Construction begins (almost)

Yesterday I finished cutting the 2x4's for the base of the Tree of Life v2.0.  This weekend I'm going to buy the plywood and start construction.  I have the chicken wire and about 2 dozen packages of flex tubing.  The only thing that's an uncertainty is the size of the frames that will be mounted in the tree.  Currently my budget can only really handle the 8" frames which run $35 from Amazon.  I was at Best Buy to see how to see them in person and realized they really are tiny.  Amazon's next price level is $99 which actually gets me a 12" frame (the 10" frames are oddly more expensive). I'd really like to get those so I'm trying to scrape together money from every source I can.  Sadly I don't really have many sources.  :(

I've also purchased all the apples for the tree and more copper wire.  I have to harvest more red cabling to see if I have enough for the four red apples.  I've been using Freecycle, Craigslist and driving around on garbage day looking for discarded computer equipment to salvage parts and cabling from.  Unfortunately there is precious little red cabling inside of a single computer / TV / monitor.  That means I'll have to purchase some at either Home Depot or Microcenter if I can't salvage enough.

I've made some progress on the USB-NA sculpture.  I ran into a small snafu when I discovered that conduit benders were a bad idea.  They crimp the copper tubing rather than bend it nicely.  The internet came to my rescue with tons of helpful tutorials on how to bend and twist the copper tube with just a torch, some welding gloves and some clamps (well, a few other things, but you get the idea).  My professors in my sculpture III class are going to assist so me so when I go to Home Depot to buy plywood for the tree I'm going to pick up a 10' section of copper tubing.  Thankfully I found a great source for USB extension cables so at least those are cheap. 

Pictures of materials will be coming soon! ....maybe even later today!