A couple weeks ago in technology I learned about wood veneer. Wood veneer is a very thin slice of natural wood. Veneer is sometimes used as a small, individual sheet, but more often veneer are manufactured into larger sheets. I thought it was cool to see all the steps that veneer manufacturing factories do to make large sheets.

For creating my box there was three steps. Measuring and cutting the wood, gluing the sides, and gluing the bottom. The easiest part was measuring and cutting the wood because it was pretty straightforward and I could clearly see what and where I was cutting. However, the gluing steps is the part that I struggled with. When I was gluing the sides together they were falling apart and didn’t really stick together. I decided to put more glue on the wood and hold the wooden pieces together for longer. The next step I did was gluing the bottom, which was a little easier than gluing the sides because the sides were already glued. After, I let the pieces of wood dry. I decided to not paint my box because I liked how it would look natural without any paint. Overall, this project was easy in some parts and challenging in the others but I enjoyed creating a box that I can now use.

Recently I have been working on creating my box for technology. I first started off with making a plan. In my plan, I drew a picture of a box and labeled the measurements of each side of the box. Then I wrote the process/steps to creating the actual box. The first step is to measure and cut the wood. The next step is to glue all the sides together. The final step is to glue the bottom of the box. So far I have measured and cut the wood. I measured the wood by using a ruler and marking the measurements on the wood. Then I used a saw to cut the wood. It was fun to use a saw because I have never used one before.

In the second week of technology I watched a video on how to make wooden utensils. Wooden utensils are made very differently than metal utensils. There are also a lot more steps to make wooden utensils than metal utensils.

The first step to creating wooden utensils is that the worker places a block of wood on a curved template and traces the curve. Then they cut along the trace line with a bandsaw. Then the worker profiles the curve on a machine called a wood molder. Next the worker uses a band saw to cut the wooden block into strips. Now the utensil is carved! Next the worker snaps off the extra wood by squeezing the utensil. Then the worker removes the nubs of the wood by rubbing the utensil against a sanding belt. After they sand the entire utensil. The worker then uses ultra fine sanding to make the utensil smooth. Next the utensils are soaked in hot water. The final step is to put three coats of food safe plant oil. Overall, I have learned that making wooden utensils is very time consuming job and is quite interesting to learn about.

Trusses are used for all different types of buildings. A truss is a triangle. In tech we had to create a truss out of toothpicks and something to connect the toothpicks. I created a truss that had different sizes of triangles. This project was fun to do.