Popular Woodworking 2004-10 № 143, страница 54
careful not to damage it during final assembly. Before applying any finish, plug the dowel holes and tape off the ends of the dowels. This will ensure that you're gluing wood to wood, not finished wood to finished wood. To finish the dowels, consider screwing cup hooks in one end so you can apply the finish and then hang them to dry. For final assembly, place the top upside down and glue all the dowels in the top first. Then apply glue to the holes in the base and carefully slip the dowels in their respective holes. Be sure all the dowels are seated home. Measure the distance between the base and top to make sure they're parallel. This will ensure a table with a top that's parallel to the floor. While the glue is drying, place a weight on top of the base. The Tornado Table described here is basic and representative of the original Noguchi table. As you can see from the gallery of tables our entire staff made (on page 52), the variations of tornado tables are limited only by your imagination and materials. "22"dia.top 19" between bottom surface of top and top surface of base 10 dowels -5 @ 237/i6" 5 @ 235/8" 14"dia. base 6"dia. cutout (optional) TORNADO TABLE
THE HYPERBOLOID: A SHAPE FOR ATOMIC-AGE FURNITURE As a child of the 1950s, I used to classify myself as a Baby Boomer. After researching Isamu Noguchi's Tornado Table, I've decided to switch titles to "Offspring of the Atomic Age." (The fact that my father worked for the Atomic Energy Commission doesn't hurt, either.) If commercial nuclear power has a birthday, it would be Dec. 8, 1953. That was the day President Eisenhower gave his "Atoms for Peace" speech. As a result, the first wholly commercial power plant was ordered in 1955 and built in 1959 by Commonwealth Edison in Morris, Ill. Coincidentally, Noguchi presented his design for the rocking stool (yes, the table started as a rocker) to furniture manufacturer Knoll Associates in 1955. When inverted and with a few dowels added, the Tornado Table takes on the shape of a nuclear power facility's cooling tower. How much more "atomic" can you get? Despite its current negative connotations, the shape of the cooling tower was the icon for a bright new tomorrow in the mid-1950s. As a pure geometric form, the shape of the Tornado Table (and the illustration above) is what is known as a one-sheeted hyperboloid. For more information on all the cool math, check out http://mathworld.wolfram. com/Hyperboloid.html. Apparently, hyperboloids came in one- and two-sheet varieties. But what about three sheets? Yet another Internet search gave me the answer. The phrase "three sheets to the wind" dates to 1821. The "sheet" is a reference to a rope on a sailboat. To have a sheet loose in the wind is bad seamanship; to have three loose means you are not capable of controlling the boat i.e., wasted. And you thought you'd only be learning about woodworking. —JH popwood.com 51 |
