23rd and 22nd of October

Yesterday we worked on our tool boxes up until lunch time. During this time began cutting my sides to a length of 780mm using the drop saw to get an accruate square cut. I also cut the bottoms of my ends with the drop saw so that both adjoining pieces would fit square. I then started to cut out my german dovetail (square dovetail) joins in both the ends and the sides.
Once i had cut the dovetails out with the tenon saw i then started to chisel out the cuts. During this time i had great difficulty chisellingout the cuts to my satisfaction because i was trying to cut them closely with a coping saw and then chisel them out with just a pearing andpushing motion. I became frustrated and the whole day i could not work to the best of my ability so my dovetail joins were pretty lousy.
After lunch we started working on a presentation on a particular glue that we may use or come across in our industry. Greg and I were teamed up together and we decided to research two part epoxy glues because i found the two part mixing idea intriguing. During this time on the computers in te library i searched up what the key words used in describing an epoxy glue, such epoxy, polyepoxide, polymer, monomer and catalyzing agent actually mean. This way i could greater understand how theglue works, eventhough the companies would not openly tell you how they work. I have in my portfolio a page on the two part epoxy glues that informs you how the epoxy hardens due to a chemical reaction. I found it very interesting.

23rd
Today we started in the workshop again, and this time i found myself very calm, and this made it much easier to achieve the kind of workmanship i require to continually be enthused in producing the tool box. My cuts were much better and because i wasn't frustrated i found it easy to ask for help.
I started by cutting the bottom piece to length with the drop saw, again to achieve a square cut. I cut it to a length of 780mm, the same as the sides. Before cutting out the dovetails on the bottom of either end pieces, and on either end of the bottom piece (haha), i had to reduce the width of the bottom piece by 12mm so that it would fit snugly in the rebates cut on the side pieces. I also had to cut a rebate on each of the end pieces to house the bottom. Overall i achieved a nice fit into the rebates and began cutting the dovetails. At the end of the workshop session tis afternoon i had finished cutting the dovetails on one end of the bottom piece.
During the middle of the day we all had a test, which was a 23 question full sentence test. Some of the questions were and easy and others required thinking and remembering things we had already done and learnt. I did find the questions relevant to the things we had learnt during our time at TAFE.