Time to make a decision about different materials for a larger scale version.
At this point the ideal, powder coated mild steel/aluminium, solution is financially unobtainable. Consequently I chose an easily available and workable material; MDF.
I was also willing to forgo some of the stricter rules governing the dimensions of objects I usually apply in my work, in an attempt to concentrate on obtaining the form I wanted from my chosen materials.
MDF presented a different set of challenges from cardboard. No longer is the issue mapping a 2D net which will form a 3D object. It has now become the manipulation of 3D materials (10mm MDF), and how those elements accrete to form something else. Esentially it was woodwork…and I’m no carpenter.
Nevertheless, this was not complicated woodwork. All that was required was a chamfering of the edges of the triangular elements that would make up the final forms.
The Platonic tetrahedrons were fairly simple; all the chamfers would have to be the same. The elongated tetrahedron, though, would require a different angle on the ‘base’ (equilateral triangle) from that joining the sides to each other (isosceles triangles). At this point, it all seemed quite simple, theoretically.
It was time to begin in earnest.
