Mt newest entry to the #selfCADchallenge design competition, a Viking-style Eating Fork !

But instead of the classic curved end, I put an inverse-extruded icosahedron !

Gotta personalize it somehow... it's not at all because I couldn't figure out how to make the end like the classic designs:

So, how did I make this one ?

Glad you asked, imaginary readers !

Design inspiration

I got the inspiration a while ago, actually, and had the idea on the backburner.

A few weeks ago, I visited my family in Denmark for my cousin's Confirmation into the Protestant faith.
It's quite a big event in Denmark, so we had a party for them and went to church to see them and everything.

After the party, we went to visit my grandmother, who lives near Ribe

Ribe is well known for being one of the biggest trade centers during the Viking Era, and one of the oldest still living towns in Denmark.

So it's only appropriate that they have the Ribe Viking Center

There's an entire subculture filled with viking craftsmen still wandering Denmark, traveling between these Viking Centers selling viking-era crafts and goods they've created during the winter months.

Quite a way to keep history alive !

My grandmother, being a retired Protestant priest, was of course most interested in seeing the Ansgar Church

We looked at a few of the different sellers goods too. Lots of traditionally forged Silver, Bronze and Iron, as well as carved amulets and wood-turned bowls.

I took an interest in the design of the Viking Eating Forks I saw a blacksmith forging, and kept the approximate design on the backburner of 3D ideas till now.

2 The design process

First, I went into SelfCad and selected the Shape Generator

After doing a first segment in the shape of the "fork" end, I tested a couple of different ways to use the twist command with further segments to create the shapely turning design. using the Twist tool in the Deform category.

Using a single long segment... broke everything very fast, as it only twists according to the number of segments

So, after some testing, I found that creating very small, repeated Segments in the Shape Generator was the way to go:

Then I applied the Twist command to only the smaller segments, given we want the pointy end to stay straight:

I did make a few half-hearted attempts at bending a end point similar to the viking fork designs I saw, but coudn't quite get it to work, so I looked for another end decoration:

And Voila :

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Credits for all photos of the Ribe Center goes to them, and a variety of tourists posting their pictures online.
The SelfCAD design photos are released into the Public Domain. Not exactly much in terms of copyright to use here, is there XP

Here's the model on MyMiniFactory and a link to the competition submissions page