week 3

I spent this week reading a book that is all about wood working. It had a lot of useful information! for example it mentions how wood is sort of alive, meaning that with the moisture content in the air, wood expands and contracts. So, when making something out of wood one must keep that in mind. This week i also talked to my dad about how i would go about making a coffee table, what joints to use where, how to connect the legs to the top, etc. My biggest question was how to connect the legs to the top. He said that he has a bunch of these brackets that are in the shape of a Z. you cut a slit in the leg for the bottom part of the bracket to slide into and the top part of the bracket gets screwed into the underside of the table top. these brackets are really cool because since the bottom part just fits into the slit in the leg, it allows it to expand and contract without damaging the piece! Overall it was a pretty productive week, I have robotics 6 days a week and I'm the president so when I'm there I can't really work on this project because the competition is coming up so I'm expected to be working on the robot. I do have wood working tools at home, table saw, band saw, etc however, if I open the garage door to let the saw dust out I'll freeze to death and if i leave it shut I'll cover me, my dad's, and my mom's Harleys in saw dust and they would have none of that! So until the competition is over (march 22) I plan on just doing research which isn't so bad because it's gonna be good for me to know a lot about woodworking before just jumping right into it!