Update 11/11

Our epoxy gloss on our 3D rocks dried over night, so we were able to put a few up on the wall today.


With those up, we began adding some of our 3D water splash elements.   It's going to take a bit to get the look we need to see.  We want the water to flow out from the wall towards the viewer, around the rocks.


The stained glass spray paint going on some of our water features.


We took photos of the horizontal stabilizer yesterday, and began creating a pattern to follow.  We scaled it up with a projector, then traced around it.   We also worked to get the root figured out.  


Once we had the stabilizer root cut out, students worked to figure out how to make it fit onto the fuselage.   There needs to be a bit of adjustment at the tail to get it all to fit like it needs to.   We then need to work on how we will secure the stabilizer onto the fuselage securely.  We may need so structural support via metal brackets.

Update 11/14

More painters are returning to our mural work to help clean up some of our areas.  


We began adding splash and water effects to our 3D stream.   We have a long way to go, but it will look something like this.


Bondo is being added to smooth out our contours on our C-130 nose.   We have a ways to go.


We need the room in the 3D Art room for more sculptors, so our C-130 work has transitioned to the hallway.  I thought we were done with most of our cutting notches for stringers......so we immediately went to work cutting notches for stringers on the tail.   I'm sure my neighbor teachers are thrilled.  It's not noisy at all.






We are still working on our foam work on the fuselage.  


I've got several people working on water and fire made out of lexan and plexiglass.   Students realized how it was near impossible to get bubbles to form in the lexan, but developed quickly in the plexiglass.   They are using the lexan for fire, and the plexiglass for water.  

I think we are good right now.    

I appreciate your asking.    

Update 11/16

We are slowly working out how our horizontal stabilizer will lock into the fuselage, and adding stringers to the vertical stabilizer.




We cut out pieces for our horizontal stabilizer yesterday.    We might get to the two structural beams today.


Students were measuring different points on the fuselage for the landing gear pod, trying to make sure we only have to cut this out once.   They had a novel idea, of trying to project the image of the fuselage onto the model, then drawing the line from there, but there is question to the distortion that will happen with the image being projected over a 3D surface, so we decided not to go to the trouble of setting it all up.  





More water splashes were added yesterday.  We decided to add some that were clear, along with some that are slightly tinted to add a bit of variety to our display.


We are trying to get the wall above where the mountain lion is located, painted up and ready for the second otter to go back onto the display.   Getting around the large mountain lion display has not been easy.  


Our firefighter portrait is complete and ready to dry out.   The artist had to go in and poke holes all the way through the sculpture so we didn't have any air pockets inside the clay.  Those would cause it to explode in the kiln.   Once the holes are poked though the sculpture, then they are blended back over on the top, so they don't show.

That would suck to have the head explode after all that has gone into it.   Have air-pocket reducing methods been used throughout?  Folding the mix instead of stirring type actions?  Could you poke a few holes and put it in a vacuum chamber until equilibrium then fill in the holes before firing?  Kind of like how Polyester/Epoxy Resin are treated prior to pouring to make a bubble-free clear ball/river/table whatnot.   For $100 for the pump and $100 for the chamber and fittings, it would be a good addition to your "Lab Of Everything" branching out to allow static/noise resin pours to make the running streams on your walls, for example, rather than warping plexiglass, mold your own static "liquid water".  

When you get all done with the day, and your team has done a marvelous job creating the perfect horizontal stabilizer.............


..........and you realize it is the left stabilizer and not the right.

Their teacher is a dumbass.

Big ouch...

Update 11/17

Horizontal Stabilizer problems......

Well, we started this morning by taking the pattern over to the fuselage and figuring out what exactly we did wrong yesterday.  Turns out, the pattern IS the right stabilizer, but we managed to install the ribs upside down.



Pattern correct-ribs upside down



Fitting the spars to the fuselage.   All was good with these.


They were so careful with the assembly.....it was just upside down.


About 5min before we test fit to find out it was wrong.


When we pulled the ribs off the spars last night, the ribs were pretty trashed and needed remade.
This is the new version.




With only a few students doing the carving on the foam, this is taking more time than I'd like to see.  

Yes, we have a hot knife, but it can be difficult to control.   A long blade on our sawsall also works very well, but also can get out of hand quickly.   They are just being very careful not to cut too much.   It's the right way to do it, it's just super slow.  I understand why they are taking their time.

Man, I've got a great team to work with this year.  

We ran into a substantial obstacle this afternoon, and they didn't skip a beat.   They worked the problem, came to a concensus on how to fix it and got it done.  

I had several students from earlier in the day stop by after school to check on progress of our horizontal stabilizer, just to see where we were at.

Good team.

Update 11/21

Short week with Thanksgiving break starting Wednesday.  

We have the start of some t-shirt designs.  This is the student exploring some possibilities.  He's getting used to using Customink's website.  


As I reported before, we had a little, "well that's not going to work" last week.   We got our horizontal stabilizer up and saw this......  
Canted forward....  hmmmm.


The students did a great job figuring out how to get rid of the forward cant.  We still need to stabilize the bracket a bit more, but the angle is correct now.

Update 11/22

I want to thank my best friend, for again donating so generously to the PHS Art program.   He dropped off this 6ft ladder yesterday.    Thanks again!
Oh, I'm going to need some paint next week.   We are out of light blue.   I'll get you some color swatch codes and a voucher this week.


Our creek continues to flow with more water added.


Details in our mural are expanding again and we brought back some of the taxidermy mounts and got them repositioned.   They may have to get moved again if space determines.






Another design idea for our t-shirts......


Our horizontal stabilizer received much attention yesterday.   We are using this as our plan for the wing, and I want the students to have a good idea where we need to go with the wing before we begin.


There is a lot of rasping left to shape the foam on the edges.  We will cover the foam with paper mache once we are happy with the overall form.


The nose and landing gear pods are getting closer to ready for paper mache also.




The students got much more confident about the pods yesterday.  It was fun to see their enthusiasm and excitement as the shape got closer to what they have been trying for.  


We began cutting out the pattern for the wing yesterday.   We will tape all the paper pieces together, then lay out where we think the spars should be and how many ribs will be needed.  

Update 11/28

We are back this morning.  

We have our wing pattern laid out and we will start planning on where our spars will line up, and how many ribs we will need.


We started manipulating the life-size firefighter's hand by cutting relief cuts and then uing the heat gun to bend the hand into a grasping form.


We have some work to do on the thumb.


The portrait is ready to fire this morning.   We will know if it survives tomorrow morning.

We talked about that.   He may have his gloves off.

That was exactly what we had planned.  

We may still end up there, but for now we are going to try it this way.   We think our firefighter will also have the helmet in one of his hands.  A lot will depend on how the portrait turns out when mounted on the mannequin.

Maybe just paint gloves on him?  Glue down some threads to have ridges/seams in the right spots for real gloves then paint white and dab with charcoal here and there?

There's a story from a long time ago, in an art room, far, far away, and an abstract painting that went to State Art.    I was told of the origin of this painting after graduation.   The rest of the story is still under Panther Art Top Secret Clearance.

Update 11/29

@Rocketman89408  Thank you for your continued generosity and support of my program.  I very much appreciate the donation of 5lbs of glue sticks!  You were absolutely correct in seeing that we go through a bunch of these through the year.   It's pretty crazy.



We began adding structure for our 3D smoke to be added to, up on the walls.   We will be adding pillow stuffing soon that will then be airbrushed to look like smoke.


Our refining on the fuselage continues.  Many students are out sick this week, so it will slow us down a bit.


Students completed the ribbing on the horizontal stabilizer yesterday.   They began working on cleaning up the foam on the edges this morning.


Laying out details on the wing pattern is still ongoing.  


Students put a couple of their little ceramic birds up onto the display last week.   I'm hoping we have a few more that end up successful enough to display.


Our ceramic portrait survived!   It will be fun to see where it goes from here when we add a bronze patina to it.    

(Removed, CoC-PATSC~guns762)
......I've said too much.  

Update 11/30

More 3D rocks were added to our creek, and the water was adjusted a bit after an accidental knocking most of it off the wall.  We will probably work to make a few more larger pieces to add to the composition.


I'm happy with the details that my painters are adding to the area under the fire tier.   We will secure the extension cord and camouflage it today.


Some of the substructure that we will add pillow batting to to create 3D smoke.


These are 1/6th scale.   We will add a bit of weathering to them so they don't look quite so new.


Several different students are working to blend the fuselage to the horizontal stabilizer.    We are inching closer to skin.


Hand is adjusted.   We will cover the canvas with epoxy putty and blend it in, then paint to match the same bronze patina that will go on the face.

What's up with that bear's face/legs and all the white striping?

It's our "Spirit Bear".   It was a contest we did, years and years ago.    They gave out fiberglass bear forms and had schools decorate them.    I'll try to get a couple close ups.   The bear is covered in glass tiles, much like our Unicorns.  The white striping represented "lightning".

I appreciate the kind words and generous offer.   I'll have to see what we are in need of.   It's kind of weird with these projects, I usually don't know what we need, till we do.  

Update 12/1
December!!!  Going to be a few short weeks.  

Thought I'd share some of the work my other students have done the last couple weeks.   Some of these students have also been working on our big project this year, and just took a few weeks off to do their own work.

These are a few of our Junior Duck Stamps for this year.   Some beginners, and some experienced students.










Not a duck stamp, but cool painting, similar in composition.  One of my better artists, and huge contributor to this year's Firebomber & Smokejumper project.


Setting up to make these antlers removeable.   The hoist will help us get the antler in the right place, before bondoing the mounting peg in the correct position.   It's not easy.   Pretty stressful for the student to cut the antler off the skull cap.

Update 12/1.2

We got a few more structure pieces up for our 3D smoke area.  


Our mural sky color also made some more headway yesterday.   We got a few more gallons of paint from Sherwin Williams, as we were just about out of a few important colors.


We are ever closer to blending that fuselage to the tail.   We found we had to replace one piece of foam, as it wasn't deep enough, and the body line flowed inward more than we originally thought.


The stabilizer is just about finished and ready for skinning.  We have a few more areas near the end that need shaving down slightly.   Those areas are circled with marker.    


The landing gear pods are also closer, but they are going slowly to make sure the curved contours remain correct.  We had to move a bit of the foam in the center out, as we found one of our ribs was slightly too short, and created a concaved area that was incorrect.


We are still refining the cockpit area, and still need to shave down the roof.  The artist that was in charge of that is home sick for a few days.   He's also good friends with several other of my go to students, so they will probably be out sick in the next few days too.



Our smoke jumpers' tools (pulaskis)got a bit of weathering and patina yesterday.


The firefighter's hand was filled in a bit yesterday with epoxy.  They will work to smooth over more of the hand and fingers this week.


Students switched back to work on the roof of the look out tower.   k


I rounded up some materials yesterday.    This will be for our 3D smoke plumes.


Material for our parachutes.   This will be an interesting project for students to figure out.   They will have to look billowed and full.   We think we have a plan.


Our robotics dept is still playing with trying to 3D scan our engine housings.    They are using a program where you add multiple pictures from your camera, and it creates the 3D rendering.   It's been a bit of a struggle.  


I did  order "Always" for myself and got it the other day.   I ordered the blueray for my cabin and then realized I don't have a blueray player at school.

I talked to our tech dept, and they rounded up a player we can plug into my desktop PC.  I'm going to be gone for a few days near the end of the semester for my oldest son's PHD graduation, so I think I will have the sub show the movie then.  

+  $115.00   for paint
+ 60.00 for satin fabric and pillow stuffing.
____________________________________
$1805.00  Total as of 12/2/22

Update 12/2

We still are in the very beginning of t-shirt design ideas, but I'm loving the "One Foot In The Black" as part of the design.




The beginnings of a roof on our look out tower.


We didn't get to adding laterals today for our 3D smoke.  Hopefully Monday.


I'm finding it a bit funny how many students act all upset when asked to work on shaping the foam on the C-130, but once they start, they get addicted to it.  


We began adding the first part of our fuselage's skin today.   Always kind of a fun moment.




Figuring out a strategy for the skin on the rudder.