Today we have a guest post from Henri Bielawski. He is part of
The Empty House Studio team, a colleague from my Arts Management program,
and a very talented metalsmith and engraver. He and I talk a lot about the tension between
management school and studio time but we've been able to spur each other on to creating
... in the tension, not despite it.
He recently installed a vent system in his studio space and
reorganized his bench. I found it so interesting to see the details of a space like this that I asked him to document the process. I hope you enjoy!
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Studio Reorganization by Henri Bielawski
I was at my studio a few nights ago, testing out a new low temperature solder. During the
process I burned my table with a blowtorch and the smoke and fumes that
resulted made me realize I needed to get some sort of ventilation system in my
studio.
So ... I began to clean up and make
some changes so I could rig up an exhaust vent from my soldering station to the
outside.
First, I would like to show you
what my bench looked like after I took everything out of it and laid it all on
to my soldering station.
My brother, who was also cleaning the
garage (the location of the studio) at the same time, prompted my studio
cleaning. I had wanted to reorganize for a while, and I had a few thoughts
about how to do it. Also, I knew that I had collected more tools on my bench
than I needed, lacked places to put them, and needed to do something about it.
The next pic is another picture of
the soldering station. Unfortunately, these are the only two before photos I
have of the studio. I wanted to take more but the
battery on my phone ran out of juice that day.
Note the empty drawers on my bench.
Also, I would like to make a note that this is NOT what my studio looks like at
all times. I don't toss everything onto my soldering table into a giant heap
like this. Most of this stuff came from the top of my bench and the drawers. As
you can see I took this photo after I had partially installed the exhaust vent
(the big silver pipe running out of the right hand corner of the photo.
I did a
lot of things to make more room and cut down on the amount of space I use on
and inside my bench.
I had a bunch of papers, mostly
drawings, sketches, and other stuff sitting on the corner of the soldering
station. Never bothered me before, but honestly, its just not safe and I really
didn't want any paper around at all. I decided to save all that stuff for the
drafting table at home. Boom - all papers banned.
I had a collected a freakish amount
of little metal scraps. Wires, metal shards, cuttings, sawed out metal scraps,
practice plates, strange experiments, old projects, cool little knickknacks,
etc. For some reason as a jeweler, engraver, metalsmith you just don't want to
let go of anything that is metal, even if its not really anything. These scraps
got separated into boxes as materials to use later. I made a collection box for
copper, brass, nickel, aluminum, steel and unknown shit-metal, and a box for
plastics and plexiglass. If I need any metal I can either choose from the
scraps or melt down and roll my sheet and wire as I need it. Hard work? Yes.
But I have the materials and I have the ability to make it instead of buy it if I
need to.
For a long time I had a burr
organizer, but the holes were too small to hold most of the 3/8th inch
engraving tools that I use. I drilled the holes bigger and that got rid
of about five little boxes of gravers, allen wrenches, burrs and other things
on my bench. Boom - bigger holes, more tools can fit, more space.
I had hammers IN my bench. I hung
those on the wall where I can see them.
Anyways, long story short, because
this is actually getting quite boring hearing a story about how I organized my
studio...
Cleaning happened.
Organizing happened.
Moving stuff out of my general work
area besides the immediate tools I need happened.
Aaaaaannd....voila!
This is the polishing and sharpening
station. I polish things here, and I sharpen tools here too, including my
gravers. You can see the green thing on the corner of the table is my rolling
mill. This is where I make sheet and wire. You can't see in this picture, but
the bins that I separated the metal scraps are underneath this table.
This is my soldering station. I am
going to try to keep this station as clean as possible because, well, fire. The
silver duct is an exhaust. I have found that it doesn't pull enough air to be
very effective, so I am going to build a hood around this area sometime soon to
capture the smoke and fumes. The air compressor I use for my engraving
equipment is here too (the big hunk of equipment on the top right corner of the
table) and I want to move that because it is expensive and I don't want to
damage it.
This is my bench. There are many like
it, but this one is mine. The blue thing is the burr organizer, a majority of
the engraving tools and burrs that I use are there. You can see that the inside
of my bench is pretty clean. it used to be filled with tools. I hung all my pliers
to the right on the drawer. Right now my ball vice is connected to the
bench as I am beginning to work on a new and quite large engraving of a bird.
My brother put a folding shelf on the top of my bench. I have only a few things
on it right now but it will definitely come in handy.
There you have it. That’s the nitty-gritty. There is so much more I could write but I'll spare you. Time to work.
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