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The following is a piece from a BEd student who
suffered bereavement and yet gained inspiration and support from
the memory and loss of her brother. This is a message from Louise
to all of us.
My name is Louise Mc Lean and I am a final year BEd student in
Technology and Design at St Mary’s.
In August 2011, my brother Michael, who was aged
26, died in Nicaragua, Central America, whilst on a nature hike.
The death of my brother made it extremely difficult to start
back to my course in September, but with the guidance and caring
attitude of my lecturers, technicians, friends, family and of
course the support I felt from my brother, I continued on with
my studies at St Mary's.
This year I designed and manufactured a table for the Titanic
Dock and Pump House Museum in Belfast. I wanted to have a client to help me with my project throughout
the design, therefore I arrived at the museum and asked to speak
with the Director, Mr Colin Cobb. He was very interested in
my design proposal and asked to see sketches of initial ideas.
I started to sketch ideas that he was calling out to me and
within two hours, we had six tables with different design features
in each. Colin picked out the features he thought would be the
best and I sketched a final idea.
I then went back to St Mary’s and using Solid works,
I was able to draw this idea and show him the dimensions of
the overall product. He made alterations to it, for example
he changed the height to suit a high chair and added the Titanic
Quarter logo onto the anchor of the base.
I wanted to recreate as many features in my table as were used
in the Titanic, and thus used materials such as walnut, cherry,
brass and manilla rope. When manufacturing the table I started
with the spindles of the wheel. I used the wood lathe to achieve
the same profile as the Titanic wheel. I then cut the inner
circle and outer arc of the wheel and assembled all the parts
together.
I sent the drawings of the table base away to be laser cut
and once I received them back, I welded them together and sent
them away to be powder coated, using a suitable RAL number.
After careful consideration, I selected a bronzed glass to tie
in with the colours throughout the table.
I have worked on this project since November and many hours
have gone into the manufacturing and the design process. I brought
it down to the Titanic Pump and Dock Museum and Colin was extremely
happy with the outcome. I hope that he will commission it for
the museum. I am thankful for the support I received throughout
this project, with special acknowledgement to the lecturers
and technicians within the department, but I am eternally thankful
towards my brother who I called on to help during the difficulties
I faced in the manufacturing process.
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