Triple Cities Makerspace is one of many organizations in the Binghamton area which – among other things – aims to provide one or more kinds of public service; in the case of the Makerspace, its public service is typically educational, but we also have taken on the creation of a variety of specific projects for other such organizations. One of these organizations is The Binghamton Philharmonic, a local professional symphony orchestra which puts on performances of a variety of classical and popular musical pieces in different area venues, but whose home is the Broome County Forum Theatre in downtown Binghamton. They reached out to the Makerspace via email in mid-2018 to see if one or more members of the Space would be willing to create a brochure stand for the Philharmonic from the dilapidated remnants of a chimes stand. This brochure stand, once created, was to be placed inside the Forum whenever the orchestra would be playing, to hold pamphlets advertising the Philharmonic and its activities in an upright, visible position. Erik Leonard and Cliff Burger, the current president and vice president of the Makerspace, volunteered to undertake the task of creating this brochures stand, and once the chimes stand was delivered set about remaking it into something awesome!
The chimes stand being upcycled had a steel frame with wooden and metal components used to hold the chimes, as shown in the picture below. The wooden piece had significantly deteriorated and was unusable, and the stand itself was coming to pieces and structurally unsound, but the rest of the components were determined usable. Erik and Cliff discussed what could be done with these pieces in terms of constructing a new frame and appropriate shelving to hold the Philharmonic’s pamphlets, then commenced to disassembling the stand so that the frame and chime-holding components could be refinished – as shown in the next series of pictures, below.
The steel stand frame was cut down to a shorter size in order to better fulfill its new purpose, and all its components were sandblasted clean of their old finish before being welded into its new configuration using the metal shop’s Miller welder; the reformed stand was then spray-painted glossy black. The wheels from the original stand were cleaned and refitted into the stand’s base, and all of the chime set-screw holders were also cleaned and spray-painted black so that they could be repurposed to hold the new shelf dividers.
It was determined that a small amount of new material was needed to create the shelf and dividers which the brochures were to be placed upon, effectively replacing the wooden chimes holder which had been in a similar position in the original stand. This new shelf is comprised of several components: rectangular steel tubing for a frame to support the shelf, a small piece of plywood painted silver for the shelf itself, and steel leaves for the brochure dividers. Once the tubing had been welded into the reformed stand frame, the shelf was attached to it and the divider holders screwed into the frame behind the shelf, as shown in the pictures below. The dividers themselves were CNC’d from scrap steel at the space, and finished in a similar way as the frame itself.
Cliff installed a finishing touch on the shelf: a metal plate created on the CNC machine, stating that the stand had been “refurbished by Triple Cities Makerspace”, and painted in black and silver. Once given a final cleaning, the stand was presented to the Binghamton Philharmonic staff, who were thrilled with the final product! Erik and Cliff were happy to do this work for the sake of building ties with another community organization and providing a substantial and needed piece of furniture to them, with the bonus of being able to reuse and upcycle an existing piece of furniture in the process!
