Building a sculpture stand from recycled materials.

Okay, so you want to have a go at clay sculpting but you don't have a stand to place your work on, maybe you don't have the resources to buy one of the sparkly newfangled stands that the big name stores provide, or simply like the idea of building your own out of recycled materials. Whatever the reason I am going to walk you through the very simple process of making your own sculpting stand for free, or as near to it as possible.

So first of all let's take a look at what materials we will be using to make the stand:

Materials Required

Adjustable swivel office chair
Bedside table
Wooden board (you can use a tabletop or kitchen work surface, whatever you have to hand)
Four nuts and bolts
(Optional)
T-shirt iron on transfer paper
Water-based satin gloss paint
Wax

Tools Required

Power Drill and pilot drill-bit
Philips head screwdriver
Iron

Step 1

If your bedside table has feet, like this one that I salvaged, unscrew and remove them using your screwdriver.

Step 2

Unscrew the bracket that's located under the chair's seat, then remove the seat and then lift the bracket off the chair's adjustable stem (Hydraulic piston).

Step 3

Mark four holes, using the chair bracket as a template, line the bracket up with the centre of the bedside table top to ensure even distribution of weight.

Step 4

Drill the marked holes using the pilot drill bit, then simply force the screws from the bracket into the pilot holes using the screwdriver to ensure that the bracket is securely fixed.

Step 5

Once the chair bracket is attached to the top centre of the bedside table, go ahead and turn the table upside down and place it on the chair stem.

Step 6

You may already have four holes on the bottom of the table from where the feet were once screwed, if not you will need to drill four holes.

Step 7

Line up your piece of wooden board, once it is in the desired position, mark and drill four holes through the board, so that they line up with the four holes in the top of the sculpture stand . I originally used a kitchen cabinet door, but wasn't happy with the end result, so am holding out for a recycled table top instead (Photos don't show the wooden board for this reason).

Step 8

Thread four bolts through the bedside table and wooden board, then tighten the nuts so that the wooden board is securely attached to the bedside table (countersink and fill the board with wood glue so that you have an even surface to make your clay sculpture on).

Step 9

Optional - Add a piece 2x2 wooden plank to one edge of your sculpture stand's work surface, this can be used as a straight edge to help with modeling the clay. You can also mark out a rule on the wood, so you can easily measure your clay components.

Step 10

Optional - The next part is just about adding some style to your stand and isn't necessary, but fun all the same. Prepare some images that you want to use on your PC, print the images onto iron on transfer paper for t-shirts. Iron the transfer paper onto the wooden parts of the sculpture stand, for a quick and quirky makeover. You could also paint and wax the stand to create a shabby chic antique effect and then iron over that, you could even paint on the transferred image to add even more flare to the piece.

Notes.

I tested this sculpture stand with 50kg of clay and it handled it easily, although the bedside table was made from pine, the quality of the build was very good so it was a robust piece of furniture with good joints etc, hence its strength. Whatever you decide to use, make sure it is weight bearing. The chair base is obviously weight bearing way beyond 50kg.

The purpose of bolting the work surface onto the bedside table, rather than screw it, is because when you drill your armature into the surface to secure your sculpture, you will eventually have so many holes, that the surface will not be able to secure the armatures. You can simply undo the bolts and replace the surface with some new wooden board. You could of course, use a flange and pipe armature set-up to reduce the wear and tear of your sculpture stands top.

If your bedside table has a draw, then that's a bonus, this can be used to keep your tools together in one convenient place.

If your bedside table isn't large enough to be at a comfortable working height, then you can place spacer blocks of wood between it and the wooden board surface.

Adding some kind of lighting may also be appropriate, I haven't gotten around to that yet and if I do design something, I'll post another tutorial on how I did it.

I hope that you found this tutorial interesting and helpful, if you have any questions or would like to get in touch with me, you can find me on twitter @iliteratepoet.