Art (New York)
After spending a lot of time on the Chameleon piece (see the other art tab under Projects), I now moved on to tackling a piece that has been sitting around in my house for some time.
I have extensive electronics, hardware, and software background, but have rarely stepped into the world of woodworking or the larger crafts scene. So I certainly learned a ton here about woodworking, using (a lot of scary, to me, at least) machines, how to sand, glue, prime, paint, and finish wood and 3D prints, and how to mess up a ton and breathe for a few days and then come back, fix mistakes and continue.
3D Manhattan
About 3 years ago, I bout some STLs of Manhattan that I wanted to print out and frame. Little did I know just how long this project would take me. I don't have pictures from this time, but I had my 3D printer working overtime for about a month, printing all of the individual tiles of Manhattan, 45 to be exact.
Re-Beginning​
As you can see above, each of these tiles were printed separately. And this is where I lost about ~2.5 years of my project, as the tiles sat under my bed collecting dust. I wasn't sure how to continue and the uncertainty slowly overcame me to make me apathetic enough to not continue. Honestly for a long time, I wasn't sure if I would ever even revisit this project. I had no woodworking experience, the machine shops are super intimidating to me, as a software person, and I had no idea of where to even begin.
But then, 2.5 years later, we got a new bed, and alas, those tiles had to be moved somewhere else. That picture above is where I placed those tiles, on the carpet, after I had taken them out from under the bed.
So then I cleaned, and began doing research. How do I even get the wood to make a frame? How do I attach these tiles? How do I cut and paint the wood? How do I make a frame? I didn't yet recognize just how much time and detail goes into putting together projects like this. To me, the idea is simple - just 3D print the tiles and glue them to a board and frame it! But executing all of those steps to a fidelity and quality that matches what you would want to see in your living room requires careful precision and accurate choices
The Woodworking
After extensive research and claude-ing, I decided to take the first step and go to the lumberyard and get some baltic birch plywood. I then made the scary first step of taking this huge plywood piece into the woodshop at work and cutting it down, the pic above was my first attempt.
From here, a lot of Youtube videos, practice, and learning was had, and eventually, I put together a frame too. The smaller one being my first practice frame. A lot of sanding and wood filler later, and I had the frame I was going to use. This led to me also cutting down the plywood piece to more exactly fit the frame.
Sanding, sanding, sanding, and painting
I didn't take a lot of pictures during this process, something I now regret, but the below pic shows the next available picture I have. Maybe about a month had elapsed by now. A lot of sanding, priming, painting, finishing, messing up, restarting, sanding, priming, painting, and finishing again had occurred. I also made a classic cutting mistake, had made the frame and board too big, cut it down and fixed it, and then had cut it too short, leading me to have to dremel off about 0.5 inches from the left side of the tiles, etc.
Warping and Flattening
I ended up gluing all the tiles together before I did any priming or painting, as I wanted all the visible tile gaps to be as least visible as possible. So when the whole of Manhattan was outside curing from a first layer of primer, a heat wave hit the Bay Area. I came outside the next day to the whole of Manhattan being incredibly and horrible warped.
I had to spend the next few days with a hair dryer, heating up the PLA and laying down weights in my best attempt to flatten the whole piece back.
And after this PLA pieces had finally be primed and finished, I began the final step of gluing Manhattan to the board with some trusty E6000 Plus. This also took a few days as I tried continually to heat up, glue, and flatten the piece against the board.
Finally
Oh, I also forgot about the whole French cleat and wall mounting process - not too interested, but equally as time consuming as everything as :)
Finally, it was done, mounting this felt like such a huge accomplishment. I'm personally proud of myself for seeing this through to the end, learning a ton of things I had 0 idea of, and coming out on top with a well finished and nice looking piece.
