Happy new year everyone, I decided to take some much needed time off to close out last year, but now I am back in the studio and putting the finishing touches on my latest project.
This work is the next progression in my "Ray-shaped" series. It builds on what were mostly superficial knife design references from my RR212 piece, and brings them into a more functionally familiar space.
As with all my knife inspired works, I want to start by repeating a phrase I have written often. “I am not a knife maker”.
When I say that, I simply mean that I am a sculptor taking a sculptural approach to a genre I admire, but do not pretend to fully understand. That sort of thing can take a lifetime, so I feel obligated to say that I am just a visitor, not a resident, of knife-land.
With that said, I find myself circling knife design often, and so have endeavored to dip my toe in once again with the goal of saying something new about a craft with a very long tradition.
So lets get started. This piece borrows from the mechanics of your standard issue folding knife, probably the first one you might have had as a kid. Specifically, it uses a slip-joint to articulate a tail-like feature that folds out of the work, either by pulling hard enough to overcome the spring, or when you depress a lever.
Originally, I thought I might make the tail a locking feature using a what is called a back-lock arrangement that would hold the tail firmly in place once open. However, I settled on a slip joint because it provides a third neutral position for standing the work up in interesting ways, as well as just working better in terms of tactile response and some other fidgety qualities.
Also, a firm locking mechanism would have made it a better piece of art to truly stab something with. That is not really what I want my art to be about, contrary to how some of my pieces have looked over the years. So I went with the more versatile mechanic.
However old the slip joint design might be, I still tried to put my own mark on the mechanism (see video above). Traditional slip joint knives use a rigid metal spring of some variety to provide tension to the lock. However, In place of a proper spring, I have taken the opportunity to use magnets to provide the opposing force in the mechanism. Magnets are better suited in this piece because they provide better haptics to the lock bar. I worked up my prototype thinking I was some sort of pioneer because I had never seen such a knife, but that didn't last long
I had assumed this type of spring would be completely impractical in a real knife because magnets tend to attract debris if kept in a pocket and used out in the world (especially for a metal worker), but after discussing my working prototype to a collector friend of mine, he kindly corrected me, and directed to a knife design that already uses a similar principle, but takes it into some very clever territory.
All of this is to say, when an ideas time has come, it has come. Regardless of how practical this arrangement might be in a real knife–for a piece of art like this, the magnets work really well. Not too firm, and just click-y enough to give a very unique feel.
On the design front, I am usually a bit coy about my visual allusions, but I think it is pretty obvious that I am working with a sort of Ray shape here.
I also went out of my way to relocate the bolt hardware from the sides, where they looked more like a utilitarian adornment, to the front of the piece where they have a more obvious creature feel to them. Moving the bolts to the front was both a visual and engineering challenge and really brings some charisma to the piece.
And of course there is the tail. I felt that since this is knife inspired, one might assume the fold out should be a proper blade. But it is not really my style to be so obvious. Instead, I have produced a more ambiguous convex spike shape. I think it serves well as both a tail and a blade-form without being too much of either.
Turning this pointy bit required me to build a fun little arbor to align this unruly shape with the center line of the lathe.
More on the engineering front: I took a number of extra steps to lighten the weight of this piece to balance how well the tail can support the weight of the work. For starters, the “wing” sections are made in aluminum, which is very lightweight. I did some extra hollowing out on the hidden side to lighten them even further.
I specifically wanted them to be aluminum as well because this piece was screaming for some bold colors. That dark blue is actually a deep deep grey dye that takes on a battleship blue or denim color when left to fully saturate.
I also tried making the tailpiece and lock-bar out of titanium, thinking maybe I would have an opportunity for further anodizing, and because it to is much lighter than stainless steel.
But, although I already knew this, it turns out that titanium has very poor sliding qualities and is too prone to galling to work here. I somehow thought I could get away with it, but I underestimated how poor the sliding action between two titanium parts would truly be. It felt downright gross. so I scrapped that idea and switched to stainless steel for the sliding parts.
This created a much friendlier bearing surface.
For the pieces that I will refer to as “the liners” I prototyped in aluminum, and then worked up a pair in titanium and stainless steel. Both stainless and Ti presented unique challenges here.
I ran into some extreme warping issue with the stainless version. Thin stainless steel bar stock has a lot of internal stresses caused by how it is rolled in manufacturing. Once you start cutting into its surface, it loves to curl up like a fish. My first batch of parts warped pretty badly and needed to be bent straight in a press. I know a few ways to mitigate this in the future, however it was a fun to be reminded again of the hidden forces hiding inside various materials.
The titanium version stayed much flatter for me, but this material is prone to work hardening and other general mayhem when machining. My test parts here came out with slightly oversized perimeters, and so there was some fitment issues. But after a little fiddling, I ended up with good parts here as well.
Now I could assess them in the context of the piece.
The titanium liners are lighter, but honestly, I personally like the extra heft of the stainless ones. They feel better to me in the hand. And, it turns out I saved so much weight making the wing parts in aluminum, that this added weight does not seem to be the issue I thought it would be.
There are of course lots of reasons to use the titanium liners, chief among them is that titanium opens the door to further anodizing and colored details. Time willing, I will get to explore that next, as I still have a bit of R&D to do to refine the piece, as well as my processes.
But thats my journey so far, and I was eager to share how this mix of design, engineering, and sentimentality has comes together in a work that feels pretty unique.
Lets call it another great example of my “not a knife” style work.
A note for collectors: Naturally, I am planning to make an edition of these pieces for those interested in adding this work to their collections.
I think I will open the sign up this coming Thursday January 9th (my birthday!) and leave it open for a about a week. Then, as is my way, I will close the books on this piece and set to work. Most of you who collect know the drill at this point.
So look for a sign up email and or links at all of my usual places (My blog, My IG, and email) at 11AM EST.
I will have most of the details sorted out by then and will include extra details on the sign up sheet regarding pricing and options.
In the meantime, and as always, comments and questions are welcome.
Thanks for reading
