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.