Introduction to Product Design: Stanley Knife

   My first experience of product design was to produce a stanley knife based on a template design given to me. This project helped me understand the ergonomic design that goes into products. Ergonomic design is how the designer factors in the usability, practicality and functionality of a product. All products need to work to their intended use in the most practical way! With objects like knives a designer considers how the object fits in the hand and how comfortable it is to use.

   Firstly I was given a template of the design and a set of measurements, radii and depths. I used spray mouth to adhere the template onto a piece of model block I then cut the template out on a bandsaw and used a milling machine to mill out the holes for the screws. I sanded the edges with sanding blocks to smooth the surface.

 Next, I used the milling machine to mill out the sections that hold the name plate of the knife.

   To add the curves to the sides of the knife, I marked out the given radii using a digital calipers then joined up the dots. This gave me a guide to round the edges by sanding them.

    As with most stanley knives, the knife had interlocking teeth that held the two halves of the knife together. To do this I had to mark out the space needed to fit the teeth. Then using scrap pieces I attached the needed size tooth on the opposite side. I used isobond to fill any gaps and again sanded the spaces to fit each other neatly!

   To make the name plate, I made a bi-resin cast of a given silicone mould of a name plate. After a lot (and I mean a serious amount!) of sanding. I started to prime the piece with grey primer and a spray gun. Yet again more sanding was done when the primer showed any rough surfaces. After priming was done I finished the piece with a few coats of silver paint from the spray gun and topped with a gloss spray. And presto! The finished product!! (My apologies for the lack of photos on this post, a lot appear to have gone missing from my hard drive!)