This Victorian Bench was made as my final project for college to compete in the young craftsman at the South of England Show. The brief of the project was to include an element of the South Downs in the design.

PROCESS

When designing this bench, the idea of having a straight bench didn’t feel challenging enough for a final project. This started the idea process and within a week I had the final design drawn to scale and ready to start making. When making the back of the bench I cold bent all the parts in a fly press instead of heating them up. I did this for two reasons: firstly because the hot steel wouldn’t bend evenly meaning the flow of the bench wouldn’t match the drawing, and secondly because the handling of the sleet thought the fly press would involve two people using tongs and gloves just to make sure there was no warping in the bars.

The main tools used to create the Victorian bench were the fly press to create all the shapes that you see from top to bottom. The second was the pillar drill which saved me time allowing me to drill over 100 holes with ease and precision and ultimately making the final peace clean with even spacings and centred holes. Lastly, is the power hammer making light work of all forging, creating all six feet by drawing down a bar of 40 square tapping into 20 square and producing the armrests which flowed into the legs.

Final assembly of the Victorian bench was done in three parts, back, seat and sides. The reasoning behind this was because there was a large number of rivets holding bench together and the size and weight of the bench would involve a lot of moving and turning so by assembling in parts I minimized this process. Throughout the final assembly process I realized riveting certain pieces would involve bending and making tools so it would be possible to put together which I should had realized in the design process.

SUMMARY

Overall, the project was a great success and was well received at the South of England show. This is one of the pieces I am most proud of and I look forward to creating more designs like this in the future.

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