Woodworking

In total I took two different tech classes in highschool, one in the ninth grade and another in the eleventh grade. The alternative was to take a business elective... no thanks. Between the two courses several projects were assigned where we were given free reign over the woodshop, and the metalshop under specific circumstances. Getting to work in the shop and doing something hands on for once in a school setting was a nice change of pace for me. The photo above is an image of a coat hanger... that was admittedly not designed by me, but I did technically make it. It was for a workshop at the end of the eighth grade trying to give kids a snippet of what taking a tech class would look like. Although I didn't design it, it's still pretty cute so I'm including it.

The next major project we worked on was some sort of two player game. Basically, two people are on each end taking turns trying to launch a puck through the cutout in the center. I don't quite remember, but I believe everyone worked from the same design schematic, to give everyone a feel for all of the different tools and machines available. The end product came out quite nicely and is a great time to kill time with a friend.

This next one is a marble cannon that I designed myself. It was for the final course summative at the end of the semester. The goal was to design and fabricate a marble shooting...thing? I decided to go for a turret mounted on top of a vehicle for the coolness factor. Basically everything taught in the course was applied in this project. There was even a little bit of welding, though I don't recall what type of welder it was. Due to time constraints the wheels don't rotate smoothly, but it's still a nice piece to leave on the shelf. It terms of practicality, it can probably launch a marble 1 foot tops, the same as everyone else's designs.

In the eleventh grade, we were assigned a team project to design and build a working trebuchet. Despite my team hating each other's guts, we still pulled through and made a pretty awesome final design. Though it could never really hit anything... but it's a miniature trebuchet so that is to be expected. Just for the record, pink socks was NOT a part of our team.

This box was a design for a summative project for the grade eleven tech class. It was actually finished after the next one but it's not as cool so I'm placing it before. It was supposed to be a box that could house all of my LED cube electronics and mount the actual cube on top, although I never got around to assembling it. My first LED cube was far too janky to be used, and the short wires would have made it difficult to fit everything in place. I still have it, and may end up using it sometime for my second LED cube whenever I get around to completing it.

This last one is my personal favourite. I'd say it's the best piece of work out of all the others. It's a folding table that folds in half, as expected. And no, the dog paws are not part of the design, someone just thought it'd be funny to photobomb my one second photoshoot. It is the only project from these two classes that is still used today, probably because it's the most functional.