Clockwork Fan

I don’t remember the date I was infected with steampunk fever. But one of the first symptoms aka projects started would take ages to be finished:

The Clockwork Fan

The idea had been in my head quite soon. I remember kneeling on the ground for days and drawing cogs and gears. The sheet of paper just was too gib for my desktop.

It wasn’t only throwing some gears on the paper. The shape of single fan blades was to be defined first. This was transferred to transparent paper allowing me to draw on the backside and orient the cogwheels. For stability reasons I was taking care there were as few freestanding features possible.

2013

The fan itself is built from one millimeter thick beechwood chipboard of three layers I found at model making supplies. The blades were aligned to the direction of fibers of the outer layers. After sawing I removed the ridges with my pocketknife.

Know the whole stack was clamped and sanded. A bit more sanding follows as well as sanding. After an eternity (almost) all blades were the same width. Some too narrow and were discarded.

2014

The holes were drilled by a college with a vertical drilling machine.

2015

To saw out the corners my boyfriend told my to keep a safety distance of two or three millimeters.

This meant I had to remove these additional millimeters by sanding, sanding and - I will let you guess - sanding! This time using a Dremel. At the end I was totally stressed out and covered with wood dust and my boyfriend said: Maybe the safety distance was a little bit too big.

In the meantime I had cut the clockwork windows from stiff paper (see below). These templates were used to transfer the pattern (1). Then holes were drilled at all corners (2). Now the shapes could be sawed using a jigsaw (3). With a Dremel I smoothened the edges and finalized smaller features (4). In harmony with neighboring fan blades I completed the pattern on the planks (5) before the contours were drawn with a soldering iron (6). At the end all pencil marks have to bee removed and one blade is finished (7).

Although I already sanded all blade edges with 180 paper there were still splinters detaching from the sides. That means sanding again. Now using 400 sanding paper.

The shape was finished so now the question of color arose. With this I got help and inspiration from comments on Facebook and the German steampunk board Rauchersalon.

First I wanted to paint single gears golden but I discarded this idea in favor of some highlights painted with the Inka Gold color “gold brown”. This was also used for the edges

On a test piece I tried out the effect of linseed oil and left over furniture sealing. I have chosen the oil. It’s a little bit brighter but will darken with time. And it makes the wood feel like silk.

After four days the wood is finally dry and I can assemble the fan. Through the hole at the far end I put 1.5 millimeter wire bent at both sides. Attached to this is a second wire like a loop with a tassel. I will replace this with proper brass wire as soon as I get some.

The three holes above the clockwork picture are threaded with fishing line which defines the width of the open fan.

Now the brisé fan is finished. Summer can come!