making a bent plywood wall

We made a new display wall to show our jewelry at ICFF this year out of bent plywood.  After making some sketches in Rhino, Jesse built a more rigorous model in CATIA.  The idea was to use the bend of the plywood to create both wall-like and shelf-like elements.  The 3-dimensional nature of the new Cell Cycle line meant that we needed flat surfaces to display pieces on, in addition to our usual hanging space.  Using CATIA allowed us very close control over how the surfaces curves were created so we could ensure the shelves were perfectly flat and sized for the pieces.

We used a CNC router to cut six 4′x4′ pieces of MDF into molds.  We decided to only make every other layer needed for the full thickness of the plywood which saved quite a bit of materials and machine time, but meant we spent hours screwing spacers on to the pieces.  The display is made up of 10 bent plywood strips, which means there were 10 molds, each with a male and female side.  We cut down 4′x8′ sheets of 1/40″ cherry veneer into strips of an appropriate size.  Then we layered six strips with epoxy resin glue using a foam roller.  The stack was then carefully put in between the two halves of the mold and 2-4 clamps were used to apply pressure over a 24 hour period.

The next day, we removed the pieces from the molds, trimmed the top and bottom edge, and sanded everything.  For our first attempt at bent plywood, I think it came out very well!

kitchen table in progress

please ignore the yarn….

side table, desk x 2, bed, dresser and bookshelves coming soon

I’m pretty satisfied with the thickness of the branches in this piece, and somewhat unsatisfied with the the frame we built on the bottom of the table top to prevent warping, next version will have a hidden frame.  We limited the amount of space the branches took up to maintain adequate leg space, but I think they could have bit more expansive on the long edge of the table.

assembled chair

Well we finished assembling one chair, it is not actually finished since it needs to be sanded and then clear coated or painted.  All of the connections are done solely with wood joinery and all the cutting was done with a CNC router in our basement that we built ourselves.  The pieces will be disassembled for transport to our new apartment in Boston and then finished in situ.  The bottom on this chair is going to be flipped in the other chairs, so far we’ve completed 2.5 but the computer that’s running the router keeps crashing since it is running ubuntu off of a cd-rom.  We’ve taken a quick break to repartition the computer so we can run linux off the harddisk for fewer mishaps.

Furnishing our apartment

As of January 11th, Nervous System will be moving to Boston!  Our new apartment is ~1200 sq ft and located in Union Square.  We decided to take a week and design and build all of our furniture: dining room table and chairs, dressers, bookshelves, side tables, bed frame, etc.  Everything on our router, in our basement in NY.  Mostly we are using AC  plywood, which is the cheapest grade of plywood, and then some finished maple plywood for tables.

Here is a dining chair in progress:

From left to right: wood left over from cutting the two side of a chair, jesse sanding the seat of a chair, the router cutting a chair back