Simon Squire of ArcActive Limited in Christchurch has won the inaugural Great Kiwi Engineering Competition along with a swag of prizes and cash thanks to Engineering News, XPO Exhibitions, Machinery House, Cigweld and TheOutdoors.
Judges felt there was something quintessentially Kiwi about Simon Squire’s entry ‘Cutlery Kiwi’ and when it came to the final judging process his entry edged out ‘Bird’ by Ian Bedwell of Cankiwi Ltd trading as NZLaser.
The final judging was put in the hands of attendees to EMEX 2018, with an incredible one in five people through the show voting. Both ‘birds’ were featured on the Engineering News stand.
A feature will appear in the July issue of Engineering News, but from an engineering perspective, it was as if he was given a job to do and he turned to whatever he had on hand to get the job done and fulfil the brief.
Simon utilised old school practices that many a Kiwi engineer has had to do for more than 100 years due to available resources, supply issues/cost and isolation, or just because the ‘No.8 Wire’ is so entrenched within our psyche.
He fired up his imagination and welder, opting to enter Cutlery Kiwi using welding as his principle engineering discipline. Some innovative sparking of grey matter had him heading to the cutlery draw to create his engineering art – the feathery forks fitting fantastically while his mind merged spoons and forks definitely put the kiwi’s nose ahead of its competition.
“With us Kiwis having a big focus on sustainability, I decided to take a recycling approach for my sculpture.
“I purchased recycled cutlery from a local eco store and op shop and set about cutting, heating, shaping and welding forks and spoons together into my final kiwi form. It took approximately 80 forks and five spoons to make my kiwi,” says Simon.
“I started by making a basic skeleton with cutlery and then built up the body, head and beak from that, before modelling the kiwi’s feathers with lots of forks.”
Thanks go to competition sponsors:
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