen

        Hoppen was born into an Irish-Jewish background. She began her career at the age of 16 when she was given the opportunity to design a family friend’s kitchen. She has designed for a number of celebrities including David and Victoria Beckham and Martin Shaw, who was one of her first clients. She has designed on the homes, yachts and jets, as well as commercial projects in several countries, including hotels, restaurants, offices and aircraft. Some of her most recent projects include a collaboration with Pearl Motor Yachts and the design of a LUX* Belle Mare hotel resort in Mauritius.

Nature and Design of Aestheticsby David Pye

        The economy has been a major influence on the designs that people make now a days that when someone says “better” they mean “cheaper” in price. All materials have different characteristics like the hardness, how flexible they are, and even the size and shape. When we work with them we are altering these characteristics and using them to our advantage. There are also many ways to manipulate the characteristics of the materials like carving, heating, or polishing. Even though we can work with these materials and manipulate their characteristics it is only to an extent. One can only bend a piece of wood so far until it breaks just like how metal can not go back to the way it was before after it rusts. When working with trying to cut straight pieces of wood a jig should be used. This article is very right when they say that people often try to go for the easier and cheaper prices. Now a days when something is both cheaper material and good quality we often go straight toward. We often regard it as the best option because of the economy problems. When working with wood it is not as expensive and it can be made into almost anything that you can imagine. The way that wood can be manipulated can often be mind blowing even though it does have it’s limitations. Personally “better” and “cheaper” can work hand in hand but it has to be the right material and the right design. 

Final Steps to Final Product

With the bandsaw I ended up cutting it in angles around the circle that was drawn on the block of wood. From there I then power sanded the wood so that it smoothed out into the circle. After I cut an inch off to make the top. 

 After sanding the whole thing with 80 sandpaper I used the drill press to make a hole for the necklace as well as a little place for your finger to help scoop it out. 

 Here on the left is the box after it's sanded. The picture on the right is after I used the drill press. As you can see the necklace fits perfectly with just enough room for your finger to go in and scoop it up.
After I used the drill press again to insert the dole rode to attach the top and make it swivel around.

Here is the final product!

Starting to Work on the Final Product

I decided that I wanted to use walnut as the wood because to me the darker wood is more appealing to the eye. It also seems to appeal more to other people as well. I had 5 pieces of wood to make a 4x4x4 bigger wooden block to work with.

After gluing all the pieces together and waiting for it to dry I cut off the few edges to smooth it down. 

Next I cut out a template for my circle and traced it on to the 4x4x4 box of wood.

First Time Cutting

When I first heard about this project I was a little bit nervous. Cutting wood with big machines was not something that I had done before. The first time I cut with the bandsaw I thought I was going to cut off my finger. Thankfully I did not and I also was able to learn how to control the wood to cut how I wanted. The first time we cut I learned that unless you have a barrier to cut against it is very hard to cut a straight line on your own. I also learned that cutting in a complete circle is also a very hard thing to do in just one cut. This made me realize that I would have to better plan out on how to cut my box.

Here is the scrap wood that I cut for the first time using a Bandsaw.

This was the piece of practice wood we were given to learn how to make and cut out our box. 

These were the different practice circles that I tried cutting out with the bandsaw. As you can see I learned that it was harder to cut in a full circle. I learned that it all depends on which size bandsaw blade you were using and how big the piece of wood was. 

Here were the first two ideas that I came up with. The top was going to pull off with the inside not completely hollow so that the necklace would be able to sit in the middle of it. After I cut these I realized that I wanted my dimensions very different from the test models.

First Set of Models

Here are the first set of foam models that I built for the vessel project. I realized that this type of material was very hard to carve and work with. It was also very very messy and flew everywhere. For my second vessel models I ended up using cardboard instead. It was easier to manipulate and construct my ideas with. At this point in the project I thought that I wanted to either do a square box for the necklace or a hexagon for the triangle ring to follow the angles.

Inspiration

To help come up with ideas for the vessel I did a lot of researching. The internet was one way that I could look up other bandsaw boxes and  concepts that I would be able to apply to my project. Here are some of the boxes that I used as inspiration during my first models and my initial sketches.