As part of my research I have visited several antique shops in which I have fond a few items that have interested me. There have been several large ceramic jugs and other kitchen paraphernalia that I wished to look into further. There is in particular one flat iron that I then decided to reproduce.
For my first attempt, I tried to make the iron out of polyurethane foam in which I carved the different layers out. I decided to do this originally because caving the different ridges and shapes would be easy to engrave with the use of a scalpel. I then had other thoughts as realism is important with this and the idea that the iron would be considerably heavy compared to one that is made out of foam and so that would look quite obvious if it is a tool that is being used by an actor, instead of one that is not going to be used, and is just there to be observed.
I then decided that it would be good to make the iron out of pieces of MDF wood. And so the processed that I have been through to create this are as follows:
Draw out the shape of the base layer of the iron onto a piece of MDF the right depth that is required. Cut this out using a ban-saw and then sand it on the electric sanders so that it is as smooth as you want it to be. At this point it is important to round off the edges of the iron to give it a used look.
Cut the second layer in exactly the same way. Although remember that on this layer it is very clearly sloped and so when using the sander it is best to hold the piece of wood at an angle to the sander so that it gets an even edge at an angle. It is also very important to make sure that both sides are symmetrical.
There is a ridge on top of the iron, which I have created by cutting a smaller shape out of very thin MDF board and attaching this onto the top of the middle layer.
To make the handle, I found a piece of plastic tubing that was the perfect circumference and then cut this down to the right length. I then sanded this. To make the sides of the handle, which has been one of the trickier aspects to make I took a sheet of fairly thick aluminum and drew out the shape of the handle sides. The first thing I needed to do was to drill the hole for the tubing to fit into. To my luck this was the exact precise size for it to fit snuggly. These shapes then needed to be cut out and this required using a metal ban-saw. It is very important that when using this equipment that you wear special Personal Protective Equipment. This includes goggles, overalls (or clothes that cover your skin) work boots and most importantly in the metal workshops, ear protectors as the sound that comes from cutting metals can be so loud that it can damage your hearing.
Once the shape is cut out of the sheet of metal you can then sand it so that it is smooth. Be careful of this however, as doing this creates a lot of heat and as most metals are good conductors the metal gets very hot very quickly. Once it is smooth enough it is then time to bend the metal so that it is in the right shape. This can be done by rapping the piece of metal in a vice and then simply by hand bending the metal. Do this to both pieces of metal and then slot them together with the piece of tubing that was cut earlier.
The next part is to start gluing everything together. Simple superglue should do the trick, or even wood glue so that the 3 layers of wood fit together to look as one.
The embossed letters that are on the top of the original iron could be formed in a few ways. They could either be formed out of molding material, or a cast of the letters could be made and resin poured into it to create a precise copy. Another way is to carve the letters out of polyurethane foam. Depending on how skillful you are with a knife and cutting small letters out relates to how well the design will turn out. The design, once cut out then needs to be glued onto the top piece of MDF. For this I used an all purpose extra strong clear adhesive ad not superglue as I found out earlier that this has a tendency to melt the foam and leave it out of shape. This glue is strong enough to hold everything together but it will not distort the shape of the foam.
Superglue is very useful to glue together the metal sides of the handle and the tubing. For the handle it needs to have a base for the ends to attach to the base. These were also created out of the same polyurethane foam and were glued together using the all purpose glue. Once everything is stuck together it is time to paint the iron.
To give it a rustic and authentic style I felt that the best thing to do would be to mix the paint with some sand to give it texture. However, I didn’t have access to this sand and so used sugar granules. I painted the whole of the iron with matt black acrylic paint. The most important section of this iron to paint is the section with the embossed letters. This is because when all of it is painted the exact same black colour, the letters become harder to read. Therefore make sure that the black paint gets into all of the creases and then go over the letters with a slightly lighter shade of grey. This way it will stand out more.
| My prop flat iron |
| Original flat iron |
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