Wooden Box Update

Since the last time I talked about my box, I have made a lot of progress.  After I finished cutting all my pieces, I had to sand them. Sanding took a lot of time but when I finished I noticed there were some uneven pieces that I couldn’t  sand off. Ms. Giroux then made some small cuts to make them all even. After everything was all sanded I started to glue. I think gluing was the easiest part except for putting it in the vice to dry. Whenever I put my box in the vice, the pieces would move around a lot and I had to try and fix them. As a result of this, today when I found my box all glued, the pieces didn’t fit together very evenly. To fix this I have to use the belt sander to sand these pieces way down.

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Making my wooden box

In my previous post, I talked about making my cardboard box. Soon after I finished that, I started to create my box. The cardboard model helped me make my box because I had a sense of what my box would look like and the size it would be. It also helped me because I knew how the pieces would fit together. Tools like the rules and try squares were pretty easy to get the hang of, but some of the saws made me nervous. When I was cutting my cardboard box with the scroll saw, I was scared that the cardboard would slip a little and the line would be way off. With the saws for the wooden box, I was scared that I would put the saw on the wrong part of the wood and it would saw off too much of it. When I was measuring, it would take me a couple tries to get the measurement perfectly perpendicular. I also had trouble getting the line to be the perfect length. For me though, it was more easy then hard with the measuring. When I was cutting the wood, the saw would get stuck a lot and I always pointed the tip of the saw up accidentally.

Cardboard box draft

In tech, we are going to make wooden boxes soon. To get ready for cutting the wood and measuring right, we made cardboard box’s. The first thing we did was make a paragraph of what we wanted our box to look like, and why. I said I wanted my box to look like the one that is an example. I want my box to look like that because it very clean and simple. I think I’m going to put all the cards I get from my birthday and holidays in it. The next step was to draw out the box and label the parts. I needed six different parts to make the box. Then, we did the measurements. I made by box 7.5 x 5 x 4. After making the draft of our box, we got a piece of cardboard. The size of the piece of cardboard was dependent on how big our box was. Next, after getting our piece of cardboard, we started to draw out the different parts of our box on it. My top and bottom were 7.5 x 5, my front and back were 7.5 x 4, and the sides were 5 x 4. Once we were done with drawing out our parts on the cardboard, we were aloud to start cutting the pieces out. We used a certain tool called a scroll saw. When I was finished with cutting out my six pieces, I could start assembling them. Finally, I used tape to assemble my pieces. After that, I was finished!

Safety in Tech

In tech, we have been learning about safety in the classroom. Some of the safety rules from last year that apply to this year are no running, stay focused in what you’re doing, don’t play with the equipment, wear appropriate safety gear, and make sure, before using a dangerous machine, to ask the teacher. Some safety rules that will be easy to remember is to ask the teacher before using a dangerous machine, and to wear appropriate safety gear. Something that will be a challenge for me to remember is to stay focused when I’m working on something because I talk with my friends a lot.

flashlight activity #2

Before we built our flashlights, we had to build a diagram that was as accurate as possible so we would know where to put the wires. When Mr. Calvert showed us how we were going to make the diagram I was so confused and worried that I was going to mess up. When we started our diagrams, I got distracted so I was a little bit behind. Luckily I was able to catch up to everyone else soon. I just finished making the base for the diagram and I am going to draw where the wires are going to go tomorrow.

starting the flashlight activity

When Mr. Calvert introduced this project, he first talked about when this soccer team got stuck in a cave for weeks. You have probably already heard of it. Anyways, it was a really really hard process of getting the kids out and one of the divers even passed away from trying to get the team out. Mr. Calvert then told us we had to make a flashlight that was waterproof.  I was kind of confused of how I was gonna do that but when he explained it a little better, I was started to get how I was going to do it.

switch game

In tech we just finished doing the switch game. At first, I thought that it was going to be too much work and I would get bored of it quickly but when I started building my first switch I realized that it was a lot of fun and I was excited to start building the other ones. My first switch was almost like a bungee cord button. I used a rubber band to make it jump back up. My second switch was made out of a popsticle stick, and my last one was simply just made out of cardboard.

Solder Person

In tech we made solder people. At first I thought that I wouldn’t be able to do it or it would turn out horrible but it just turned out a little bad. First we planned out what we wanted our person to be doing. I decided to just have a regular person doing nothing. I wanted to do a plain jane design because I thought it would be easier. Then we took a thick piece of brass wire and formed it on a penil. After that we soldered the arms of the person on. When I soldered the arms on a little piece of solder was sticking out of the “armpit”. I now call it armpit hair.

Atomsss

Recently in tech we’ve been learning about atoms. I personally don’t find it that fun but Mr Calvert said that we need to know about atoms before we can start building. I am starting to get it and at least he makes more interesting and funny than it normally would be. I think it’s cool that everything is made out of atoms but we can’t see them. I thought it was really cool when we were talking about how if we turned a grapefruit into the size of the Earth, then the atoms would only be the size of a blueberry and no matter where we were, we would just see blueberries. I liked how we put it into perspective.

Starting Tech!!!

So far, tech had been very fun. I like how its a creative space where we can just think out of the box. It is a good way to end the day because instead of stressing about the test we have tomorrow or how much homework we have that night we can have fun and create new things. Recently, Mrs. More visited and talked about an alternative to elephant ivory. I really liked the idea she had because elephants are my fav animal and I’m sad to see them endangered.