Kai’s senior project

  Senior project day 13.  The last day of senior project, I can’t believe it has gone by this fast. Today was a good day's worth of work. I started at 8 in the morning, trying to finish gluing down the landing strip before my mentor showed up, so all we would have left would be shaping and gluing down the top panel.   the panel was a little tricky to glue down, but it went down nice.  After gluing the panel down, I was finished with the board for the day. Tomorrow I will need to do a little shaping, but it should all be down by tomorrow. hours: 6 total hours: 76

  Senior project day 12. One more day left to work on my board. Today was a productive day on my board. I spent the from 9 to 4 today working on speed railing and setting up a couple of other things. At 4, I went to my baseball BBQ, the last sports commitment I probably will ever have. After the BBQ, I went home and spent another couple of hours working on the board. After 11 hours of work, I can say that I'm in a good spot to get the board shaped and almost done by tomorrow. hours: 11 total hours: 70

Senior project day 11. I can’t believe that I am working on my project on a Sunday, but I'm afraid that this is what has to be done to finish the board in time. Today was a jam-packed day. I spent the morning adjusting the nose and tail blocking to fit the frame properly. After that tedious work, I got the nose and tail blocking set and in place. After that, I proceed to put in the chine. The chine is a small strip of wood that runs down the board to give the board more strength. Prepping and setting the chine was a long process, but after a little bit, I had the chine glued in, and all the glue whipped away. After the chine was put in, I proceeded to glue in the starter stip, which was pretty much the same process with this chine but a different wood shape. When everything was glued together, I decided to call it a day. Hours: 10 Total Hours: 58.5

This week went pretty well with building my surfboard. I had a couple of hiccups along the way, but I think I got the majority of them solved and out of the way. I believe that by midday Wednesday, I will have a finished board that just needs to be coated with epoxy and fiberglass. Going into this project, I didn’t think it would be as time-consuming as it was.  This week, I felt that I got a  bunch done on the board. I got the frame glued onto the bottom panel and the chine set up and ready to go for tomorrow. Back in week one, I made a big mistake that I thought I had fixed, but it turns out that I didn’t fix the issue. The issue was that I cut the bottom board too narrow in a couple of spots, making it hard to put nose and tail blockings in. Without that small and easily avoidable mistake, I could probably be at a point where the board would be exposed by Wednesday. Over the last two days, I have spent most of my time trying to correct that mistake, and I believe that I hav...

Day 10 of senior project. Today was a pretty tedious day of work. I spent my day making tail and nose blocking for the surfboard. Pretty much the tail and nose blockings are wooden blocks shaped to be the nose and tail of the board. After 5 hours of drawing, cutting, and sanding, I had finished all 4 of the nose and tail blockings. I had just enough time to glue down the blocking before going to the last day of baseball practice. Practice today was working at the Andover middle school and teaching some kids how to play baseball.  Hours:5 total: 48.5

  Day 9 of senior project. Today wasn’t a productive day at all. The majority of my day was spent cleaning glue and re-shaping the board. Re-shaping the board took me a while because I had to do it by hand with a draw knife. A jig saw wouldn’t be accurate enough and sander way too slow. After I finished cleaning up excess glue, it was 2:30, and it was time to leave and go to baseball practice. Baseball practice today was a bunch of fun we ended up playing basketball for the whole practice. After practice, I went to the play, which was better than expected. hour 5 total:43.5

  Day 8 of senior project. Today went pretty well. Today started off with me reading the manual about how to make the rails. After doing the reading, I proceeded to add more glue onto the board to help secure the frame to the bottom panel. Tomorrow I will take off the strongbacks. I didn't get a lot of hours on the board today due to my baseball game, which turned out pretty well.  I’m trying to stay on track to finish the board by Wednesday, but It might take a couple of more 10-hour days. Tomorrow should be a pretty productive day. hours: 3 total hours:38

  Day 7 of senior project.  Today was a really effective day of work. I started today's work by gluing small strips of wood to the keel to help make it straight. After that, I spent a couple of hours setting up strongbacks to put over the ribs to help seal everything together when I glued up the whole board. When I finished creating the strongbacks, I headed off to baseball. After baseball, I headed back home to glue up the frame. I spent from 7:30 at night to 1 in the morning gluing the board up and attaching the strong backs hours: 10.5 total hours: 35.5

  Day 6 of senior project. It's hard to believe that a week has already passed. This weekend was nice, I loved not having to worry about homework and I could actually have a weekend. Today I spent over 7 hours on my senior project. The first portion of the day I spent cutting the general shape and setting up and sanding the inner frame. By the time all of that was done it was 2:30 and a raced to baseball. Baseball was a short practice due to the thunder and lightning and ended at 4:15. After baseball, I raced home to meet with my mentor about the next couple of steps in making the surfboard. Hours: 7 total: 25

This week went pretty well for me. I think I learned a lot and got the majority of the slow, tedious things out of the way. Well, I shouldn’t say that because there are many repetitive and somewhat monotonous things that come with building a surfboard. However, there is always something to say when you build something yourself. On paper, it looks like I haven't gotten a lot done, but there was a bunch of prep work I wasn’t expecting to do. Such as, I had to go out a couple times to buy equipment that I thought I had, and I also had to spend a bunch of time reading the manual, which I didn’t anticipate. A couple of other things that set me back were taking the AP calculus test on Monday and getting pretty sick on Wednesday, which almost halted all work on my board. After this week, I think I should be in good shape to get the board done by the end of senior project. This week I haven't learned a lot because most of the woodworking steps that have been done were all things th...

  Day 5 of senior project. I'm still a little sick but definitely better. Today was also a pretty productive day. I started my day off at nine by doing the same thing as I did yesterday, reading the manual. After reading the manual, I decided not to do the next couple of steps in the book but instead made the top panel which is the same thing I did yesterday.  After creating the top board, I took the frame pieces out of the wood they were cut out from.  When I finished up with that, it was about time to leave for baseball. Tonight was senior night. Unfortunately, we didn’t come out with the win, but it was a hard-fought game. Hours: 5 Total hour: 18

  Day 4 of senior project. I'm feeling a lot better today. Hopefully, by tomorrow I will feel up to going to baseball. Today was probably the most productive day I have had for my board.  The morning started as usual with me reading the manual for the upcoming day's work. After that, I went out and bought some pipe clamps because on today's agenda was to glue the bottom of the board together. After buying the pipe clamps, I taped all the seems up to prevent the glue from leaking onto the floor and proceeded to glue up all the joints. By the time I was done gluing the joint up, it was 4 o’clock, and I needed to let the glue set for an hour, so I called the day there. Hours: 5 Total hours: 13

  Third day of senior project. Today wasn’t the best day. Today I woke up a little under the weather. I wasn’t feeling healthy enough to do work on my surfboard so I spent the majority of the day watching videos of the process of building a surfboard and taking inventory of what I needed to buy. By the time 12 o’clock rolled around I wasn't feeling any better and ended up missing my baseball game. I watched the game on Tilton’s live stream and we actually won for once. Hopefully, by tomorrow I will feel up to work on my board and get the materials I am missing hour: 3 total hours 8

 The second day of senior projects. Today went pretty well.  I actually got started on my senior project.  In order to make up for lost time, I decided to get to work around 8 am. I spent the 4 hours cleaning out my garage since this will be the place I will be working in for the rest of the senior project. After cleaning up the garage I set up my table and laid plastic on the floor to protect the concrete from any glue.  When that was all done, I at last opened up the surfboard kit.  Two days into the senior project and I'm just opening the box.  All the content inside was what I was expecting, however, I didn't expect the building manual to be so long. I didn't have much time to look everything over before having to go to baseball practice. Hour:5 Total hours: 5

Today was the first day all year that I made it to breakfast.  That wasn’t by choice though. I had to wake up early in order to make it to my AP Calculus exam. Wasn’t what I was hoping to be doing on my first day of senior projects. After 2 and a half hours of grueling math, I finally finished my last commitment to high school classes. The rest of the day I spent waiting around for 3:15 to head to baseball practice. ( there wasn’t enough time after the exam to go home and back.)  After one whole day of senior projects, I didn’t get a whole lot done but in the upcoming days, I am planning on putting in a couple extra hours in order to compensate for the hours missed today. Hours: 0 Total Hours: 0