Amaya Blackstone (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
special_rabbit) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
fandomhigh2019-03-06 05:43 am
special_rabbit) wrote in fandomhigh2019-03-06 05:43 am
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Shop Class; Wednesday, Third Period [03/06].
As crazy as it may have seemed, Amaya may have sort of overworked herself a little between trying to get a project done too quickly and being interrupted on account of a door. So she hadn't had as much time as she would have liked to have spent on planning something a little new and interesting for the class today, but that was fine, since she had plenty of things from last semester to dredge back up again.
"Welcome back, everyone," she greeted the class with a nod, "today's project is something a little more lighthearted and fun, but it's involved and I think you'll like it. Last semester, we managed to do these without me hearing about it being confiscated by any of your other teachers, too, so let's keep that trend going. Today, we're going to make some grappling guns."
"Obviously," Amaya chuckled a little as she gestured toward the materials, "this isn't going to be the most functional grappling hook; it's not likely to hold a lot of weight, so don't go trying to climb up the side of the school with it or nothing, this is more for fun than function.
"We're going to start with these metal coat hangers and a dowel," she continued, demonstrating as she explained so they could follow along. "We want to cut our dowel to about a foot long, and we want to straighten out the hanger, so cut it off at the neck, and then finagle it all nice and straight. And now that it's straight, we're going to bend it all up again, so that we've got ourselves three prong, three's a good number for grabbing onto things. Use your pliers to help get nice bends, you'll want to start with a small section that'll connect to the shaft, and then bend the hook shapes from there.
"Now what we have should look a bit like a propeller, but it's not very sturdy, so we're just going to use this thin bailing wire to wrap around the hook, reinforcing it, and then we can bend the ends to the shape of the hooks we want. If you want a stronger hook, you can just add more hanger wire, more hanger wire, layering it up, but for the class today, we'll just be doing the one hanger.
"Let's cut our dowel to the right length, then sand the end to a tapered point, which will allow us to fit the dowel between the wires of the hook, and then we can bend the wire around the dowel and reinforce it with more bailing wire and maybe a little tightly wound tape. And then some electrical tape while we're at it around the end, not only to secure it, but also to keep the wire from getting too pokey when you're using it.
"That's it for the hook! Let's move onto the launcher! We're working with some PVC pipe for this, to make it nice and lightweight and easy, and, I'm not going to lie, PVC pipes are pretty amazing, I've got to say. Let's grab some saws and cut some of this up. First, we'll need a piece about three inches from our half-inch wide pipe. Then, from the three-quarter inch pipe, we'll want a piece about eighteen inches long. The small one, which is what's going to be used as a guide to keep the hook's aim steady, is going to be attached near the end of the long one. Take a second to sand down the sides of the pipes you're going to be putting together; it just fits nicer if they're flat rather than rounded, and who doesn't like using a sander, anyway? A little PVC glue," glues for everything! What a time to be alive!, "a little duct tape, and onto the next step!
"Surgical tubing! Nice and stretchy like a big, sturdy rubber band! Cut off about a foot, loop it around the small piece, so that the two ends are flanking the end of the large piece, like this, and we'll just use a zip tie around the pipe and the ends of the tubing to secure it into place, like this."
Once it was in place, she pulled on the tube to show them how it stretched, and then slipped the grappling hook in and gave it a little launch of demonstration. "See? That there's the basic for it all, but we're going to take it to the next level. This next part's going to involve a bit more doing; we're essentially going to create a clothespin-like device that'll allow us to hold back the rubber before launching, but a simple clothespin wouldn't be strong enough, so we've got to make...basically...a bigger clothespin. I've already cut a few out if you'd like to skip the buzzsaw today, but for the rest of you, I've got some blocks of wood already marked out, just go ahead and cut those out and drill a hole where marked for the hinge point, and then saw out a notch in your dowel to fit into the piece."
As they finished up, Amaya instructed them to drill a hole into the PVC as well, so that they can use another piece of hanger wire to attach the release mechanism to the pipe. "Twist that wire around tightly, trim off the excess, and we should be able to test the trigger now!"
Which, of course, she did, sending the hook flying to satisfying results.
"Pretty good launch, really; once we attach a cord to it, that's going to create a little more friction and drag, so don't expect it to go so far once we do that, but then it's not really a grappling hook, is it, more of just a launching hook. We've got some nylon string for that, and we want that string to be able to spool out, so we're going to add a spool, but we need more frame and a shoulder rest to make it easier to use before we can do that, and that's where all these other pipes come in. Add a T-section, a small piece for a handle, and a bend here, another piece about ten inches, and that's where we can attach the spool, see? One more piece on the other end of the T-section that we can use to back up against our shoulder, another elbow, giving it a nice rounded edge. Now, the spool, we want that to be removable, so we're drilling another hole in both the spool and the pipe, and we'll use a nail when we attach it, making it easy to take off and put back on again.
"Measure out some of the string, about thirty to thirty five feet, and attach one end to the hook, and the other end attaches to the spool. Keep that in place with our good friend electrical tape, and then drill another hole in the spool just wide enough to fit the string through, then add a knot and flatten it down with some tape it keep in in place. Now, you're more than likely going to have to wind your thread around the spool, keeping it as close and even as you can, but we have power tools, so we might as well use them, right? Go ahead and use one of those bad boys to wind your string up around the spool, like so."
True, Amaya loved her traditional methods, but any excuse to use a power drill was a good excuse for her, those things were amazing.
"There's only three things we really need to do now before we're finished. Our trigger needs to be reinforced with some rubber hose so that it'll stay firmly down against the pipe, but we'll want to reinforce our tubing with some glue and, if you want to decorate it, go ahead and take some time to paint 'er up before we add that last piece. Then tie on that last piece of tubing with some zip wire, and you should be ready to launch! There's plenty of space here in the shop to test it out, but if anyone wants to take a field trip outside, we can do that, too."
"Welcome back, everyone," she greeted the class with a nod, "today's project is something a little more lighthearted and fun, but it's involved and I think you'll like it. Last semester, we managed to do these without me hearing about it being confiscated by any of your other teachers, too, so let's keep that trend going. Today, we're going to make some grappling guns."
"Obviously," Amaya chuckled a little as she gestured toward the materials, "this isn't going to be the most functional grappling hook; it's not likely to hold a lot of weight, so don't go trying to climb up the side of the school with it or nothing, this is more for fun than function.
"We're going to start with these metal coat hangers and a dowel," she continued, demonstrating as she explained so they could follow along. "We want to cut our dowel to about a foot long, and we want to straighten out the hanger, so cut it off at the neck, and then finagle it all nice and straight. And now that it's straight, we're going to bend it all up again, so that we've got ourselves three prong, three's a good number for grabbing onto things. Use your pliers to help get nice bends, you'll want to start with a small section that'll connect to the shaft, and then bend the hook shapes from there.
"Now what we have should look a bit like a propeller, but it's not very sturdy, so we're just going to use this thin bailing wire to wrap around the hook, reinforcing it, and then we can bend the ends to the shape of the hooks we want. If you want a stronger hook, you can just add more hanger wire, more hanger wire, layering it up, but for the class today, we'll just be doing the one hanger.
"Let's cut our dowel to the right length, then sand the end to a tapered point, which will allow us to fit the dowel between the wires of the hook, and then we can bend the wire around the dowel and reinforce it with more bailing wire and maybe a little tightly wound tape. And then some electrical tape while we're at it around the end, not only to secure it, but also to keep the wire from getting too pokey when you're using it.
"That's it for the hook! Let's move onto the launcher! We're working with some PVC pipe for this, to make it nice and lightweight and easy, and, I'm not going to lie, PVC pipes are pretty amazing, I've got to say. Let's grab some saws and cut some of this up. First, we'll need a piece about three inches from our half-inch wide pipe. Then, from the three-quarter inch pipe, we'll want a piece about eighteen inches long. The small one, which is what's going to be used as a guide to keep the hook's aim steady, is going to be attached near the end of the long one. Take a second to sand down the sides of the pipes you're going to be putting together; it just fits nicer if they're flat rather than rounded, and who doesn't like using a sander, anyway? A little PVC glue," glues for everything! What a time to be alive!, "a little duct tape, and onto the next step!
"Surgical tubing! Nice and stretchy like a big, sturdy rubber band! Cut off about a foot, loop it around the small piece, so that the two ends are flanking the end of the large piece, like this, and we'll just use a zip tie around the pipe and the ends of the tubing to secure it into place, like this."
Once it was in place, she pulled on the tube to show them how it stretched, and then slipped the grappling hook in and gave it a little launch of demonstration. "See? That there's the basic for it all, but we're going to take it to the next level. This next part's going to involve a bit more doing; we're essentially going to create a clothespin-like device that'll allow us to hold back the rubber before launching, but a simple clothespin wouldn't be strong enough, so we've got to make...basically...a bigger clothespin. I've already cut a few out if you'd like to skip the buzzsaw today, but for the rest of you, I've got some blocks of wood already marked out, just go ahead and cut those out and drill a hole where marked for the hinge point, and then saw out a notch in your dowel to fit into the piece."
As they finished up, Amaya instructed them to drill a hole into the PVC as well, so that they can use another piece of hanger wire to attach the release mechanism to the pipe. "Twist that wire around tightly, trim off the excess, and we should be able to test the trigger now!"
Which, of course, she did, sending the hook flying to satisfying results.
"Pretty good launch, really; once we attach a cord to it, that's going to create a little more friction and drag, so don't expect it to go so far once we do that, but then it's not really a grappling hook, is it, more of just a launching hook. We've got some nylon string for that, and we want that string to be able to spool out, so we're going to add a spool, but we need more frame and a shoulder rest to make it easier to use before we can do that, and that's where all these other pipes come in. Add a T-section, a small piece for a handle, and a bend here, another piece about ten inches, and that's where we can attach the spool, see? One more piece on the other end of the T-section that we can use to back up against our shoulder, another elbow, giving it a nice rounded edge. Now, the spool, we want that to be removable, so we're drilling another hole in both the spool and the pipe, and we'll use a nail when we attach it, making it easy to take off and put back on again.
"Measure out some of the string, about thirty to thirty five feet, and attach one end to the hook, and the other end attaches to the spool. Keep that in place with our good friend electrical tape, and then drill another hole in the spool just wide enough to fit the string through, then add a knot and flatten it down with some tape it keep in in place. Now, you're more than likely going to have to wind your thread around the spool, keeping it as close and even as you can, but we have power tools, so we might as well use them, right? Go ahead and use one of those bad boys to wind your string up around the spool, like so."
True, Amaya loved her traditional methods, but any excuse to use a power drill was a good excuse for her, those things were amazing.
"There's only three things we really need to do now before we're finished. Our trigger needs to be reinforced with some rubber hose so that it'll stay firmly down against the pipe, but we'll want to reinforce our tubing with some glue and, if you want to decorate it, go ahead and take some time to paint 'er up before we add that last piece. Then tie on that last piece of tubing with some zip wire, and you should be ready to launch! There's plenty of space here in the shop to test it out, but if anyone wants to take a field trip outside, we can do that, too."
Sign In - Shop Class, 03/06.
Listen to the Lecture/Class Activity - Shop Class, 03/06.
Test your Grappling Hooks! - Shop Class, 03/06.
Talk to Amaya - Shop Class, 03/06.
Talk to the TA - Shop Class, 03/06.
OOC - Shop Class, 03/06.
Re: Sign In - Shop Class, 03/06.
Re: Listen to the Lecture/Class Activity - Shop Class, 03/06.
... Not that they'd have to try hard. He didn't have many practical uses for even one grappling hook, nevermind two.
Re: Talk to the TA - Shop Class, 03/06.