KrishnaSanakaHawkenProjects2021

  My inspiration to create this project honestly came from looking at everything I had done previously and doing the opposite. Given that I want to enter the medical field, I’ve spent summers shadowing and researching, so while I could have continued this trend over the past three weeks, I knew I wanted to do something different. Specifically in the case of choosing a carpentry-related project, I wanted to make something tactile that would be practical. While my group originally thought about building a tree house and then a shed, we decided on a picnic table, knowing that it would be less expensive and more feasible to build than the other two options. The initial two weeks of our project, which involved going to the Ohio Carpenters facility in Richmond and building a picnic table at my house, went very well. The instructors at the facility, which included not only our mentor Mr. Dan Sustin but also Mr. Dave Knight and Larry (last name unknown) were extremely patient, helpful, a...

  Today, we wrapped up the bench part of our bench swing. A picture of this completed component is included in this blog post. All in all, the bench was very difficult to construct but also very educational. We needed to make multiple curved cuts using a jigsaw, which is very time consuming and requires precision. After cutting these pieces out, we also needed to sand them (picture included) which is time consuming as well. We ran into barriers in that the plans we were using were somewhat unclear, so we made some incorrect cuts, but we ultimately adapted the incorrectly cut pieces to fit the bench. Additionally, due to not only to mistakes but also due to other adaptations we had to make, we needed to go to Home Depot three times for materials, slightly exceeding our budget of $200. On one of these trips, we purchased massive 4x4 pieces of wood for the swing support, which were horribly painstaking to cut and caused sparks to fly when using the jigsaw. Perhaps the largest lesson...

  For the past few days, we have started to work on our new project, which is a bench swing. Our first step for this new project was buying wood. In doing so at Home Depot, we used some skills that we had learned at the carpentry facility. For example, we were taught to avoid knots and bows, which are forms of imperfections, in buying lumber, which we applied. Additionally, we closely followed a plan in buying the wood and in the first few steps of construction, again applying literacy skills we picked up during our time at the facility. For the handles and back pieces of the bench swing, we needed to learn a few new cuts and techniques. For these pieces to fit together according to the plans we were using, we needed to cut only part of the way into the wooden pieces. Therefore, we could not use the miter saw we had traditionally been using to make the cuts. Instead, we used a jigsaw in conjunction with a hand saw to achieve a cut that was both slanted and only part of the way in...

  Today, we rebuilt the picnic table in my back yard. For the time being, we will keep the table here, though our ultimate goal is to find a park or any other type of establishment that we can donate it to. The process of reconstructing the table was much more difficult than we thought it would be. When we took the table apart on Friday, we were sure that rebuilding it would be simple because all the holes to drill into were already in place. Instead, due to slight environmental differences between my yard and the carpentry facility such as the angling of the ground and texture of grass rather than vinyl flooring, our measurements were slightly off, which rendered the entire construction much more complicated than we expected. To remedy this problem, we needed to drill the screws in at angles so that they would not protrude out of the table and cause problems down the line. This process involved a lot of cracked wood, but we eventually realized that using the drill’s reverse fe...