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Since the quarantine is going a lot longer than expected, I have been home all day long. As a result, I have been learning to make slinkies out of paper and I have read a lot of books. Even though it has been boring at times, I have explored new hobbies. I hope everyone is staying safe at home!
This week I got to sand my box. Sanding is where you make the sides of your wood smooth by rubbing it against sand paper. I sanded by using a belt sander which is a rotating piece of sandpaper that you hold your piece of wood against. When the machine turned on I got scared because it was out but then I got used to it. Overall, I really enjoyed sanding my box and I hope it turns out great!
Since technology class has been delayed due to Corona Virus, we have been assigned to look around the house and find materials for building. What I found is:
With this material hopefully I am able to build many different things!
Since, school is canceled due to the corona virus, I had to find a way to keep myself busy. I usually slept to about 9:00 am. What I would do is I would get dressed and go for a walk. Then the rest of the day I caught up on schoolwork and did extra practice. On top of that I read a great book called “Starters”. To, me the week went by really fast and it wasn’t that boring. I also played lacrosse outside which was really fun on the hot days. Starting this week we are going to have a lot of homework to do, so hopefully I will get it all done. I have nothing else to do because I don’t have school and all my sports are cancelled. With my free time I hope to read more books and explore new hobbies!
Last week I finished cutting my wood with a miter box saw. When you cut the wood you had to keep the saw level otherwise it would be hard to cut the wood. When you finished cutting the wood the saw would land on the bas with a hard thud, which scared me the first time but then i got used to it. In my opinion the are much easier to use than a regular saw. I also practiced sanding on a scrap piece of wood in preparation for the week after that where we would use a sanding machine. To sand you put a piece for sand paper, a rough surface, on a wooded block and then rub it on the side of a piece of wood that you want to be smooth. When I sanded it looked like this:
My pieces of wood that I cut with the miter box saw looked very rough and they were close to giving me splinters. Overall I had a lot of fun cutting the pieces of my box and practicing sanding.
This past week I have done a lot of work. Specifically I loved using the hand planers because I have never used one before. If you didn’t know, hand planers are meant to shave wood in order to make it smooth. I looks like this:
As you can see, when the wood is shaved, it leaves left over thin wood curls. At the end of class, we spent about 5 minutes trying to clean all of the curls up because there were so many!
In addition to working with the hand planers, I designed my box. I had to be very specific so that Ms. Giroux could know what size pieces of wood I need. This is what my design looked like:
The dimensions on my box show that may box will be a regular rectangle. Overall, I am very excited to start building my box!
Yesterday I got to work with wood and screw drivers. When I was trying to screw a screw into the wood, it was hard for me to keep the wood steady while driving the screw into the wood. This is why the vise was helpful so that it could keep the wood steady. It was sort of like an extra pair of hands. This is what it looks like:
The vise is used to hold the wood steady. You twist the handle counter-clockwise to open up the vise and then turn the handle clockwise to tighten the wood in place. The tool that I used to screw the screw into the wood was a screw driver which looked like this:
The tip of the screw driver is made so that it can fit in place with the top of the screw, making it easier for the screw driver to screw the screw into the wood.
This image below shows how the screw driver and the screw fit together well.
Overall, yesterday I learned how to properly screw a screw into a piece of wood properly, effectively, and safely. Some questions that I had were: