S1 Design & Technology

Good to Be Wood

Hey my name is Daniel Reidy and I am here to tell you about the eco friendly boats we are making right now in tech. In tech we have been designing these boats for a few periods now and so far it is going well. We are working in groups. Some of the groups names are the Wood Chucks, Woody The Woodpecker And Pyjamas the name pyjamas came from the first initial of the people in the groups names. Our first task was to make the a mind map for each group looking at all the different design factors.

Today we were talking about “form over function” which one was more important? They way something looked or the way something worked? My own opinion was the function was more important because you can’t sell something to someone that only looks good then doesn’t work.

By Daniel Reidy 

(I Am Brilliant) 

Tools We Used

(Hover over each picture to read a description of the process)

1st year were given the design brief to create a wooden shelf. To begin, we had to make the legs for our shelf go at an angle. The tool we used was a smoothing plane. Next, we had to mark our main part of wood. (245mm, by a 5mm gap and 100mm.) We used the tenon or a copping saw to cut the wood in half. (Not two equal halves!) We then had to put our backs into sanding the wood down. We could use the sander machine or do it ourself. After sanding it to the smoothiest point, we used the smoothing plane again to make the piece of wood (which will be nailed into the main body of the wood) and again cut it at a slight angle.

By Peter

Plane Sailing

We started to mark out the base of the wooden rack.Then we clamped our base into the vice. After that we used a plane, a plane is a tool used for taking small layers of wood off quicly and smoothly. It has two handles one at the back and one at the front, if you are right-handed you would put our right hand at the back and your left hand at the back. If you are left-handed you would put your left hand at the back and your right hand at the front. As you slide the plane along you notice that small curly peices of wood appears, these are not sharp or warm. In St.Luke’s we all make sure that all of the pupils are safe and cannot be harmed when in the workshop.

By Amy

softwood and hardwood

Softwood trees are my favourite type of trees. Softwood’s are mainly long and thin trunks but are not always. An example for softwood is scotish pine. Hardwood tress are better wood for the likes of building a door or a house like they do in Scandinavia. An example of a hardwood tree is a horse chesnut tree which is a famous type of tree. Why. Because that’s where conkers come from.

Conor