Ordering Steel from Extremor or Rapid Steel

Order from http://www.rapidsteel.us (delivers to 3rd Ward) or from Extremor Stainless Steel 1050 Grand Street, Brooklyn, NY 11211 718-302-6108 (walking distance from 3rd Ward). Reed has used Extremor and Mike K. has used Rapid Steel.

The material to order is hot rolled mild steel.
Steel generally comes in 24 ft lengths.
The wall thickness or gauge would be 1/8 inch which is .125.

For furniture or sculpture Square Box tubing is a good material. To give you some context we were working on the one foot square cubes from one inch square box tubing last week in class. A one foot square cube requires 12ft of material.

Place a steel order if you have a project idea in mind. Depending on where you are at in the class working with the available scrap steel at 3rd Ward can be very useful to develop your technique and get a sense of sculptural composition.

Tack welds, Scribing & 90 degree angles

Here is a video that I created as I started to assemble the legs of a table. In the demo, I'm using a set of magnets to hold together the different pieces to ensure that the two pieces are positioned are at 90 degrees.

Here is the link to the video.

Tack Welds

To secure the two pieces together, I'll use a tack weld to ensure that the two pieces are secure before I finish them off with a longer weld across the two seams of the metal. The tack welds are used to ensure that I measured correctly and that the angles are setup correctly before "really" attaching the two pieces together with the longer welds. If I screwed up my tack welds, it's easy to fix.

But if I don't use a tack weld and go right into a longer weld, it will require a lot more work to fix such as using the angle-grinder to cut off the weld, more sanding to clean up any spatter and genuine frustration that I have to start over from scratch.

Scribing

I overlooked the concept of scribing when I first got started in metal working. Scribing is the art of measuring and then cutting the metal to your expected lengths. While the video doesn't show me scribing anything, I never would have been able to get the lengths to the right size without it.

I like to use both a Sharpie marker to identify the lengths (and pieces) that I'm working with and a scribe tool such as this:

The scribing is important because it's easy to cut the pieces the wrong size and that is never a fun exercise to repeat something that you should do once.

90 degree angles

Welding two pieces together at 90 degree angles and have them line up perfectly sounds really easy but it's actually more complex than you think. Depending on whether you have cold-rolled or hot-rolled steel, the steel may or may not be perfectly uniform. I took this for granted when I was trying to figure out the differences and most often two pieces of steel are never exactly the same.

Welding magnets, like the one below really helps the two pieces of steel stay where you want them to and holds them together while you do the tack welds. I can't recommend these magnets enough and I'd recommend that you use two to ensure that you have a tight grip on the steel.

I hope you've enjoyed the video.

Ordering Steel

On Saturday we will go through the process of ordering steel so that people will be able purchase their own material for specific projects and/or to experiment.

In the meantime take a look at Rapid Steel a company that will deliver directly to 3rd Ward which students have used successfully in the past - http://www.rapidsteel.us/

Hot rolled (mild) steel works great for welded steel furniture and sculpture. This is the material to use for your first project.

Inspiration

I keep a folder of inspirational images for my design work, and I thought folks might be interested in the architectural & interiors related images from that.

It's stuff from every where, but it gets me thinking about new furniture & sculpture ideas.

Hope it's useful:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/28117403@N07

MIG @ Miller welding online

Here is a great source for MIG welding information:

http://www.millerwelds.com/resources/improving-your-skills/mig/

At this stage of the game we are focussed on welding hot rolled mild steel which is the material most commonly used in furniture and sculpture. When we refer to 'steel' in the shop this is what we talking about. Cold rolled steel is much harder and can be very valuable in a situation when you need a more precise gauge/thickness of steel.

Welcome New 3rd Ward Class Summer Session

Welcome to the new Students this is your teacher for the summer session at 3rd Ward - Ryan OConnor.

It was great to meet you all last Saturday at our first class. This blog was set up
so we can have an ongoing engagement of ideas, thoughts and questions. I want
us to create a vibrant dialogue that can support and encourage your ongoing
development through our Saturday class meetings.

Each of you have been added and should post things to the blog. These posts can be germane to the class specifically or congruent to the larger topic of art in life ie. a gallery show to check out, an inspiring story of an artist, your favorite chocolate cake recipe! Well maybe not that unless you studied under Ferran Adria!! kidding.

Buy a small sketchbook and start carrying it with you. Then check this out:

The American drawing-book by J.G. Chapman from 1847

http://digital.library.pitt.edu/cgi-bin/t/text/text-idx?idno=00z303872m;view=toc;c=nietz

Whether you draw, used to draw or stopped drawing we will use this text as a jumping off point. Draw anything, draw poorly, do amazing drawings. I encourage everyone to post a sketch or any thoughts they have about drawing.