Homemade Jewelry Part #6 Soldering

Now I had all my pieces! Time for the final step… soldering!!! A soldering iron is a very hot tool used to bing things together with a metal called solder. When the hot iron touches solder it instantly melts. I was soldering all my pieces to create a pendant for my choker. First I touched the iron and solder to the part of the circle I wanted to close. I held it there for like two or three seconds. Now all I had to do was this process to all the parts I wanted to bind together.

Solder doesn’t come out very smooth, so after a few minutes of it drying I had to file the bumps down in order to have a flat pendant. The tool I used to do this was sand paper. I took the sand paper and rubbed hard on the intended areas. Now that it was nice and smooth there was still solder on the internal part of the pendant. To do this I used a metal file, kind of like a nail file for metal. The metal file is long, skinny, and rough, so I used it to get the solder out of the middle.

Finally my pendant was finished, so I got a piece of black string and threaded it through. Now I had a stylish choker.

Homemade Jewelry Part #5 Shaping the rest of the wires

Now I had my circle so I could start shaping the wires against the circle. To make strait wires I took the pliers with a flat surface and grabbed one on each side of the wire and pulled until the line was strait. I used this strategy to make the arms of my avocado man. Now the avocado shape was very difficult to make because it’s not a normal oval. When I made my adjustments to the oval with the normal pliers and the flat surfaced one it ended up taking me more than one class to do. The pit of the avocado is just a simple oval so I took the circle making pliers to round my wire and it only took a few minutes. Lastly when making the little circle to thread the string through all I had to do was use the circle making plier on the smallest part. Now that I had all my pieces it was time to solder.

Homemade Jewelry Part #4 Shaping the circular wire

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This step was hard and took more than one class. Earlier I said that we printed out our design, now we got to use it as a template. There were two types of wires, a thick copper one and a thin silver one. You could choose both or one or the other. I chose the copper for my circle and silver for the avocado. It was really hard to shape the copper wire because it is so thick. At our table we had one inch wooden cylinders to wrap the wire around to create a circle. This sort of failed for me! When I laid out my circle onto my template it was way to big. Thankfully Mr. Calvert was there to help and I got to shape my circle with a special tool called a man-drill. It is a heavy pole that gets thicker and thicker. Toards the end of the pole there is a one inch measurement. We used that. Eventually I had a perfect circle!

Homemade Jewelry Part #3 Pliers

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This next step took more than one class. I will explain the different pliers used to bend wires. At our table we had lots of different types of pliers. There was one simple plier with thin parts used to finish up and make things neat. The most useful/common plier had a flat surface to place thing, straiten wire, and cut wires since it had a wire cutter at the bottom. There is another plier that I didn’t find very useful. It had lots of sharp bumps which made them look like wire scissors, but they didn’t really work. Another plier was just a plain wire cutter. At our tables we got blunt ones, but Mr. Calvert had a sharper one at his desk which we were aloud to use if we asked.

Homemade Jewelry Part #2 Vectornator

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On an app called Vectornator We drew out our designs to print out and use as a template. We started off by drawing our initials onto a red 1 inch circle. Then we created a second layer to draw out your design. Since this was going to be our template we had to make sure every line was perfect. This meant using lots of different tricks. This was hard because it’s hard to explain how to do it and you could be doing the wrong thing. You would use your pen to draw and then have to make it neat which is really hard. Once our designs were perfect we printed them out onto paper.

Homemade Jewelry Part #1 Design

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In the past few weeks of technology we have been making jewelry pendants out of wire. The first step of all of this was to brainstorm and design multiple ideas for pendants. We only could make one pendent but what would it look like? On a piece of paper with lots of circles we drew designs. These designs could only use five wires. Although later on we may of bent the rules. With Amanda and Maddy we narrowed down to three ideas. 1. Ugly Cat 2. Peppa Pig 3. Peppa Avocado. We ended up choosing the avocado. We drew out the designs on an app called Vectornator. In my next post I’ll explain how Vectornator worked.

Tech Post #2 Evolution of Cameras (continued)

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In 1975, Steven Sasson invented the worlds first digital camera called the Kodak digital camera. It had a CCD sensor and a tape recorder. Although this was the first digital camera, the first digital camera was made in 1991 priced at $13,000.

A camera that people still use today called the Fuji QuickSnap camera. It could only take 27 photos at a time and was priced at $4. However after you took 24 pictures it had no use and it would be disposable.

In 2000 came the flip phone. This was so much better than cameras because not only was it much smaller and could take pictures, but you were able to text and call on them. This was fantastic and things still got better.

In the great year of 2007 came the Apple IPhone. This was the best of all. Now we even have an iPhone 11! The IPhone is able to text, call, take pictures and more. Since then there have been many more camera developments like the GoPro and Cannon Cameras. Although there are more cameras I hope you learned a lot about the ones I did write about.

 

 

 

 

 

Tech Post #1 Evolution of the Camera

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Today you see something that you want to take a picture of, take your phone out your pocket and just easily take a picture. That’s not how it’s always been, the first camera ever made was actually made in 1500. It was called the Pinhole Camera. It just emphasized light and shadows. This camera was made by a Chinese Philosopher.

339 years later a camera called the Daguerreotype Camera was created. This camera was actually able the store the image unlike the Pinhole Camera. It was made by the French artist names Louis Daguerre.

In 1900 the Reise Camera was invented. Carrying around bulky cameras was tough. This camera was the first portable camera. It would fold up in a way that would be easier to carry. This camera changed everything.

Since my sister is a photographer I have seen the Leica I camera. It was made in 1925 by Ernst Leist senior. “Leica I was the first compact camera that packed a superb f/3.5 lens and was able to shoot photos on 35mm films“ – Onetrapixel.com/evolutionofthecamera.

In 1947 cameras were everywhere. Everyone had them. The Polaroid company that you may of heard of today created the Polaroid Model 95. On this camera you wouldn’t have to go develop the photos like any other camera, the camera printed out the picture instantly like the Polaroid Instax camera that we have today.

 

 

 

 

 

 

My Podcast

In my class at school we had to make podcasts. Our podcast could be about anything and there were no limits. This made it hard for me to decide. I wanted to do something general so I came to a conclusion and decided to do my podcast about school safety. School safety might seem a little boring at first if your a child like me, but once I started researching it, it was actually very interesting. You might be wondering where our podcasts will be useful and I have an answer for that. We are going to submit our podcast in a competition on NPR for a chance to get them on the radio. After many weeks of researching, interviewing recording, and more I think my podcast is the best it can be.


			

Happy Halloween

One spooky Halloween the wind gushed through my backyard. I heard whispering, “Go to the graveyard!” I was terrified the, wind talked to me. I had nothing else to do so I went. Everything was normal until I heard the whispering again, “Go to Ella Ridges grave stone.” Wait I’m Ella Ridge. Why would there be a grave stone for me? I looked in front of me and took a few steps and there I saw my grave stone…..

BOO!

She was never seen again!