carry all

Finished of the tool box today and I'm pretty happy with it. Apart from a few small gaps in the joints, a scratch and a chip it looks pretty good. It was all glued together yesterday arvo so thismorning i had to unclamp it and sand it down.
After it was sanded, we spent the rest of the morning sorting ou the construction sequence. we found a good format and as a class we all had some imput and went pretty smoothly. All that's left now is finish up the portfolio and look forward to coming back next year.

starting to take shape

After 3 days of being mostly in the workshop the tool box is starting to look like a tool box. On friday we finished of our drawings, cutting list, and joined our ends and base with the biscuit machine so come monday we were right iinto the marking out stage. We started monday morning by machining our timber to correct thickness and then spent the rest of the day marking everything out. It all went pretty smoothly with not much erasing and remarking to do.

Yesterday and today we were into the manufacturing stage and got a fair bit done. Most of my finger joints are up to scratch and it all fits together quite nicely. I had a little mishap last night while chiseling out the rebate on the ends, the corner snapped off but it was glued back without any dramas. While chiseling the other end of the rebate this morning I took my time and had no problems and it ended up pretty good.

Apart from the workshop, we also spent some time yesterday researching different glues used and presented our findings to the class. Today we also had an assessment based on the first task which I found OK but couldn;t answer the question about how o work out the true length of the leg. Need some revision.

Back to the drawing board

Today we started off finishing off our portfolio from the saw horse project and got it into a logical order. This is what we'll be basing our next project's portfolio on and also those of the on-site training.

After morning smoko we were back on the drawing board planning our next project, the tool box. As a group we decided on some standard parameters for the tool box. It will be 780 long, 230 wide and 360 high. After that we had a bit of freedom to design the partitions and sliding tray as we liked.

Tech drawing is always something I have struggled with but I definitely felt more comfortable this time round. Am looking forward to finishing the drawing and planning so I can get stuck into the construction side of things and I'm really hoping it will turn out a bit tidier than the last job.

wednesday

Back at tafe and finally managed to finish the saw horse project. I found it a great exercise as not only is the finished product practical to our work, it also allowed us to hone our hand skills, develop our problem solving skills, use calculations relevant to our work (pythagorus) and provide us with the framework to present our on-site training.Although my finished product was far from perfect, I understood exactly what I did wrong and how I will go about it differently when I make it's pair at home.Am looking forward to starting the next project, the tool box, and now we know what is expected of us in terms of planning and proving our work and knowledge, the project should run smoother and quicker.