Woodwork

The machines and how to use them to make a tool for pottery throwing.

Pillar drills are used in a downwards motion the create holes in wood.

How to use;

• Turn on the extractor fan and place the piece of wood under the drill piece and align to where you’d like to make the hole.
• Use guard to cover/protect face from any pieces of wood that might go flying.
• Move drill piece closer to the wood and turn on machine.
• Press firmly down on the wood to keep it in place and gently lower the drill bit onto the wood- continue lowering until it goes all the way through the wood.
• Keep the machine going and slowly raise the drill out of the wood.
• Turn off the machine and extractor fan.

Bandsaws are used to cut shapes out of wood, for this tool we used the straight line from the cut of wood and a small curve to create a triangle like shape.

How to use;

• Turn on the extractor fan and adjust the guide height of the machine so that it’s just above the wood.
• Turn on the machine.
• Keep fingers away from the blade and push the piece of wood towards the blade to cute it to shape.
• Use wooden sticks to push the wood through instead of using fingers when it becomes too close to the blade.
• Slowly push the last bit of wood through so that it doesn’t split.
• Turn off the machine and extractor fan, ensure the blades stopped moving before clearing any wood cut offs.

Disk sanders are used to sand down the wood and create a smoother shape. We used this tool to sand the edge of the wooden shape, then angled it to create a smoother curve around the edges.

How to use;

• Turn on the machine and extractor fan.
• Keep the wood to the left hand side so that it doesn’t try to fly off.
• Push the wood against the sander the shape.
• Angle the wood against it to help create a curve.
• Turn off the machine and extractor fan.
• Use sandpaper to further sand the wood piece to shape.

Finally we use sandpaper, starting with a rough grain and grandually moving to a smoother one to finish off the tool and make the edges nice and smooth!

Mini Bandsaws are just small versions of the bandsaw. After using one one a small piece of wood I found it slightlier easier and lighter to use than the bandsaw, however this could be a drawback if using a larger or thicker piece of wood.

How to use;

• Turn on the extractor fan and machine and adjust the guide height to just above the wood.
• Same principle (move the wood around the blade to create/cut out shapes).
• Still being super careful of fingers.
• Turn off the machine and extractor fan.