World Skills Wings

I have been working with wings for a few years now. I enjoy the challenge of creating something that can be packaged very small, but then open into something much larger.

The images below are of my latest set, created for the City of Calgary as part of the World Skills Olympics, which took place in September 2009. I created these wings over the course of four days, demonstrating techniques for whittling, steam bending, carving and tying to several thousand school children, with the hopes of making a few converts to the arts and trades.
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For more information on the construction of this piece, please refer to my blog.

Cedar wings

This was my first set of wings, created for a storyteller who wanted to be able to transform into a bird mid performance.

For more information on the construction of this piece, please refer to my blog.

Steel Wings

This was the first set of wings I made. I realized quickly that in order to make the linkage work I needed a high degree of accuracy in the joint positioning. Thus I naturally turned to laser cutting, and stainless steel. The problem with this was that the resulting object was quite cold and mechanical, leading me to switch to wood and cord for my subsequent projects. I solved the accuracy problem by simply making the joints adjustable, you can shimmy the cord back and forth along the spar to refine the joint position.