Personal Project

Assignment: Choose a project to work on during Challenge class and at home. The project must be finished on or before it is due: the last day before finals week. This is for part of the final grade in Challenge Class.

Guidelines:

-You may work in groups

-You must fund it; on your own, or with “fund raising”

-You must be able to work on it during Challenge Class

-It must be legal (obviously)

-You are responsible to find the equipment needed

Requirements:

To get a passing grade, you must:

• Type a proposal for what you will do onto the Challenge Blog

• Choose a project that is challenging for you.

• Show effective problem solving skills

• Show effective group/people skills

• Present what you have done, and what you learned in some way to the instructor and the class

Some Suggestions:

- Put on a community breakfast with food from Shop n’ Save; challenge yourself to get more than 15 people to attend

- Build a bike

- Build something simple with wood

- Make your own blog

- Design a skate board logo, deck, or sticker

- Design a Alt Wheels sticker and get it made

- Make a Challenge Class ’08 yearbook

The Search for the Right Paint Goes On

It is down to the wire for the boat building; this next week it will be time for boat using.

We need a final protective coating for the boats, something that will protect against UV from the sun and give it a nice finished look.

I have been researching types of paint outside of class.


We need something that:

• will stick to epoxy
• is environmentally friendly
• will protect the boat
• will not flake off when stressed
  
• is as cheap as we can get

Oil based house primer paint- Cheap, but has many volatile chemicals during painting and drying. The jury is still out on how it effects the environment when dry. some states have banned the sale of oil-based paints in gallon sized containers and up because of environmental problems.

Acrylic latex porch and floor paint- still cheap, less volatile chemicals, may not stick as well to epoxy, may not be a durable.

I think we should test the latex paint, that way we can paint it on with out having to use a respirator mask. It will impact the environment less as well.

What does everyone else think?

Go Get Some Fiber

WE had to cover the kayaks with fiber glass tape. The way we did it is we put epoxy on the bottom and then put the fiber glass tape over the epoxy and then put epoxy over the fiber glass tape. The way we spread it on the kayak is we used a brush. Thats what we used yesterday.

Fiber Glass The Seams

We glued the fiber glass tape over the seams to the sides of the boat. We also put epoxy over it and then we put the fiber glass on the boat as well. We used regular epoxy to "paint" the fiber glass to the boat. It is called painting the weave. It all is a pain in the butt and it's really hot out when we do the work outside, it kinda sucks.

New Blogging Style, Faster Updates

The blog has grown. Now that we have an up-to-date blog with a good body of information, we can start telling people to look us up on the internet.

To stay current with what we do in class and on our kayak project, I would like to try a new posting style. Everyday someone will post an entry on what has happened since the last post. Only one person has to post on their assigned day.

This entry should be a personal reflection. It should be in your own voice and should contain your own personal experience and thoughts.

For Example:
5/10/08
Buying Paint
I had to find out what kind of paint we can use for the outside of the kayaks. It needs to be durable and not harmful to the environment. The paint also must protect the epoxy from the harmful effects of sunlight. So far I know that oil based paint will stick the best to the epoxy, but we don't know if it is still harmful to the environment after it is dry. Things are getting down to the wire; I hope we stay on schedule.
---Ryan

This "personal reflection" style of post is what many people use on their blog.

Monday- Shawn
Tues- Mike
Wed- James
Thurs- andy
Fri- Adam

(If someone is absent the next person in the order posts and the absent person switches with them. )

Seeling the Inside and Tracing the top

We just got finished sealing the inside of the boat. We seeled it with oil based primer. We painted the whole inside of the boat with the primer. It acts like a water sealent so that way no water gets inside.
Now we are in the process of tracing the top of the boat. That's the easy part. Put a large piece of luan plywood across the top of the boat and trace it. Then you would cut it out and then glue it and even use nails to make sure that it is sturdy.

Nailing the Bottom

Once you have the bottom cut out to its correct shape you first you spread the glue on the chinelog. The glue we used was Titebond III Ultimate Wood Glue. This is a good choice because it is waterproof. You place the bottom of the kayak on the chinelog. Then you nail the perimeter of the boat to the whole chinelog.