Foam carving and structures

There were 2 projects to turn in for Materials this week. The first was to make a cube out of a foam core board. The second was to carve a 3-D object out of blue or pink insulation foam that was at least 2 layers deep.

For the foam core cube, I’m using the cube we worked on in class since it turned out pretty well. On only one edge did I kind of go just a little too deep into the bottom layer of paper. But, for the most part, it was pretty exact – the lid stayed shut pretty much on it’s own.

For the 3-D object, I had the idea to make a giant replica of a Dutch clog as soon as our instructor gave us the assignment. I’d already had some experience with working with foam, from a previous project. For that project, I only used 1 layer of foam to create the last project, whereas this time I used 5. I started out with two drawings, a top-down view and a side-view.

First, I did some research on what clogs actually look like. I searched for ‘wooden shoes‘, which brought up a nice selection of views for Dutch clogs. Most of the views were 3/4 views, but a few were front and side views. I approximated and drew 2 pictures in my sketch pad. The horizontal lines on the side view were added when I was transferring to the drawing to a larger piece of paper, to help me see how to properly align the curves of the shoe. Originally my transferred drawing was way too big; after drawing it, I realized that creating a clog that big would cost require at least $100 in foam. So, I decided that it would make more sense to draw the 2 views of the shoe within specified measurements, in this case approximately 18″, just under the width of the 24″ boards.

At this point, I had essentially 2 stencils. Before cutting them out of the paper, I used them to measure out how many pieces of foam I needed to cut and glue together. When I had all 5 pieces, I mistakenly glued them all together with the glue tape. It was a mistake to glue them all at this point because when I went to use the band saw, to cut off big chunks of unneeded foam and generally make the foam into the approximate shape I needed, I found that my block of foam was too big for the saw. So I pried apart the foam and then drew the shape of the clog, using the side-view stencil, once onto the 3-chunk block of foam, and then reversed it for the 2-chunk block of foam. Having the exact shape made it easy to use the band saw to cut the shape of the clog out of the foam. It was still pretty blocky, with 90 angles.
Clog about to be sanded.

After this, I drew the top-down view of the clog onto the bottom of the clog. Using a hand saw, because the chunks were now re-glued together, I started the long process of shaving and sanding away unneeded parts of foam, in order to shape and smooth out the curves of the clog. For a large majority of the shaping process, I used a metal file that really helped me get rid of a lot of foam.

Eventually, I ended up with a pretty good clog. The next day, I came back to use a piece of sandpaper to make the outside of the clog really smooth and to use a power drill, chisel or pick, to hollow out the back of the clog where a foot would go. I made for the size of my foot, but I didn’t try to stand in the shoe. It is just glued pieces foam after all.

 

My foam clog