Journaling Time Capsule

A hand crafted time capsule that stores multiple journal pages and their entry dates, with a themed stand.

Overview

Included

Manufacturing techniques (milling, turning, casting, etc.)
working around “dead-ends”, finding new ways to get accomplish vision.

Prototyped in Fusion 360

More

This time capsule preserves thoughts from different moments in life. It has 4 separate compartments that store secret scrolls. If a scroll is entered every 5 years then when the capsule is full, the user can see how their feeling have changed over 20 years. It is similar to scrap books or family home videos, except this is for written thoughts. Next to every compartment there is a place for the user to record the scroll’s date using supplied stickers.

The capsule is designed to look like it is recently unearthed treasure. The aluminum capsule sits in a bronze base that represents the dirt that the cylinder would have been freshly dug out of were it a regular time capsule.

Challenge

To create the desired visual effect, I had to learn some new manufacturing processes. For the dirt base to looked organic (like dirt), I had to use a process that can naturally create organic shapes - sand casting. I milled the details on the capsule, but it would have been impractical to mill the dirt base given its limited degrees of rotation.

Normally, for sand casting, I would have created my pattern out of a modeling board like Obomodulan, however I wanted to mould the shape with my hands, adding and removing material until I arrived at the right organic-looking shape. To find this material I went to the children’s section of a craft store and got some Crayola air-dry clay, which I sprayed with a Shellac release agent. Due to the casting equipment available to me, the pattern failed multiple times and I had to try many different approaches until I could find an arrangement that worked.

After casting the base, I left a rough cast finish on the outer surface, to look realistically like dirt, but sanded and polished the inner surface that comes into contact with the capsule.