Day 6: Aiden C

 Today was the start of our woodworking, and all today we worked on using the Jointer, Planer, and Table Saw to cut our wood for our frames.

    I started today ready to start cutting my wood, as I had already marked and reviewed what I wanted to do the previous day. Tyler was absent for the first half-hour though, but it was actually helpful because I was able to spend that idle time reviewing my cuts and fixing all the errors that could have occurred. 

    Once my measurements were complete, I went to work on using the machines shown above to flatten and standardize all my wood. The machine on the right (Jointer) was used to remove major curves on the board, and the machine shown on the left (Planer) was used to cut the board to a uniform height.

    The Jointer is basically a spinning cylindrical saw blade with two horizontal plains next to it, and when you run wood on top of them it cuts off and protrusions

    The Plainer is a machine with another spinning cylindrical saw blade, but it has rollers, and instead of just cutting off protrusions, it just shaves off the correct amount of wood so that the entire thing is the height you want.

    The board shown above is the cut to a uniform thickness and flattened version of the board I started with, and this is the type of board I would take to the table saw to do the final cuts on and to get it to the look I need to put my box together.

    Using the table saw, I cut my wood to the width I needed, then cut miters (the slanted edges at the ends of the wood) so that my wood would fit into a box shape.

    Once I cut my boards on the table saw that the boards are resting on in the picture, I then took these boards over to the table where I would use a strap to temporarily put them together and test them and their look with my diorama/shadowbox. Here is how all the wood fits together:

    Around the same time I was finishing this, the teacher called the other students to get them to start on cutting their boards, which meant I was not able to use the table saw anymore, since I would need to move the blade to a different position then the other students were using. Because of that, I set both my boxes down on the table and took a preview picture:

    Since I could not do anything else, I spent the remaining 30 minutes of class helping others with their projects and cleaning up.

Thanks for reading!

- Aiden