This week’s homework assignment was to use the water jet to cut out a diamond shape with the noun of our choice cut out inside the diamond. I decided to cut out a surfer that I traced in Adobe Illustrator and use the vinyl cutter to make some waves so when I painted it it looked like the surfer was actually surfing.

First, I cut out three pieces on the water jet in case a made a mistake post-processing (I should have cut about 5 more pieces…).

After cutting them out, I used the metal grinder in the machine shop to make the edges of the diamond smooth. I then went into the wood shop to use the sand blaster to make the edges where the surfer was cut out smooth. After about 45 minutes if sandblasting, I finally got both sides of my piece to be very smooth.

Then, I decided to paint my surfer which I quickly realized was a very bad idea. My original plan was to paint my piece darker blue, put my wave stickers on, and paint a light blue for the sky, and peel back the sticker to show dark blue waves and a light blue sky. The OEDK did not have light blue though and was out of a lot of other colors, so I decided to go with silver for the waves and black for the sky.

I painted my piece silver and then put my vinyl stickers where I wanted the waves and then painted black over top. I let this dry for about 3 hours or so just to be safe. When I went to peel the sticker, though, some on the back paint also peeled off around the edges of the wave. On my second piece, the black paint bled through my sticker and ruined the silver wave. I tried to fix this by putting the sky part of the sticker on the piece and repainting the silver wave. Again, when I went to peel the sticker, the paint peeled with it.

At this point I was extremely frustrated because the paint kept peeling. Instead of trying to use the sticker to cover the waves and repaint the background, I found a very small paintbrush and painted the edges of the wave by hand. This was pretty time consuming because my pieces are pretty small. As for the pieces with the peeled black paint in the sky region, I had to sand the paint off and restart.

I finally got to painted pieces I was okay with and decided to paint the back silver and do a matte clear coat on one of them. Unfortunately, when I did the matte clear coat, the paint started to crinkle and the silver paint on the back pooled and go on the front, ruining my previous paint job. This was incredibly frustrating, but I used sandpaper and got to work removing the paint on this piece. After removing the paint, I did my best using tape to cover the waves, and I repainted the sky.

After a very frustrating couple of hours working on this assignment with waves that are looking a little rough and an uneven sky, I finally got two complete pieces. I can’t say I am happy with how they came out, but I got it done despite all of the obstacles I ran into along the way. If I were to redo this, I would definitely not post-process with paint; I would use the sandblaster and the wave stickers to create and the surfer riding the wave look.

As for the cost, I used the water jet for about 5 minutes, and at about $30 per hour, that totals to about $2.50. I used the sandblaster for 45 minutes, and at about $45 per hour that totals to $33.75. I used the metal grinder for 5 minutes, and at about $35 per hour that totals to about $3. I also used sandpaper ($1), spray paint ($5), aluminum ($10), and vinyl ($3). I also spent about 6 hours and ask for help from the lab assistants for about 30 minutes, and at $10 and hour, that totals to $65. The grand total comes out to $123.25.