For my design, I will need to fabricate both a wood structure for my hourglass and a light installation to go inside. As of now, I am not settled on the details of my light installation so I will focus on fabricating the wood base. Taking inspiration from traditional hourglass forms, I want the wood base to have an interesting aesthetic. In addition to a top and bottom base plate, the structure will also need three vertical wood columns as is customary for hourglasses. For these columns, my options are either to buy a pre-ornated dowel or lathe some ornamentation into the dowel myself. As for the wood bases, I plan on using a CNC machine to make the proper cuts from a larger piece of wood. Since my idea is still in the works at this point, I do not have a specific timeline in place. Rather, I am waiting until I find a glass piece for the hourglass. At this point, I will have a better idea on my fabrication process.
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This seems to be like you will be in the machine shop very frequently. It a great project to gain some skills for sure. I think that it would be a pretty neat outcome if you wore to use the lathe to make your own wood columns. this would make you sustain that they are strait. Overall this seems like a very fun project.
Have you ever thought about doing a glass blowing class, so you could build the hour glass yourself? I have taken one before and they are a ton of fun. Plus the simple stuff like bottles, vases, and such are easy enough to make. If you had extra time in the future you could either blow directly into a metal or ceramic structure to mold an hour glass, or hand make it. This would make your art piece more interesting without dramatically increasing the overall aesthetics.