Icosahedron Sculpture

 

Hi

For a few months, I have been working on a bike rim icosahedron  (20 sided figures which nominally use triangles as sides), with the starting point gathering enough 27" bike rims to do the job. Before Christmas, I started putting one together in my girlfriend Mary's back yard, my own backyard having too much cr&p (junk in the form of other bike sculptures mostly) in it! 

As well Mary was having a Christmas lunch, this could be the star attraction - along with Mary's excellent cooking of course!

To join the bike rims, making edges was the first step, and I did this by drilling wooden joiners at the dihedral angle using a 3d printed jig. These were put away for a few weeks till I had time to build anything. Finally, close to Christmas, all the wheels and tools and edges were bundled in the car.

Assembly was only partly successful and partly done before Christmas, the bike wheels weigh enough to rip apart the joiners. But Christmas lunch was a complete success with Mary, me and 5 guests laughing and eating and reading the daggy Christmas Cracker jokes almost continuously for several hours. 

Graham had arrived completely soaked by the rain on recumbent bike and was given a new set courtesy of Mary. Later he rode home in the rain again and even later still returned the clothes, dry washed and ironed to Mary!

I will work on another joiner for the icosahedron, this time from steel tube and wing nuts, and may remove the spkes and hubs from the donor wheels.

PS 3 wheels make quite a neat unit, but when the units are joined up using spoke holes, they act like dodecagons. I've made a pic of this using 20c pieces.Will report further progress.

This link is for a completed sculpture made with 1 rim per side.

This link is for a completed sculpture made with 3 rims per side.