Home Base

Well, finally it's posted. It's been finished for over a month, but I'm just getting around to posting the finished Home Base.

I'm actually lucky I even have them now, they were stolen from the Architecture of Objects show and were not returned until a good friend from the architecture school wrote a rather strongly worded stern email to all of the architecture school and someone anonymously dropped it off. I still owe my friend a beer for that one.

I made 4 of them, in the range of colors seen above. They went over very well in critique and everyone was very positive about what I had made. Shaun (my professor) seemed to like them very much as well. I think the best comment I received on Home Base was (paraphrasing) "These are strong enough as a product that they don't really need heavy marketing to get people to buy them. I would like one in my apartment. The blue one specifically."

I was very happy that I got the pieces powder-coated, there nothing like a professional paint job. I'm getting pretty good at making my models, but the guys at Cramer Tech know their stuff.

I decided not to exhibit the black Home Base in the show because of a little paint blemish and the wood piece for it was a little uneven so I pulled it. The three remaining did well I thought.

These are the custom magnetic note holders I made. I took steel rod, hollowed it out on the lathe and made a pocket for a neodymium magnet to sit inside. Each end was then capped with a rubber bumper to protect the steel frame of Home Base. I was quite proud of these little buggers, simple but because of the strength of the magnets they hold well.

These are the custom fasteners I made to hang Home Base. Similar in form to the magnets, these are a polished steel jacket over a press fit aluminum threaded insert. A hanger screw (coarse wood screw on one side, fine metal threads on the other side) was then threaded in and Loctite was used to fasten them in place. The bumpers were the final caps to the fasteners.

I presented Home Base with these as the hangers and people had no particular issues with them and they held heavier keys well. For the final public show however I used a different fastener that Shaun showed me that was wider in diameter and had a groove in it to hold the keys. Similar idea, but a bit nicer finish so I went ahead and substituted them.

I'll follow this up soon with pictures of the public Architecture of Objects show, it was pretty nice, if a bit packed with objects. The class made many many nice objects so I think Shaun had a hard time picking what got in. I was quite happy to get my clocks and Home Base in, 2 projects out of 4 in the final show isn't bad!

Thanks for reading!