Tea Boat Design

In association with this post here (more on the presentation side) Here is the design side.
There are 3 parts: The main wooden boat, the acrylic inner boat and the cover.

General design procedure

I designed it in Autodesk Inventor, 3d modeling it and then following multiple steps to export, obtained 2d dxf that I edited in Inkscape. (I am working on a tutorial for Inventor to SVG)

In Inkscape, I separated, duplicated the pieces, and added the inlays and hexagonal detailing.

The Main Boat
Bateau%20%C3%A0%20th%C3%A9%20bois

Nothing special here, all pieces are simply cut at PG cut setup. Glued with wood glue and held in place during that phase with Tabbed Gluing Jig with a 1’ strap all around.

Acrylic Inner Boat
Bateau%20%C3%A0%20th%C3%A9%20acrylic

Again nothing special, but would need adjustment to the acrylic thickness ((About 1 mm smaller all around, maybe less) It is way too tight now. Glued with Cyanoacrylic Glue to ensure a watertight bottom joint. (I soo hate that stuff, I really don’t have the twist with it.)

Cover
Bateau%20%C3%A0%20th%C3%A9%20couvercle

Here I engraved the circles at Full Power; 1000 speed and 450 LPI with the design laying landscape. Took 2h20 and there was a lot of charring inside the circle, not a nice finish. So I improvised the inlay, cut it with the same file shape, which made it not exactly fit inside (not really clear what is happening) But with a lot of wood glue, and means to lay it flat so that the joint can be made, no one will be the wiser, hopefully.

The cutting went well here.

Changes to that could be made

  • Adjust the acrylic to have a little more room.
  • Better design the inlay
  • Adjust the circle to better fit my tea holder (really more for me than anyone else)
  • Could add cut and engraves on the sides. Since there is a clear acrylic inside, not much risk of spillage and could be interesting. But it may draw attention away from the top cover design.
  • Have a thicker Cover for strength, but would need to shorten the acrylic boat height.

Comment away.

20 Likes

I just saw the tea boat. It looks great. You’re too kind to share the design files. Thanks!

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I strongly believe in sharing them. If you use them and they end up better looking then mine, what is my lost? I don’t believe techniques and knowledge in making should be hidden, kept, like in the old medieval guilds. They should be openly shared, and if I share what I do and how I did it, it doesn’t mean I loose my experience.

This thinking came both from scouting where knowledge is openly shared, sewing where it is part of the culture to share knowledge (because it doesn’t mean that because you know how to do it, that you can do it great), and from listening to Adam Savage take on the subject.

So yes if you have questions, ask away, it will be my pleasure.

11 Likes

Thanks so much for sharing the design!

2 Likes

very nice write up. Thank you for the files.

3 Likes

Thank you so much for your work … and sharing the design!

1 Like

Thank you so much for share your design. I loved it when you posted the final product and thought how could I make this. Now thanks to you share I can play around with a design that I would like in the grid as well as materials.

2 Likes

Thanks for the message, really appreciated. I didn’t thought I would share this since I thought it was so simple. I will be delighted to see the final result of your remix.

1 Like