Friday, September 7, 2007

Planing Legs and Completion of Photo Story

This morning Greg and I continued on with our Photo Story based on the electric planer. After completing it, Paul and Tim viewed our photo story, and although it was very entertaining and funny, found that it would not be acceptable as a final product. After this we joined the rest of the class and began hand planing down our legs for the saw horse.
This was quite a challenging process but became much easier when i discovered that everyone else had used a sliding bevel to get the right angle on the wood. I corrected one of my legs but it became too thin so Paul placed all of the legs through the Thicknesser at a height of 77mm. I then began marking out the angled feet of the legs. By using a bevel on the pre-made saw horse, i obtained the angle of the feet. I placed the legs in the vice one by one and started sawing them.
After Lunch Greg and I changed our photo story to a more tamed down version. We used the same pictures as before so it still retained that funny side that greg and i had planned for.

Thursday, September 6, 2007

Drawing completion and Photo Story commencement

This morning we continued on with our drawings of the saw horse. I finished off my plan view and then started labelling the certain parts of the saw horse , which consisted of four parts, the bearer on the top, the spreader inbetween the legs, the legs and the cleats. After this i drew in some dimensions such as the 800mm length of the bearer and the 595mm total height of the saw horse.
After this i moved onto the mathematics of figuring out the actual length of the legs by using the pythagoras thereom. The hypotenuse of the right angled triangle drawn from the diagonals created by the legs on the plan view, worked out to be 606mm long, which was precisely what my line actually measured because i damn good at drawing and mortal kombat 2. It was required that we write down how we came up with the actual lengths of the legs in the 100mm boarder, so i wrote it out with all the steps included.
After lunch we commenced work on our photo stories of a particular power tool. Greg and i worked together on the electic planer. First of all we wrote out a storyboard, with descriptions of the photos we were going to take along with the accompanying text. In all Greg and i had 7 scenes, which were pivotal to conveying the main parts of using an electric planer. We took alot of photos in different positions so later on we could choose the one that appealed to us the most when we are actually going to make our photo story.
I thought today was a productive, easily understood enjoyable day, in which i finished my drawing and worked well through the photo shop planning. I enjoyed the drawing as a subject and found it a good problem solving excersise and use of fine marking hand skills.
The photo shop, although not really releative to carpentry, was very enjoyable and i did learn more about the electric planer such as they contain 2 blades that rotate on a wheel at around 15 to 16 thousand RPM.

Wednesday, September 5, 2007

Planning and Drafting

Today we were in class again to learn about constructing a plan for our saw horse. This involved coming up with the major steps, which were Planning, Set up, Manufacturing and Assembly. Under these main steps we came up with some significant points that needed to be done to complete each major step.
Under Planning we discussed that what tools, where you were you going to work were two important steps to planned out. Hazards were also under planning and we came up with a few hazards that could result in constructing the saw horse and also how we would go about minimising or neutralising these hazards.
I struggled to concentrate through this part of the class as i had a sore, blocked ear that made it difficult to hear and hard to concentrate. I also found the planning steps hard to understand as they didn't have any strict rules or guidelines to them so in my mind all the steps were just floating around everywhere and were hard to make any sense out of. I did however learn the importance of scanning your work environment for where the fire extinguishers, emergency power stop buttons and fire blankets, before a problem arises as it only takes a second too long and someone could die or be seriously injured.

After lunch we started working on our large scale drawings of the saw horse we are planning to make. First of all we obtained long lengths of brown paper 900 wide and we ripped them from the roll at around 2m. Using masking tape we taped down all 4 sides of the paper to the wooden drafting board and then cut our paper to the size of the drafting board. After this we drew a 10mm boarder around the edge of the paper and then used large aluminium squares to make our "true" lines. From there we drew up our 100mm margin boarder on the right hand side, which contained 60mm x 100mm boxes, which had our name, project and also the scale.
Once this was complete we began drawing up our saw horses, firstly in the side elevation and secondly the plan view. I found this a good practical problem solving excersise, it really got me thinking about how i was going to obtain diagonal lengths with only limited straight lengths.

Tuesday, September 4, 2007

Fire Extinguisher Presentation


Today we continued on with our work on the workbooks containing the information about hand tools. The pages i workedon today were primarily concerning the types of saws, how to sharpen the blades and also terminology used to describe a saws attributes. The kerf is the width of the cut wich is generaly 1.5 times the actually width of the saw blade, because the teeth splay outwards. By having this wider cut made by the teeth, the saw is able to sink deeper and deeper into the wood without getting any friction and thus making the saw harder to operate.

I also learnt a bit about oil stones, that the main synthetic stone used is made of aluminium oxide and that natural stones give a much finer, more precise finish to blades of chisels and the like but cost alot more, so only a fine furniture maker would purchase a natural stone. Oil stones need to be washed in oil to float away the pieces of metal and stop the stone being clogged up. If an oil stone becomes clogged up due to the drying out of the oil, it is nescessary to wash the oil stone with petrol or kerosene.


After lunch we moved back into the classroom for a presentation made by a man that works for Bell Fire, called Jim. The basic outline of the course was to inform us on why we need fire extinguishers, how to use them and what different types of fire extinguishes there are. I found Jim to be very engaging and spoke with a clear a loud voice and often used vibrant hand gestures and vocal effects to describe explosions and other situations. I found Jim informative and entertaining.

During this presentation i learnt that under law it is nescessary to have a fire extinguisher in your car, you must be trained how to use it if you employ other people and if you're an employee you must do everything you can to extinguish a fire otherwise your ass is liable and you can be sued. It is nescessary by law for any place of employment to contain at least one portable fire extinguisher and a wall mounted fire hose reel. The fire hose reel should not be used to carry out other duties in the workplace.

All fire extinguishers have been standardised in Australia to be painted red. There are four tyes of different fire extinguishers, each singalled by a different coloured band around the top part of the cylinder.

Black Band - These are carbon dioxide fire extinguishes. As explained and demonstrated by Jim these are rather useless in extinguishing any fire outdoors and if inside there is air conditioning they useless as well. The only plus side is that they create absolutely no mess.

White Band - These are dry powder (monoammonium phosphate) fire extinguishers. These are rated for all three main types of fires, paper, flammable liquids and electrical. The powder is non toxic. These were proved to be extremely effective, as they are very efficient at puttingout flammable liquid fires and also because the powder, in the air, protects the user from heat as it stops the heat radiation.

Blue Band - These extinguishers are filled with a foam. Jim did not discuss these in great detail but he stated that they are't that effective and are not rated for electrical fires, and when used in bad weather conditions the foam can quickly be washed away.

No Band - This signifies a fire extinguisher that contains only water, so it is not rated for electrical fires or flammable liquid fires.


Classifications of fires.

A) ordinary combustibles - tree products

B) flammable liquids - plastics

C) gas

D) flammable metals

E) electrical fires

Monday, September 3, 2007

First of all in the morning today we began work in a classroom near the carpentry workshop room. For about and hour and 45 minutes we worked through some new workbooks that contained images and short descriptions of different types of tools. By reading through two books called Practical Carpentry numbers 1 and 2, and then writing the answers in the workbook. Some of the tools in the workbook weren't located in the books so we had a class consultation about what we thought the tool may be used for and then Paul would give us the answer. I found brainstorming with the class about what the tool may be used for and its features such as the rebate planes blade, very useful to help me remember the tool and its name.
After our morning break we moved on to the library and separated into two teams of three and were asked to prepare a presentation on a particular construction item commonly used in roof carpentry. Rhys, Michael and I decided to go with hardiflex as it is particularly interesting material as it poses a serious health risk. Using the computers to further contribute to our previous notes from last week, we assigned certain parts of the presentation to each member of our group.
I was unclear as to how ellaborate we were expected to be with our speeches and how professionally we were to go about it, so i did struggle to concentrate on the computers. When each of us got up and presented our knowledge on the construction material, i found it very engaging as not only did we have someone talking to us about it, Paul would throw in bits of his knowledge about the subject and get all of us having a discussion about the subject.
During the speeches i learnt about Wesbeam's E-beam, a type of LVL (laminated vinear lumber) from the other group. I learnt that similar to the Hardiflex, the dust produced from the sawing of the E-beam, is dangerous to your health and can cause a rare cancer of the sinuses, so dust masks must be worn in enclosed areas.
After we finished the speeches we moved onto more practical joinery tasks back in the carpentry workshop room. Today i finished the bridal joint and was very pleased with the fit of the joint, i was shown by paul how to use a granny's tooth plane, which was one of the things we learnt earlier in the morning. I found it very effective as opposed to using a chisel where the depth isn't perfectly level.