Saturday, February 27, 2010

Bowl over

Decoupling the bowl in prep for fiberglassing. The tires had to come off to get the bowl off. Hopefully that won't be a necessity every time.

Wednesday, February 24, 2010

It's a bowl!

How to skin a bowl

In the end we went with the 2d skinning of the bowl. We'll have to make up the extra d with foam before we fiberglass. We're going for a true round shape. Not a faceted sphere.
We've added the fuel filler door from the original donor vehicle. Allowing us to fill up on 8 essential vitamins and unleaded on the go.

Fail

We tried a number of ways to skin the bowl but just couldn't seem to get it right. I'm sure this lathe process could work. I've seen it somewhere. But it just wouldn't follow the bowl shape. If it was a nice sunny day we might have spent more time with it. But the rain somehow sapped us of our desire to tinker with it.

Monday, February 15, 2010

Let me take a minute to explain WIBCI..?

All designers, tinkers and engineers are familiar with the acronym K.I.S.S. As most of us know, it stands for Keep It Simple Stupid. While I usually agree that this is a helpful thing to remember. I also feel that it can be artistically stifling. Nothing whimsical or fun came out of KISS. Nothing crazy or amazing ever developed with KISS in mind. (Mostly)
But how many awesome things began with a blank sheet of paper and the phrase "Wouldn't it be cool if...?" "Wouldn't it be cool if we could fly like a bird?" Wouldn't it be cool if man could go to the moon?" Wouldn't it be cool if George Foreman sold an appliance that would allow me to grill indoors?" W.I.B.C.I..? Look up "Wouldn't it be cool". Below the sponsored links you'll find pages and pages of people asking crazy and challenging questions beginning with the phrase.
Put a little WIBCI..? in your day.