Aaron Hines Design Portfolio

Outdoor Concept No. 268123

February 27, 2009 at 4:07 pm | Posted in concepts, Furniture | Leave a comment

Circa 2006: While at my previous employer, I tried to come up with some drastically different concepts to pitch to product line managers as well as to just satisfy my own desire for additional creative output. This concept utilizes a typical approach to ‘sling’ seating, but strives for a drastically minimalist and contemporary appearance. Needless to say, this concept remained digital, never generating any interest for production. The rendering alone looks good (Rhino model, Flamingo rendering plug-in) although I need to dig through my old files to find the original sketches…

Kayak Seat

February 12, 2009 at 9:47 pm | Posted in Kayaks | 2 Comments

2009: The kayak development continues with a seat for the prototype. The seat borrows an idea from traditional kayaks that utilized ribs for their structure. The initial thought process formed around creating a one-piece seat that would have been fastened to the inside of the gunwales, providing thigh and sacral support while keeping one off the skin and keelson. After some consideration, I realized that the one-piece seat idea not only required a non-trivial amount of effort and materials to create, but it would be impossible to install with the skin and coaming in place.

At some point, the idea to turn the one-piece seat into ribs came about, and it did not take long to determine that it would be relatively easy to prototype, install, and test, giving similar support qualities to the one-piece seat. Because of the hull shape in the cockpit area, only one rib shape was required to span the open area between the plywood stations.

The ribs are laminated from thin slices of pine, and glued with Titebond III – all materials I happened to have on hand, and not necessarily the best materials to use for such a project, but sufficient for a proof of concept. The ribs are fastened to the inside faces of the gunwales with a single screw per side. No greater effort was required to mount them securely in place.

The rib seat works wonderfully, and even without any kind of foam padding feels much better than no seat at all. There is sufficient thigh support, and no longer does the forward plywood station put undue pressure on the back of the thighs causing discomfort and eventually reduced blood flow. Coupled with a sheet of closed-cell foam and a back rest/sacral support, the rib seat should be a comfortable and viable alternative to other seat styles used in skin-on-frame kayaks. Expect a final report after more extensive testing has been conducted.

Ney Swivel Chair

January 24, 2009 at 3:07 am | Posted in Furniture, Laneventure | Leave a comment

2008: The Ney Swivel Chair (sorry, I didn’t come up with the name) was inspired by several mid-century modern rattan chairs of similar construction. Intent on maintaining some originality, I incorporated elements from various other mid-century or more recent chairs of related appearance, and added more conventional cushions than the inspiration chairs used. Making such an open-framed swivel chair is alway challenging (where to hide the ugly swivel bearing?) but I think this one turned out well. The scale is smaller than the company’s typical lounge chairs – they call it an “accent chair” – but its just right and extremely comfortable. The natural rattan frame lends a certain amount of flex that makes the chair more lively than a metal or wood-framed chair.

The Ney Swivel Chair is part of the Celerie Collection by Laneventure.

Adirondack chair

January 20, 2009 at 2:58 pm | Posted in Furniture, Laneventure | Leave a comment

2006: The goal for this project was to design an adirondack-style collection that wasn’t totally derivative of every other adirondack chair that had ever been made. The manufacturer for the project was well-versed in adirondack styles and had a particular construction style they insisted on using (that allows a certain level of flat-packing, which is difficult to argue against) leaving relatively few things that could be changed in the attempt to differentiate. The original design was meant to convey a more sinister feel, with decidedly dramatic proportions and details than one would normally see in the adirondack style.

The final product differed somewhat from the original sketches due to manufacturing constraints as well as some “marketing dept.” influence (i.e. the wheels) and a general toning down of the original design. The wheels were added to make the chair easier to move around; they serve that purpose well enough and don’t take away from the design too much. The name that was going to be licensed to the collection did not fit with the original design, so it was watered down during development (although the licensing fell through in the end).

This chair is part of the Coastal Classics Cypress collection by Laneventure.

X1 Kayak Prototype

December 31, 2008 at 3:11 pm | Posted in Kayaks | Leave a comment

The X1 kayak has been prototyped, although its only been paddled a few times. First impressions are that it meets most of the design goals:

more speed – it is certainly much faster than my other kayaks
less stability – while less than my other kayaks, it is not difficult to handle and is not as challenging as I had hoped it might be
easy to build – the frame went together in only a few days
“modern” appearance – without deck lines it looks very minimalist, but it needs on-deck storage as nothing is accessible below deck while underway

The frame was built from found/salvaged materials: the scantlings are redwood, resawn from a 5′ long 6×6 beam, scarfed together to make up the lengths needed; the plywood frames are a mixture of various types and thicknesses; the deck stringers are left-over redwood; stems are scrap cedar; the coaming was made from scrap red oak. The only materials purchased were epoxy (for scarfing and assembling the frame), skin cloth, and skin coating. The original skin – varnished linen – wrinkled up after coating and was easily damaged due to the coating remaining very soft. The current skin is polyester coated with polyurethane. It also wrinkled up, but not as badly; the polyurethane coating has proven to be much more durable.

It is not perfect, however – it could use a seat or some kind of floor, deck lines, and a better skin without wrinkles – but those are pretty minor problems to have. Otherwise, it really needs more time on the water to determine if the hull needs any revisions. Stay tuned!

Additional photos available here

Retro Style

April 21, 2008 at 8:24 pm | Posted in concepts, Furniture, Laneventure | Leave a comment

Circa 2006: This still-born project for Laneventure was an exploration in “retro” styling for the “extruded aluminum” outdoor furniture category. The inspiration comes from many time periods – Bauhaus modern, to ubiquitous and low-priced patio furniture of the middle 20th century, to mid-century modern classics – but adapted to “standard” dimensions and cushion specs used in Laneventure’s other outdoor products. The lounge chair was prototyped and shown to a select few, but it was deamed to be less important to develop than other projects that were in competition if I recall the story correctly. Weather or not it would have succeeded in the marketplace is anyone’s guess; retro seems to work well for automobiles, but its been pretty limited in furniture. None the less, I find the frame to be visually interesting…

The next kayak…

April 21, 2008 at 7:44 pm | Posted in Kayaks | 1 Comment

Circa 2008: Since July 2007 I’ve been hard at work trying to flesh out the next skin on frame kayak to build. I took it upon myself to read up a bit on kayak design and naval architecture in general so that I would have a better understanding of what I’m doing. The design brief has changed a bit as I have learned more about kayak design, but the constant themes have been that the kayak had to be capable of more speed (i.e. longer) and a bit more challenging (i.e. less stable, i.e. narrower) than the retrieval. I also wanted the kayak to be easy to build, with as few aesthetic features as possible (i.e. “modern”). I played around with many different designs, from 11′ to 16′ in length, and 18″ to 23″ in width, and took some long and ultimately dead-end tangents in form and shape.

I finally settled on 15’7″ x 21″ as a compromise between speed potential, wetted surface area, and stability. On paper, its speed potential (measured as resistance) is average for a kayak its size. While longer kayaks do have more speed potential if you have the power and fitness to make use of it, that potential comes at the price of greater surface area (more resistance at lower speeds) and increasing difficulty with transportation and storage. The width is not particularly narrow for an historical skin kayak, but its moderately narrow for a modern, commercial sea kayak, while being on the short end of the length spectrum for both. If calculations are correct, it will have a suprising high amount of stability because of the boxy hull cross section. While I initially thought that going for very low “skill building” stability would be a good thing, designing for higher stability came with only a small handicap in speed while (hopefully) giving a kayak that inspires more confidence and allows one to relax without constant attention to prevent capsize (i.e. more fun, less work, since that’s what a hobby is all about!)

The final thing worth mentioning is that I intend to build this kayak from as many found/scrounged/salvaged materials as possible. Wood, fabric, and lashing material is pretty easily found, but skin coating and glue is probably best bought “fresh” so that there is less likelyhood of failure.

Below: A few of the various design dead-ends.