Over the course of the last few months we’ve been working tirelessly to get the Tinkering Studio and South Gallery ready to go for our grand opening on April 17th. Walter has been sequestered up in TS North (a workshop we set up in Marin) constructing some of the larger environmental elements that we will be using to create comfortable spaces and niches for exhibits. One of the most fun things about watching him work on these projects is seeing how he thinks about making jigs, which are custom tools created to accomplish specific tasks.
Back in the fall, when we were prototyping walls for the gallery, Nicole and Walter came up with a really beautiful, flexible, and sturdy system of dividers for the space. The walls have different heights and attach at various angles. We also thought that it would look cool and be more functional if we had some curved pieces to add to the set. But creating these wooden panels proved to be a bit of a explosive challenge, so Walter had to construct a giant jig to help him bend the wood and attach it to the frame. Here’s how he used the jig to make our dividers:
First Walter put a thin piece of plywood on the bottom part of the jig and sandwiched it under the top layer with some glue.
Then he climbed up on the sled and used his body weight to keep the flexible piece curved against the bottom part.
Next, while still sitting on the jig, he put six to eight clamps on each side of the wood to hold down the piece.
Then, he circled back around and tacked the board to the frame. Each board then needed to dry before it was cut, sanded, stained and prepped to be moved out on the exhibit floor of the new museum.
Just this week we started placing the dividers in the museum. Here are a couple straight pieces and a curved shaped creating a niche for a super secret Tinkering Studio exhibit.
I like that the process of creating our space continues to mirror the prototyping spirit that we ask visitors to engage with us in the space. We had an idea of how they wanted the dividers to look and feel but then Walter really had to experiment to create a process and the jigs to help him accomplish that. We’ll try and highlight more behind the scenes tools and techniques as we get closer to opening.
