The frame

When designing the frame I decided to make the wooden skeletal frame for my sculpture curved so it also appeared to mould around around the sphere. I roughly sketched out a design to decide how long and narrow I wanted each piece to be.

 

Then using a compass I redrew one arch to use as template to cut out each piece of wood. I cut the template out redrew it onto card and traced around this onto each piece of wood for the frame. 

 

 

When this was complete I then needed to cut two 45 degree angles onto each end to create a mitre so each piece would slot together. As some pieces of wood were twisted, I needed to cut the twist out by applying pressure to different sides of the wood when cutting. 

 

 

I then joined them up to see if they would fit, marking each piece once I knew they did so i knew which sides would easily fit together.

 

 

 

After I knew it would join up, I began cutting out the curves into each piece. I did this by cutting out one curve on one side, taping it back together and then cutting out the curve on the other side using a band saw. 

Once all the pieces were cut out I needed to glue them together. I paired all the ones that went together and began by masking taping them together to make sure all the pieces would still go together. I then began glueing them together so the corners aligned.

Once it was all glued together some of the last pieces wouldn't fit so I needed to cut and sand away small sections of each side so that they slot into the remaining gaps. When the frame was whole I carved away the overlapping sections so that all the edges ran together smoothly. I finish by using two sanders to remove all marks from the frame created by the band saw.