Today I had a full day of classes, 4th through 6th and 10th through 12th. The upper elementary students worked on their hand crafted travel journals, adding covers they have designed. The high school students were divided into groups rotating through two activities. A friend, Doug Powell, taught three at a time how to make beads from molten glass, while their math and science teacher and I worked with the rest building bridges as part of an exploration in physical science.
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| Bending a laminated arch form. |
I can tell you very little about lamp work. But I can tell you how the bridge making is "structured." I prepared stock in various sizes that the students can use in building bridges. The span will be 30 inches. It's being conducted as a team challenge, with students working in groups of three. The winners will be those whose bridges actually support the most weight relative to the weight of the materials used. We will test them to the breaking point in about two weeks.
On another subject, I finished photography for my American Woodworker article on a dedicated finger joint router set-up. The finished test joint and jig are shown in the photo above. One of the nice things about doing this joint on the router table rather than on the table saw is that it gives such clean cuts. What you see in the photo has not been sanded and yet shows a perfect fit. Another advantage is that no change from regular blade to dado blade is necessary. Making a dedicated router set-up is easy as I will explain in the article which will come out in the early summer.
Make, fix and create...
It's quite possible that you could end up with an engineer or two out of that bridge-building project.
ReplyDeleteMario