Kezia De Costa 2014 - Bowl Manufacture (Blog post 02)

Image 1: Red circles indicate where cracks emerged

Image 2: Bowls bent and ready for packaging

The manufacturing of the series of bowls was exactly the same our first bowls, however I did encounter numerous problems from the every beginning. The bowls began cracking in exactly the same place (as indicated in the image above) before I'd even begun sanding them which was incredibly frustrating. After the first two bowls cracked I was left with eight which I sanded and polished very carefully but once again, two bowls cracked whilst being bent over the wok. After talking to Richard, I realised that my original design for the bowl had spaces which were too close together and so the tension made the bowls increasingly fragile and prone to breakage. In order to stop this from happening to the rest of the bowls, small pieces of balsa wood was wedged into the gaps so the acrylic wouldn't bend and crack. This method was effective and prevented any more cracks. It was definitely disappointing to have so many bowls crack after hours of sanding and polishing, but it highlighted the importance of executing the functional aspect of the design. 

The technique I used to sand and polish all the bowls was to work at it like a manufacturing line. I sanded each bowl with the same grain of sandpaper and then moved onto the next. This insured the quality of the bowls would remain consistent. After all the sanding, lots of the residue from the sanding was stuck between the gaps of the acrylic which was quite a lengthy process to remove before moving onto the cut and polish paste. However, once that was removed the polishing was fairly easy and I endeavoured to ensure the same level of quality was maintained with this final process. 

All up, the process was definitely long and challenging but it was great to finally have all the bowls completed and ready for packaging.