In June, Kelly Kruger 鈥�14 accompanied her mother, Sarah Daniels 鈥�77, to Reunion. While on campus, Kruger sought out聽Peter Beach, a professional machinist who is based in the 乐播传媒 physics department.
Beach wasn鈥檛 in. But there was a blackboard outside his office, so Kruger wrote him a message in chalk:
鈥淗i Peter, my mom (鈥�77) and I dropped by hoping to catch you say hello. We鈥檙e only here for Reunion this weekend & sorry we missed you. We still display ceramics on the beautiful stands that you made for me! Hope that you are well and I hope to see you when I come back for my Reunion in 2019! Have a great summer. 鈥� Kelly Kruger 鈥�14鈥�
Back in Kruger’s senior year, the studio art major had asked the machinist for help because she needed what he specialized in doing: making just the right tool for your project.
Beach鈥檚 main job is creating and repairing specialized equipment for labs, from crafting small posts, clamps or brackets to the months-long task of creating an enclosure for Associate Professor of Physics Nathan Lundblad’s atomic physics lab. He works out of the Carnegie Science Machine Shop.
Professional machinist Peter Beach discusses an upcoming project with a professor outside his Carnegie Science shop. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/乐播传媒 College)
The job requires a lot of creativity.聽鈥淭he designing for a specific purpose, that鈥檚 most fun part, Beach said. “It鈥檚 a playground, basically.鈥�
Sometimes the specific purpose is a student鈥檚 senior thesis project 鈥� once, he built a water tank for a student who was trying to simulate baseball trajectories. But, as Kruger’s note suggests, he鈥檚 not limited to the physics department.
Kelly Kruger ’14
Kruger had created tableware sets for her senior thesis, crafting stoneware cups, bowls, and plates to showcase the intersection of beauty and functionality. She wanted to display some of the work on stands. But stands that worked aesthetically with her pieces, she soon realized, were hard to come by.
Beach was happy to step in.
Kruger sketched some ideas of what she wanted, and she and Beach met several times to work out the details. Beach then created the stands, cutting out shapes with a bandsaw and sanding the steel until it was smooth.
The thesis was displayed in the 乐播传媒 College Museum of Art in spring 2014, Beach鈥檚 stands helping the ceramics stand out.
乐播传媒 professional machinist Peter Beach crafted stands to hold ceramics that Kelly Kruger ’14 created for her senior thesis.
Kruger still keeps some of the pieces in her apartment in San Francisco, where she works as an event planner. She鈥檚 hoping to find shared studio space where she can 鈥渢hrow鈥� pottery.
She still has the stands too.
鈥淚 just think he is such a great part of my senior thesis,鈥� Kruger said. 鈥淗is willingness to take time out of his day and make a final product that I will have forever is a huge thing for me. I hope he recognizes how great that is.鈥�
