new rbs…

Last week I started to make the base for the newest rolling ball sculpture and I more or less finished it up last night.  The bottom of the base (the stand maybe??) is made of half inch copper pipe that I had lying around from some plumbing work I did a few months ago.  I quickly made up a nice square of pipe and 90 degree elbows, then had the surprisingly difficult job of making it lay completely flat on the table.  With that done I moved on to creating some legs to hold up the track.

Just like with my first RBS attempt I figured that a single piece of 14 gauge copper wire (which is what I’m using for the track) would be too flimsy to hold everything up, so I tightly twisted two pieces of wire together to make something a little bit stronger.  I don’t know if I’m a big fan of how the twisted wire looks, I think I would rather have everything (the track and the legs/supporting pieces) look uniform, but this solution seems to function without a problem.  I may look into getting some thicker wire for future sculptures.

Anyway, so four legs that attach to the base and a nice square platform on top and the base is ready to go!  I have only a rough idea of what direction I want to go with this one, so we’ll see what it ends up looking like. I do know that I’ll be using smaller marbles (5/8″), so I’ll have to go through the process of trying to figure out the track spacing again.  Because the base is already built for this piece and I want to attach the track as I go along (not create separate track pieces then attach them) I’m going to have to rethink the jig setup.  I may end up using a bolt with some nuts and washers to hold the track pieces at the correct spacing.  I’m sure there will be pictures of that process coming up soon!