Upcycle Design Report

I originally wanted to make something for my apartment, for example, a decoration or some piece of furniture. I am a hockey player and have several extra sticks around the apartment. This got me thinking I could reuse them and make a plant holder or nightstand. I ended up going with my second option of making a beverage coaster due to a lack of extra hockey sticks to use. I planned to make a couple of coasters using different sticks since each has a very bright and busy design; however, I ended up only having one stick to use. This made it more difficult to target my original aesthetics goals, which was a blend of maximalism and minimalism with a hockey theme. I found inspiration from the post below on Pinterest to make a coaster.

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This coaster uses old wooden sticks with far less busy designs. I planned on making it out of newer sticks that are made of hollow carbon fiber. The new sticks have a less rectangular shape with some hanging 5 or 6 sides to change how it feels in the hand. These sticks are less flat, so I would need to pour epoxy over them to protect them and create a good smooth finish to keep the coaster functional. This epoxy also adds a grippy rubbery finish feather assisting the functional athletic to prevent beverages from slipping around. To create the border, I wanted to use recycled wood. I went around campus to look for sime and found that there was plenty of scrap wood from the ITLL workshops to use. 

The carbon fiber proved difficult to work with. When you try to cut carbon fiber, it creates extremely fine sharp dust. This is harmful to both humans and machines. If you breathe in the dust, it can cut and scar up your lungs and I am sure cause other health issues. If you use a band saw or other power equipment to cut it, the dust gets into the machine and will start to seize the bearings. So the shops did not want me to use their equipment. To work around this issue, I had to put the stick in a vise grip and use a hacksaw to cut the stick. I was not the best at this and made a few uneven cuts even after reducing a few. I lined the sticks up and superglued the bottom together. To hold the epoxy, the lip of the wood needed to be taller than the sticks. The dimensions of the wood were not great for this, and it needed to be cut rather thick to achieve this design goal. Since I was using epoxy from the idea forge, I did not know how to fill the hollow sticks and used a lot, so I originally sealed the top with glue. This looked horrible, and I was told to do it right and make it look good rather than conserve a bit. So I painfully tore all of the glue off. I used wood glue to seal the wood and then a little hot glue on the edges where it was covered to seal the corners and a couple of cracks. Lastly, I taped the outside. To create epoxy, you mix two solutions in a two-to-one ratio and then pour slowly to avoid getting bubbles. I poured it and left it to seal for 36 hours. When I came back, to my dismay, all of the epoxy had seeped out of the small crack and sealted to the paper I left it on. I peeled off the paper the best I could, taped it up with 50 layers mummy style, and poured it again; this time, it seemed out a little but but held in the tape. This worked out in my favor, making a small lip between the epoxy and the surrounding wood to keep a drink on the grip sections and not let it slip off as easily. When the epoxy leaked, it left chunks of dried epoxy on the outside as well as stuck tape and paper. To remove this, I used a band saw. I made the wood a little symmetrical, but it was not the end of the world. I was not a fan of the sharp ends, so I rounded them out. 

The last step was to paint the coaster. I am a Colorado Avalanche fan and wanted to have the coaster resemble the team as a theme. The stick inside is a pro stock stick, which means it was built with special specifications for a player on the team. Then, I wanted to paint the coaster white and create a stencil to paint the logo onto the sides. The loco had to be under an inch and a quarter tall, and when I went to lasercut the logo, there were a lot of small detains in the log, so when I went to laser print, the space between cutouts was not big enough, and it fell apart. To keep the hockey theme, I made a stencil of crossed hockey sticks. I taped it on and painted it in with a brush. I was happy I didn’t use the Avalanche logo because it bled underneath the edges of the logo. It was not terrible, but the small details would not have worked with the Avalanche logo. 

After completing the project, I wanted to review my initial goals to see how it ended up. Functionally, I wanted to create a usable coaster; this means the size was big enough for cans and slightly larger drinks. It could hold a beverage well, prevent spilling, and survive a spilled drink. I think the final product holds well with a flat grippy center and lip on the end. I could service a spilled beverage, but the paint could be susceptible to degradation. The one knock on functionality is that it’s larger than it needs to be and a little heavy, but it doesn’t create substantial drawbacks. Next, observe the aesthetics of the final product compared to the initial goal. I wanted to achieve a minimalist and functional aesthetic with a hockey theme. I don’t believe I achieved a maximalist aesthetic. The coaster was not that busy or had layered patterns; it had much more of a clean look than maximalist. To achieve this, I would have liked to have many different designed hockey sticks and create the border out of sticks. This would have been very busy and would have cut down on the bulk of the border. I could have also found a way to print a very busy tattoo-like print of overlaid hockey logos and accessories and found a way to paste it or fuse it onto the side to achieve the maximalist aesthetic while holding on to the hockey theme. However, I loved that I achieved the functional aesthetic and hockey theme. I am going to hold on to more broken sticks now and try to make this again when I have at least 3 or 4 different sticks to cut up. For the coaster I have at the I have a can that I hold onto that will sit on the coaster and live on my dresser for the time being.