Day 6: Sutton
Today was full of new tools and new rules.
I started the morning by cutting out a coral mermaid tail layer (this color won the mermaid tail election). I ran into a bit of difficulty because I think the laser cutter sensed that this was my last piece of coral paper and decided to annoy me and mess things up. It chose not cut all the way through the paper so I had to go in with my exacto knife and stab out all the tiny scales. I ultimately gave up because so much of the detailing was being destroyed so instead, I used my backup mermaid tail and glued it to the coral border. I then glued foam core around all of my diorama layers and stacked them together.
In the mid morning, Mr. Grisbee gave us a presentation on the wood working process and introduced us to the tools we would be using. The first tool is the jointer. It basically makes the face/edge of the wood flat. It looks really easy to use but I soon found out that it can be quite challenging, especially when using long pieces of wood (like the ones we are using to make our frames). I was, and I quote, "pushing too hard" but "doing a good job." That hopefully translates to "You are doing great and I will recognize the fact you are new to using this machine and will thus give you all 5s." Fingers crossed.
Next is the planer. The planer makes the wood a uniform thickness. You slide the wood underneath, it shoots sawdust out, and bam, you have a super smooth and flat piece of wood. Pretty cool. The table saw is the most dangerous. It is used to cut the wood to size or cut "miters" or "dados." You can't make this stuff up. The crazy names don't stop there. There is something called the "rabbet" that makes a sort of slit along the edge of the wood so you can slide the clipboard into the back of the frame. Anyways, back to the danger. In the middle of the table is this spinning wheel of death that apparently has some safety feature so if you accidentally touch the blade with your finger, it will automatically and immediately retract. I'm having a hard time believing this but I am totally not going to test it out. The one thing I remember from this table saw lesson is "never cut across grain with a fence because it will fly back at you." Makes sense. Senior yearbook quote?
Oh! And while we are working with all these heavy duty machines, we are wearing some not-so-cutie things. To be safe of course, we wear these super tight, super uncomfortable, super ugly masks. I think they make us all look like donkeys. However, I'll admit, they are really good at keeping all the sawdust out of your airways. We also wear these humongous plastic glasses that are pretty much resting on our eyebrows because the chunky mask prevents them from sitting on our nose. Yet another addition to this trendy look is the bright green ear plugs that protrude from of the sides of our head. All in all, we looked incredibly attractive during this experience.
I ended the day with a sawdust-covered sweatshirt and wood that had gone through the jointer, planer, and table saw. One of the edges of my wooden boards is super not straight so I will definitely be talking to Mr. Grisbee tomorrow morning. Bye!
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