Carpentry

Well in carpentry we got to frame a 10' x 9' house. The sixteen of us split into two groups, and there was a little bit of rivalry going on between the groups to see who could get all the walls up the fastest including one partition wall. My group won the challenge of course ;)

boilermaking/rigging

So for the last two days I was rigging and learning about boiler making. I tied a lot of knots and made a sling. (the sling is for 4x4 when you get stuck you can pull yourself out) The sling is made of wire rope and I had to pull apart the wires and re-twist them into a loop.  We also had to learn a lot of hand signals so we could direct a crane.  ( I will post a picture of the sling soon)

We spent a lot of time learning about boiler making, it seems like a good job, the pay and benefits are good and there can be lots of over time so you can make extra money. Getting to work at very high heights when assembling the boilers seems very cool. I know I say this about every career but I think I'm now considering becoming a boilermaker.

Job shadow

I spent two weeks in a little machine shop for my job shadow, It was a blast the two guys that work there were very nice. While I was there I cut metal on the iron worker and ban saw and got to clean out CNC machines and load the new pieces to cut into the machine. I also got to take a part a rock crusher which was very interesting. In a way getting to fix the rock crusher was similar to heavy duty mechanics, because of the way the the rock crusher is designed. We had to hoist the rock crusher up on to a forklift and drive it into a hydraulic press to push out the shaft because it was stuck. then we had to push out the bushings still using the hydraulic press it was very awkward because the rock crusher is not level so we had to prop up and end while trying to set it in the press. I really enjoyed getting to take it apart, it was a really good two weeks off from school.


Just to give you an idea of what I'm talking about the first picture is a hydraulic press and the second one is a rock crusher. These are not the actual ones I was working on/with there just pictures of similar one i found on the internet.

Party time

So all the girls form my trades class decided to go out clubbing just before our two week job shadows, I had a great time, since we can all be a little wild at times it was a fun night :)

catch up time!

So I've been very behind on my posting so I'm going to try and catch up now.

I finished all my math and safety tests for school. I have less then a month of school left I finish on April 21. I got my forklift license I spent a day at the campus on great Canadian way playing with trains, basically we just got to climb a giant box with a ladder. I also had three joinery classes, where we made a wood box a cutting board and a picture frame made out of MDF(medium density fiberboard). I was a little disappointed with joinery because we didn't get to design our own project like in steel fab. My dad was a cabinet maker and had his own shop so as a kid I spent a lot of time in the shop making things and found the projects we had to make for school to be very easy and not the most pretty, also the shop teacher was a bit of a jerk.

 I need to paint the picture fame, MDF is just ugly lol!

                           Railway = basically just a box with a ladder!                           

Sheet Metal

Okay so I'm a week behind on my posts, so I'll try to catch you all up to date. I finished a week of sheet metal classes. If you are someone who works with sheet metal you are making and installing air ducts and vents, unless you specialize in stainless steel. I found it to be surprisingly fun, I loved getting to cut and bend metal I found the whole process very interesting. For class I made a tool box and a box out of sheet metal. We used a 26 gauge piece of metal. (gauge = how thick or thin the metal is.)

Hammer

                           Here are some of the hammers the other girls in my class made.

                           Mines the one with the octopus in space.

 My hammer after I  hardened it in the gas furnace. 

 Just the top of my hammer, I had to drive a smaller piece of wood in the top of the hammer to hold it open, then I drove a small piece of metal in the top to hold it all in place.

The bench hook I made after for just a small something to do project.

Machining

I started machining at the beginning of this week, I find it very challenging, I am not the strongest in math, or the most patient and you need both of those skills to be any good as a machinist. I made a a hammer as well as a key chain, I used the vertical milling machine with I believe it was called a facemill, to cut the metal for the chipping hammer down to size, then I used a drill press and drilled a small hole in the metal for the handle; after I went back to the vertical milling machine but this time using a 9/16 endmill as my cutting tool to further bore out the hole I had just made on the drill press. I spent all of today learning to use a computer program called mastercam x4 it was very challenging and frustrating, the coarse for the mastercam software is suppose to be 5 months but we have to cram learning it in 1 day.(that's what you get when you take a sampler course lol!) So basically you have to enter in all the parameters for the engraving machine to engrave the design you created correctly. It was very confusing and a long day, I hope in the end it will turn out okay.

Pictures!

                                          Candle holder with quick spray finish.

                                                    Roses picture - grinded down the metal for this finish and cut out the rose  shapes using the plasma torch.

                                            Cus all trades chicks are butch! lol

steel fabrication

Steel fabrication is the process of building structure by bending cutting and welding metal.
I started steel fab 3 days ago, If was a very rough start, the teacher was not helpful, and kept leaving the work shop to text on his phone. We were told we could use all the machines like the shear, CNC machine or the press break ext. but he would not properly instruct us on how to use them, besides telling us there's the on switch don't cut your hand off. It was quite an intimidating  first day not knowing what to do or how to use machines that are way bigger than you. The next day was a lot better, we asked one of the other teaches to come in and help us and too talk to the other teacher to see if she could convince him to actually teach us, he was much more helpful after that. I am making a candle holder and going to attempt a small table if I have the time. I am enjoying steel fab a lot more now than compared to the first day, I like getting to cut as well as grind the metal and watch the sparks fly everywhere.

I will post some pictures of my finished projects later :)

M.I.G welding

Okay so I finished the box I made for the oxyacetylene part of the class, then we moved on to M.I.G(metal inert gas) welding, which apparently can only be classified as M.I.G if the gas that's used is argon or another inert gas, we used a mixture of argon and co2 which technically makes it G.M.A.W(gas metal arc welding) because co2 is and active gas, which means you get trace amounts of carbon in your weld. ( but on the curriculum sheet it says M.I.G just thought I'd be a nerd and correct it.)

so I'll post the pictures of the box I made and the weird scrap metal ''sculpture'' I did in today's G.M.A.W class. After only a weeks worth of welding practice I think I did pretty good.

Welding

I started welding yesterday. Were doing oxyacetylene welding and cutting, we get to make a hinge box at the end of the week. So far I have learned how to do lap joints, edge joints, but joints, and  T joints.  I will post pictures soon.  I don’t know if we get to do MIG welding but I hope so, its suppose to be more fun then acetylene and used more often. I am finding oxyacetylene welding more challenging and way more precise than I expected, but it is still fun, don’t know if I’d want to do it as a job though…

auto mechanics and auto collision

We got our first set of coveralls for auto mechanics as well as auto collision. I had an awesome time in both classe,s each class what about a week long. I got great teacher names ''Vinny'' for auto mechanics, we took off all the tires by hand using a breaker bar, took off the breaks , checked the break pads, and filed the break rotors, we unfortunately ran out of time to change the power steering fluid on the stinking Lincoln.

I spent the next couple of days learning about auto collision repair, I got to try puling a few dents from a door panel, as well as got to dent and repair a small sheet of metal as well as paint it after. I got to try my hand at masking flames on my newly repaired panel, painting in the spray booth was fun.

Hello

So I had just recently started a blog about my time at a trades school, on a different site but due to it's constant crashing I have decided to move it all here. Hopefully I will be able to move all the posts over quickly.
As of last month I started a general trades course at bcit, I thought it would be fun to write about my time in trades and post all of the projects I make.