Day 11 of the Advanced Woodworking techniques course was a lot of fun, and productive. We started the morning by screen printing our own La Tinkeria hoodies with the classic La Tinkeria logo that we made 3 years ago when we got our new makerspace. This was my first time screen printing, and it was a lot of fun! We learned about how to properly position a screen print, the adequate amount of acrylic to use, and how to ensure the lettering and logo are clear and are not smudged.
After leaving our jackets to dry, we got to work on our last, and final major project: a countertop at the end of a locker hallway. Yesterday we made templates for either side of the countertop which accounted for the multiple protrusions within the wall. Today we used these inserts to make a complete cardboard model of the countertop. Once the cardboard model was perfected, we traced it onto a long (and heavy) piece of butcher block and started to cut out portions of the wood using both a circular saw and a jigsaw.
Some of the work today was fairly excruciating, mostly due to the weight and thickness of the wood we were working with. As it turns out, using a Jigsaw to cut through a 2-inch thick piece of butcher block is really hard to do. Even after making all of the necessary cuts, we had to remeasure, bring the wood back outside to cut, and take the wood back inside two additional times to make minor cuts to be able to slide the wood between the two walls. After we got the countertop to fit snugly between the two walls, we started to think about other materials that we need for the shelf. At the top of the list are two metal beams, which we needed to support the butcher block across the length of the countertop. We also need to take a trip to Home Depot to purchase brackets to mount the metal bars onto. In short, even though we are done with the design of the countertop, we still need to do a lot of work to support it.
Today we were productive, but also resourceful. For instance, the cardboard we used to model the table was the cardboard that the Butcher block came in. We also increased our skill level in using a jigsaw, which we have not used previously in the J-term (and I personally haven't used in 3 years).
Our jackets were dry at the end of the day and they look great! Screenprinting the jackets by ourselves added a personal touch that we would not have gotten any other way, so yay for screen printing!
Excited to finish the countertop by the end of the week!
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