The Finished Project

This post is coming in a little late. I have been busy with summer vacation starting and I totally forgot to post the finished product. After that long school year I realized that I enjoy metal working much more than I previously would have thought. With this realization I plan to work on more projects in the future, and I already am planning on making a chain-mail shirt.

Last Touches on the Gauntlet and Presentation

The year seems to have flown by and my project's deadline is just around the corner. More specifically, next week. With the deadline growing closer I have been working harder and harder to finish my project in time. For our presentations I really want to be able to wear my gauntlet and have it be finished, so that while I am presenting what my project was about, I can show what the result is. I have not had much time at all to work on my project, but I have managed to finish all of the fingers allowing me to make the wrist and arm. I have not had much time to work on my project because as the year comes to a close all my teachers are piling up the homework so that we have time before finals to study for finals. As I have been working on the project, I have also been working on what I am going to say for the presentation. Hopefully I can entertain the audience with my words of wisdom while I fling about my gauntlet.

*The picture is not current*

Making a Presentation and a Presentable Arm

This week we are starting our presentations for our project. We have been watching multiple TEDx talks in class to show us examples of good and bad presenting, and even though my project is not yet finished, I feel excited about presenting it. I do, however, want something physical that I could show off while presenting my presentation. For this reason, while working on my presentation, I will continue to work on finishing my gauntlet. Even though my original goal of my project will not be finished, having my gauntlet for my presentation done is still important because it shows that I at least worked to finish my project rather than give up on it. Because I will not have my project done, I was thinking that I would talk about how the project idea came to mind and the story behind that, and the lessons I learned throughout the year.

Finishing Up The Year

Last week I worked on sanding the rest of the pieces for my project for what little time I had because of all the homework I have had as the school year comes to an end, and the week before I finished cutting out all the pieces. It has been increasingly difficult for me to find time to work on my project because finals are coming up and there is a lot of homework, but I have been able to put aside a little bit of time to work on it. This week I have been sanding as many pieces as possible as well as start putting together the pieces that are done. I've sanded quite a lot of pieces and have finished putting together one of the fingers. I probably have a biased opinion on this, but I think it looks pretty cool so far. Hopefully I will be able to finish the rest of the gauntlet so that I can show it off, and maybe even wear it, during my presentation.

Finished Cutting, Time To Sand

I am now entering the last week to work on the physical aspect of my project. After this week I am going to start working on a presentation to present the information, the experiences, and the product to my class. Being that the window is closing for working on the physical aspect of my project, I have been working extremely hard on the project in order to finish as much of the project as possible. Last weekend, I spent a solid hour cutting out all of the pieces for my gauntlet, including the thirty or so finger pieces. After the hour was over, all the pieces had been cut out, and my hands were so sore from using the cutting tool that I had to relax and ice my hands. I could not work on the physical aspects of the project anymore that weekend after that because everything I did hurt my hands immensely; however, now that I have had a week of focusing on other assignments and resting my hands, they no longer are sore, and I am able to continue the work for my project. This weekend I plan on trying to sand ALL of the pieces similar to how I cut out all of the pieces the weekend before. I also want to try punching out most if not all the holes in the pieces, shape the pieces, and then facet them together so that I can show off at least the gauntlet for my presentation.

Finishing up the Gauntlet

Last week I got the facets and facet tool so that I would be able to facet the pieces of my gauntlet together, and this week I got a manual hole punch that would allow me to punch holes into my metal pieces without having to use to drill. The reason I did this is because, after researching for a while, I found that because of the hardness of stainless steel and the amount of heat it generates, using drills for drilling holes into stainless steel is very ineffective. When drilling stainless steel, it takes a while to drill all the way through the metal because of its hardness. Because it takes a while, the metal has more time to generate heat. Because of the metal heats up a lot during the drilling, the drill bit begins to heat up as well, which usually causes the drill bit to bend or break. This makes the lifespan of drill bits much shorter, and one might need a new drill bit for every few holes drilled. The punch, however, does not build up heat anywhere near the extent of using a drill, is much quicker, and is much safer than using a drill.
Unfortunately for my project, my deadline has crept up on me, and I only have a few more weeks to "finish" it. I'll have to work very efficiently on all my work, even my work that does not relate to this project, so that I'll have as much time to work on my project as possible.

The Build: Working More Pieces + New Tools

As I thought, during Spring Break I was able to cut-out and sand a bunch more pieces, but I was not able to finish ALL the pieces. While working, I realised it would be much easier to cut holes into the metal pieces if I left them flat, and then after cutting the holes I would bend them to their desired shape. As well, I have been trying to find the best way to cut the holes into the metal pieces and find the best way of faceting the pieces together.

Over the break, I talked with my Mentor and together we went to a supply store to look for facets. There we found both facets and a facet gun that would make faceting the pieces together much, much easier.

I also found out that when dealing with stainless steel metal, drills do not work as well as with other metals, and the bits are easier to break when drilling. Over the break and this week, I found a type of hole puncher that is used to punch holes into metal and is recommended for using on stainless steel. I purchased the punch online, and it should be arriving in a few days, which would allow me to continue to the next step of building my gauntlet.

The Build: Binge Building

As the end of the month approaches, so does my deadline for finishing all the parts of my gauntlet made in metal. In the past, when I have needed to work, I have had HW from school to focus on getting in the way of making the metal pieces. Because Spring Break is next week, I have little to no HW to focus on for the next week. This gives me a huge amount of time to work on my 20% project because it is basically the only thing I have to focus on the whole time. Even though I have a ton of time to work on the project next week, I want to make as many of the parts as I can by Monday March 31st. As I said before, my goal for the month is to finish making all the parts in metal. At the moment, it is very unlikely that I will be able to make ALL the parts by Monday, but I will make as many as I can at least.

Finished The Video

This week I have been recording video of myself making one of the pieces for my gauntlet. I decided to do this because I wanted to be able to show a visual representation of the process that is more dynamic than pictures. When I finished recording, I had to start editing the separate video files together. The process included taking out little bits of unimportant footage here and there to make the video short enough, speeding up the video to make it more interesting and way shorter as the the film amounted to almost 45 minutes before editing, and I had to find music to add to the footage to make the silence bearable. Luckily I found some great music when searching for creative commons music.

The song I used in my video is titled ”Inis Meain” and was made by So Cow. The song is licensed under a Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License for creative commons, and I found it on freemusicarchive.org at the link http://freemusicarchive.org/music/So_Cow/Wackity_Schmackity_Doo_1/Inis_Meain

Showing Off The Experience

Over the last couple weeks I have been using all the spare time I have to work on my project, and more specifically, working trying to make the gauntlet out of metal. For the month I still have the goal of completing all the pieces of my gauntlet at least cut out and shaped. I omit drilling holes into the pieces and faceting them together because I do not know the proper sized drill bit that I should use, and I still do not have the facets. This week, however, I want to try and focus on sharing the experience of making the gauntlet. I have plans for making a short speed-up video of me cutting out, sanding, and bending one of the pieces of metal to the desired shape. So I can show people the process instead of just showing the end product. I will likely use this at the end of the year for presenting my project to the class.

The Build: Working With Metal

Finally I am working with metal for my project after weeks of making my prototype out of paper. At the moment I am working on the wrist portion of my gauntlet and I have already made three of the pieces. I plan on finishing the rest of the pieces by the end of the month. To do this I would have to finish the wrist pieces by next week. This is because I will need all the time I can to make all of the finger pieces. There are a ton of them and they take a long time to cut out, sand down, and shape. At the same time that I am making the wrist pieces, I need to buy facets and figure out what size drill I need to use. This will allow me to drill the holes in the gauntlet pieces and use the facets to put them together when they’re done.














The picture shows two of the pieces that fit together on the wrist.

Finally Moving On To Metal

After weeks of working on a prototype, I am finally going to use the metal that has been sitting at my desk. To make the gauntlet out of metal, I first needed to build the design with some easily modifiable material like paper to make sure the design was fit properly to my arm. This step I am now done with. The next step would be to take apart the design into its individual pieces. Then, I would place the individual pieces onto the metal sheets and use a carving tool to carve out the shape of the piece onto the metal. Next I would cut out the pieces to roughly the same size as the carving so that I can sand down the edges. The next step which I likely won’t be able to do this week will be to bend and shape the pieces. The final step would be to drill out the holes and put the pieces together with facets.

Back To Where I Was

Last week I found out about my horrible mistake of making the prototype of the fingers wrong therefore making the two weeks that I spent working on the fingers alone totally wasted. If anything good came from this, it is that I now know that I can not just assume that I know how something should be built and that I should follow the directions as closely as possible. As well because of this, my glove that holds the pieces together has many more holes in it than needed, and this could compromise its structure when I am using the finished product.

This week, however, I am done with the prototype, and I am now back to where I was two weeks ago. With the prototype done I can now work on sketching the design onto the metal. Even though I lost a few weeks, I still feel that I am likely to complete my monthly goals until the end of my project.

Setbacks + Slowing Progress

Starting the week I found out about an annoying setback in my project. I found out that I built my prototype wrong, and I now have to rebuild the parts that were built wrong before. More specifically I built the fingers wrong. This is a huge setback because the fingers were the hardest parts to put together, and they took me around two school weeks to finish them. Even though failing allows me to learn, these setbacks have been making me feel as if I have been wasting my time and that I might not be able to finish what I have expected by the end of the school year.
Besides taking a step back with my project, I am still trying to make progress and I feel that I will be done with the prototype (again) this weekend and start working with the metal so that I can meet my goals for this month, by the end of the month.


The picture was taken after I ripped apart the failed fingers

The Build: Finished Prototype, Sketching Metal, and Prototyping Piston

This week I finished making the prototype of my gauntlet that is made out of paper. I put together the last finger, the thumb, and fastened the knuckle plate and the glove together. Now that the prototype is done I will start tracing the modified design on the paper to the sheets of metal that I have. To this I will have to first take apart the prototype of the gauntlet and use the paper pieces to trace the shapes and sketch them into the metal. This would allow me to snip out the pieces using snips to make the gauntlet out of

metal to make it a proper gauntlet; however, I feel that before I get to into finishing the gauntlet I should focus more on my piston. So next week I will be both working on sketching the design for the gauntlet onto my sheets of metal, as well as working on the design and prototype of the piston mechanism.

The Build: Final Fitting + Start Sketching Metal

For the last few weeks I have been working on a paper prototype version of my gauntlet. Making a prototype out of paper first came to mind when I realized that the design for the gauntlet could be a different size than that of my arm. This would be a serious issue for my project because first, if the parts are not the right sizes, then there will be lock-ups (when joints don’t move because they are obstructed) because the pieces will be getting in the way of the other pieces when one tries to move with the gauntlet on, and second, I would have to fix the lock-ups by manually sanding down each individual piece of metal to the right size. This can all be avoided
by making the gauntlet with paper first because paper is exponentially easier to form and shape compared to metal, allowing me to easily fit the pieces to my arm specifically. I am currently finishing the final touches of the prototype so that I can continue to the metal. I plan on starting to sketch the designs onto the metal this weekend, and then continue to cut out the metal next week.

The Build: Paper Prototype

Last week I printed out the design I am using on thick paper and cut them out. I then poked holes through the paper in the general area they needed to be in so that with rivets, I could connect the different pieces together. Next I started to put together the different pieces; however, the finger pieces I did not put together because they needed strips of leather to put them together. This week however, I have used substitute strips made from scraps of paper so that I could continue to build the prototype made of paper. With a substitute to leather, I was able to start putting the finger pieces together. When starting this I found that the fingers are much more difficult to fit to the glove than the other parts. This is because there are a lot of little pieces, and there needs to be a lot of free movement for the fingers. All the pieces have to fit perfectly or else one would not be able to move their fingers properly.

The Build: Paper First

 This week for my project I decided that I would start the actual building of my gauntlet. To do this I first needed to print out my design on paper thicker than normal paper to make it easier to trace the design onto metal sheets. To get the paper printed on, I went to the nearest postal store where I got the design printed. After printing out the design I started to cut out the pieces of paper. Before tracing the paper onto the metal, however, I decided to first try to build the gauntlet out of the paper pieces. This would allow me to fit the individual parts to my hand on a easily changeable substance like paper instead of metal. At the moment I have all the paper pieces cut out, and I tried fitting them together as shown in the picture. I left out the rest of the finger plates because they require leather strips that I do not have yet.

Progress & Problems Over Break

Problems always arise during a project, and my project has proven this to be true many times. Over winter break I was meaning to start and hopefully finish the build of my arm after purchasing all the materials; however, a situation raised when purchasing the materials. The store that I was going to buy sheets of metal from closed for the entire break, and to fix this issue I had to order metal online. Because it was ordered online, the metal took until just this Wednesday to arrive. With this delay, however, I am still moving forward in my project. I now have the metal needed, a set of tools, and the design ready to be traced onto the metal for me to cut and then shape into the desired shapes. This weekend I hope to start tracing the design onto the metal and to start cutting the pieces out for shaping.