fandomhigh | Shop, Tuesday, period 3

Entry tags:

shop

Shop, Tuesday, period 3

"Great job on those birdhouses last week," Eliot said at the top of class.. "I saw some real creativity in action, both in design and decoration. Y'all should be proud of yourselves." He was proud of all of you. You could even tell. He didn't look like he wanted to glare at or kill anything right now! "By now you should be gettin' a decent grasp on three-dimensional construction, how to think about your project having height, width, and depth. Or to put it another way, a top, bottom, and sides. And hopefully, you got a feel for some of those power tools, and how quickly they can tear into a piece of wood. And most important, I hope you all had some fun with it." Eliot thought power tools were great fun, personally. All that roaring and ripping and raw power. It was right up his alley.

"So with wood, you're mostly looking at shaping it by taking pieces away. You cut and sand and on occasion, burn." Here he looked for Hyacinthe to give the kid a nod. "Sure, you can fit pieces of it together, but once you cut, that's always gonna be two pieces of wood attached together. You're not gonna be able to make them one solid piece of wood again. Not with any tech where I'm from, anyway." This time a look for Tali, who for all he knew might come from a world where tech had found a way to melt or weld wood pieces together. "Wood is also generally pretty inflexible. It can bend, but not very far before it breaks. Today we're going to tackle a material that tends to be a bit more malleable: metal. Depending on the type of metal and its melting point, you can twist, wrench, and hammer metal into just about any kind of shape you can imagine. I'm going to give you a couple options for your project today, some of which require using torches and soldering techniques, some of which can be done with tin snips and a little bit of sandpaper. Whichever one you pick, remember our safety rules. I don't want to see anyone working without the right eye and hand protection. But first, let me show you your tools."

He led the class through a demonstration on using an acetylene torch for welding, cutting, and soldering, then covered the basics of using angle and die grinders, then showed some electroetching techniques by the fume hood. He finished off by pointing out the array of snips, hacksaws, and pliers for hand-shaping. Then he led the way over to a garage door that hadn't been in the classroom the prior weeks, opening it up to reveal a decent sized junkyard.

"Here's where you'll be getting your materials. Great thing about metal is how easy it is to repurpose it. Your projects today might use copper piping, tin cans, steel nuts, or maybe even an old table leg or piece of aluminum siding. Whatever it is, it ain't gonna look the same by the end of class. And really, that's the joy of makin' something yourself. So check out the project instructions on the work tables, pick one out, and get crackin'. I wanna see sparks flyin' up in here, people. Let's make some noise."

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Metal as fuck

Daphne Blake

Dante

Hyacinthe

Isabela

Blue Sargent

Thorin

Ada Miller

Ringo Noyamano

Jalian d'Arsennette

It involves a fume hood this time. Fun!

Daphne was taking notes as she considered what project she wanted to work on.

And, you know, scavenging.

Project options:
Tin flower
Copper cup
Signet ring
Decorative sword

Anyone going for the sword will get an additional disclaimer that it's decorative only. And then a lecture on the tensile strength and balance needed for a really good fighting sword and how they don't have time to go into proper forging processes in this class but it's a good introduction to the basic shape and structure in case anyone decides that they'd be interested in learning to forge in the future. . . .

What? Eliot has Opinions about swords.

No one back home would be too surprised -- okay, maybe her parents and Fred would be shocked -- to see that Daphne had decided to take up the decorative sword project.

"... You call that a sword?" Dante said, eyeing the pictures, because he had Opinions of that, too. (It came with having one grafted to your being.)

He wound up gravitating towards the cup thing instead, because it seemed like the most useful out of all of them.

Ringo rolled her eyes. "What? You think you can make a better one?"

Not, you know, pull one out from wherever Dante kept Rebellion, but actually make one.

Dante pulled a weird face in her general direction. "No, I've just seen better swords," he said. "Shitting hell, Ringo."

"Well, there's no need to be mean to people who want to try to make one, then," she pointed out with a shrug. Because that was totally Dante: a big meanie-head.

"I'm not," Dante said, rolling his eyes at her. "I'm just saying the sword looks boring."

"I don't know." Ringo shrugged. "I mean, you get to use some of the big machines," you know, the ones that sent explosions of sparks everywhere, "and that seems kinda cool."

Dante shrugged. "You think Spencer would let us make something useful with those?" he said. "An axe or something."

Ringo hummed. "Probably? I mean, sure, he's, like, pretty big on safety, but if he's gonna trust us with those torch thingies, I imagine he'd figure you can handle an axe?"

Maybe?

She grinned at Dante. "Why, though? Got some trees you need to chop down or something?"

Dante rolled his eyes at her good-naturedly, and smirked. "Not that kinda axe, Ringo."

"Huh?" Ringo blinked. "What other kind of axe is there?"

Oh, Ringo.

"Guitar axe, war axe..."

Dante... would go for either.

"A guitar axe?" Ringo looked at Dante doubtfully. Was he just making that up?

"Yep," said Dante, grinning and not explaining further because he knew it'd piss Ringo off.

It was working, at least if Ringo's scowl was anything to go by. "How does that even work? Like, chopping down trees with sound waves?"

"Your problem's thinking all axes are made for trees," Dante said, smirking.

"Well, sure, I guess if you could chop down a tree you could cut other things, too. But I still don't see how a guitar axe even makes sense." She frowned. "Unless some people think you need a special axe to cut a guitar?"

"I'm thinkin' you need a date with Google," Dante said.

Because of course he wouldn't tell her.

"Or you could just tell me what you're talking about," Ringo snapped.

Not that she really expected him to. Because he was a brat.

This coming from Ringo.

"Don't you have a sword to make?" Dante sing-songed.

Ringo rolled her eyes. "I'm totally not making a sword."

She hadn't actually decided what to make, but while a sword had been an option earlier, after this conversation she totally wasn't going to make one. So, you know, take that, Dante.

Hyacinthe had little interest in swords, decorative or not, and the idea of him having a signet ring just made him laugh. So he settled down to make a metal flower; aiming to make a cereus flower to send to Phèdre as a jest.

Thorin gave all the options such a look. Decorative swords? Really? Was that a thing Men needed to own?

In the end he chose to do the signet ring as a challenge to himself. Which would be why it intricate details carefully worked into it.

And only a little bedazzling. Did he just carry the occasional semiprecious stone with him in case he needed to do some smithing? It was a mystery!

What was Ada gonna do with a tin flower or a signet ring? She was tempted to try and make an imitation of Dante's sword for a moment, just to be a troll, but started in on the cup instead. At least that was useful, and not just a bit of clutter.

Ringo went back and forth on what to try to make. She'd worked with metal, sort of, in the past, but that was mostly fiddling with small mechanical bits. Not, you know, shaping the metal itself other than a little bit of work with small wires and things.

So she was chewing on her lower lip, going back and forth on what she should pick to start off with.

Wonder at the fact that it's week three and he's already letting you etch metal and make swords.

And then get the sword lecture again.

I don't get to use my dremel often enough, either. I miss living in a place with a basement and a garage.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Shop, Tuesday, period 3

Sign in

Re: Sign in

Re: Sign in

Re: Sign in

Re: Sign in

Re: Sign in

Re: Sign in

Re: Sign in

Re: Sign in

Re: Sign in

Listen to the lecture

Re: Listen to the lecture

Get pounding and grinding

Re: Get pounding and grinding

Re: Get pounding and grinding

Re: Get pounding and grinding

Re: Get pounding and grinding

Re: Get pounding and grinding

Re: Get pounding and grinding

Re: Get pounding and grinding

Re: Get pounding and grinding

Re: Get pounding and grinding

Re: Get pounding and grinding

Re: Get pounding and grinding

Re: Get pounding and grinding

Re: Get pounding and grinding

Re: Get pounding and grinding

Re: Get pounding and grinding

Re: Get pounding and grinding

Re: Get pounding and grinding

Re: Get pounding and grinding

Re: Get pounding and grinding

Re: Get pounding and grinding

Re: Get pounding and grinding

Re: Get pounding and grinding

Re: Get pounding and grinding

Re: Get pounding and grinding

Re: Get pounding and grinding

Talk to Eliot

OOC