Yesterday and today we were back in the workshop, this time looking at wood. Again we were experimenting with how to cut, sand and adapt this material with a few different machines. We were each given a piece of plywood, hardwood and MDF and discussed the different properties of each one.
To begin adapting my pieces of wood I firstly drew on cutting lines with a pencil and also marked areas where I wanted to drill into the wood with a pillar drill.
I experimented with the different drill thicknesses and how far down into the wood I could drill to create a few different holes in my wood. I used one drill for the larger holes and another for the smaller holes.
MDF with different hole sizes
After this I cut my pieces of wood on the bandsaw however, it can only cut in straight lines so for my curve I cut at an angle close to the pencil line and then sanded the rest away on a circular sanding disc for a smooth curve.
As well as looking at woodwork we also looked at fixings and how to piece together different materials in preparation for next week when we bring together all our plastic, metal and wood and create a model in our small groups. To fix together certain materials it can be done with it’s corresponding glue, for instance woods can be joined together with wood PVA glue, or with Rapid adhesive which is a very strong glue that hardens in five minutes and can fix any two different materials together despite their properties. In addition to using glue, materials can be pieced together with screws, bolts or dowels all of which can be more decorative or practical than glue.
Next week, as I mentioned earlier, we are going to be applying all the skills we’ve learnt to piece together all of our materials and create a model. We each still have the option of adapting our pieces of materials further or getting more pieces of each material to work on. By the end of next week however we will have to choose which pieces we want for our model and how they are going to fix together. This is also going to be our final project for this module as our blog deadline is coming up soon!
Interior Design at SHU 