Laser Cut Book Ends

When thinking about what to do make for our Spark mentor-ship, Dan and I talked about how I really like to read. Then we thought it would be a good idea to do some book ends at TechShop.

1. Draw out the idea
  - We brainstormed lots of ideas including a mustache and a boat, but we choose to do a boy pulling a wagon.
2. Choose a picture and draw it in Illustrator
  - This was my favorite part of the whole process because is a program that Graphic Designers use and is a profession I would like to learn more about.
  - The image has to be on all vector format and the cut lines have to be stroked at .001 thickness.
3. Cut the different pieces on the Laser cutter 
  -Your settings may vary but we used about 90% power, 15% speed.
4. Stain all the pieces with wood stain in different colors 
  - We used a towel to stain the pieces, we choose red for the boy and the wagon and natural for the rest.
5. Cut some sheet metal strips and bend then to 90 degrees
 - These will be glued into the center layer to be support and slide under the books.
6. Glue everything together with super glue
 - Be careful not to glue your fingers together! 



Tools Used and Materials:
-Paper and pen
- Illustrator
- Laser cutter
- Finger bender(for sheet metal)
- Wood stain
- Super glue 
- Cherry Veneer 1/8 inch ply wood

I really liked this project a lot. It was a lot of fun to do. One of my favorite parts was Illustrator and Laser cutting. I really hope I get to do something like this again.