On Monday morning we began working on the details of our proposed entrance for Perry Lakes Park. Even though our design is radically simple, the decisions we make for connection pieces and anchor materials will determine whether or not the project will be successful. We spent the day researching various materials and visiting Rural Studio projects to see in person how students have approached similar problems in the past.

We made a trip to Greensboro’s Alabama Power office on Tuesday morning. We met with Don Ballard to discuss the best ways to suspend 100 feet of cable 20 feet in the air. After our lengthy conversation, Don suggested that we take a trip to the area headquarters in Demopolis, AL to see if they had any scrap supplies that we could play around with in order to get a feel for the materials. We took his advice and drove the dually to Demopolis to meet with the head honcho, Corey Sweeney. Not only was our trip beneficial, but we unexpectedly received ALL of the hardware we needed for the entrance sign FOR FREE. Mr. Sweeney donated the exact materials that his road crews use to hang power lines, including approximately 1600 feet of cable, 2 - 30 ft power poles, and hanger clamps to secure the cables. We were also promised to be able to use Alabama Power’s cable tightener, so we can suspend the cable as straight as possible. After returning to Morissette, we quickly began constructing our mock-up of the sign to see how well it worked. We were able to set roundwood poles in concrete, but because of the curing period we had to wait until Wednesday to suspend the cables.

Since we did not have the cable tightener for our mock-up, we ran into a couple speed bumps. We knew that we had to get the cables tight, but we did not know how to go about doing it. After some discussion, we remembered from Monday’s research that pulleys are an effective way to tighten cables. We devised a method to use a pulley and attach the loose end to Corey (Moulton)’s awesome 4-Runner…and it worked! We also were faced with the task of testing letter connections. After some failed attempts, we customized automotive hose clamps to firmly attach to the cable and bought shorter screws for a stronger fitment. Overall, even though we had a difficult start, our day was a huge success. Except for some minor details for the letters, we know exactly how to properly build our entrance sign. We were given Friday to work on renderings, so that the assignment would not be hanging over our heads next week.

learning objective G_ develop a commitment to high quality, accurate work. Even without a cable tightener, we had an obligation to construct our mock-up as accurately as possible only with available tools. After all, there is no point in testing a design if you are not going to test it correctly.  

learning objective C_ develop skills in using materials and tools. By creating a full scale mock-up of our design, we have familiarized ourselves with materials that we had previoulsy never worked with. We have learned from mistakes and now know how to construct the sign quickly, and more importantly, correctly.

Next week we will be back in Cahawba helping to re-raise arches. It will definitely be a huge week as far as progress is concerned. Once the arches are up, we will be back at Perry Lakes building the sign. We only have a few weeks left, but they will be extremely busy!

Let me just start this week by saying that if anyone who reads this knows how to kill large quantities of mosquitoes quickly, please let us know.  Our legs will thank you..

With one week left to finish preparing the arches for their big day, team Mind Bullitz (Gwyn/Kristy/Alex/Blake/Franklin) had to maximize our efficiency and utilize our newfound help from team Roadkill to tie up all of our loose ends.  We were 99% successful, with only one thing to fix next week.

learning objective C_ develop skills in using materials and tools.We continued using old fashioned methods on our repairs this week. It takes more time, but in the end, we have realized how much more rewarding it is. (the blisters aren’t so great though…) 

After getting our newly cut/detailed wood finished at the end of last week, we figured out the best way to assemble our new gigantic arch piece in the way that would keep it as level as possible while the epoxy dried.  It took several attempts and lots of critical thinking, but we finally got our final repair started on Monday.  While the large piece dried, we set to cutting wood blocks that will stabilize the arches on the columns of the church, making sure all of our bolts will fit in the piece that goes between the arch halves, and drilling bolt holes in the new pieces of wood.  It got pretty tedious, but with arch week right ahead of us, we kept going like a horse with a carrot in front of its face.

learning objective G_ develop a commitment to high quality, accurate work. Putting an arch half together is basically a six-step process, and a stressful one at that. A bit intimidating at the beginning of the semester, the process has now transitioned into something we do (usually..) with speed and accuracy. Every now and then, one will cause us a bit of strife, but as a team we can usually find the problem and take care of it quickly.

There were a couple of things that frustrated us this week, one of which was trying to get quotes on the new lumber for the roof we need to have on site by the end of the semester.  Trying to get quotes from some of these lumber people was painful and tiring, but the order was finally made, which gives us something to work on after the arches go up.  Also frustrating was realizing at the end of the week that the holes we had drilled on our newly repaired arch beam were off by nearly an inch, giving us added stress for next week.  Hopefully that won’t be too big of a problem to fix on Monday afternoon after the crane operator calls it quits for the day.

  The arches are ready, the equipment is ready, the site is ready, and we are definitely ready for the next few days.  Our whole semester has led up to this week, and we are confident that everything will work out.  We can’t wait to see the difference the arches will make on top of St. Luke’s, and we can’t wait to mess around on the cherry pickers when we’re bracing the arches with purlins.  Anyone who wants to come out and watch or help is welcome (especially help, the arches weigh a couple thousand pounds), and if you can’t make it, check back in next week for a recap of what is sure to be the most exciting week of the semester!

March 31, 2008 - April 4, 2008

It was Team Roadkill and the Mindbullitz first day to work together as a ten person team (imagine an octopus or squid like Ursula the sea witch). Monday was a bit of a slow start for the group as a whole. The Arch members were working as always to their full potential to finish running new bolts through the Arches, while the Top Sill/ Wall team took down the green house that at one time covered the arches. Off and on we aided the Arch team rebolting the connections between the arch and the purlins. Also, two people were nearly turned into cartoon characters. How? An arch nearly recruited them to the cast of Looney Toons if they did not move out of the way in time. But we are glad that they were unharmed. Other than that, we ran around tugging on the pants legs of our brethren with doe eyes crying for a task they could think of. Any task the arch team could come up with would have sufficed. I was told to make sure that gravity still existed on the church site. You know what? It did. Our next deal is to insure that we are better organized for the rest of the week. End of Monday.

No. No. No! It’s raining. Stuck at Red Barn on Tuesday. It is crunch time and we need to organize for the tasks that should be completed by Tuesday afternoon at 4 pm and prepare a schedule for Wednesday and Friday. Everyone had a job on Tuesday. Roadkill had to research vestibule and buttress design and create drawings for the next big meeting. Also, the Arch team made numerous calls to inform people that the great Arch Day has been pushed back by a week. Yeah, I cried myself to sleep too. All day Tuesday, both teams worked together on the church model. By 4pm, 98% of all tasks were completed (church model needs a little more time).

Early Wednesday morning, we discussed the day’s schedule over breakfast at M.O. (Mustang Oil) then we drove to the site. Wednesday morning, we were on top of it. We epoxied a few purlins, moved the large 45s, and moved the jig to bolt it back together. Wednesday was a good day. Any day that we as a team can leave the site bruised, bleeding, belching, and soaked from head to toe with the vinegar salt taste of sweat dripping from our noses like the creatures from Alien, then it was a good day. Walking towards our cars together joking about the day’s events as the sunsets makes it even better day.

Looks cleaner than it was on Tuesday. But of course it would. Why? It is the calm before the storm. Friday forecasts is a storm. Heather and Meghan epoxied the purlins again and worked on the large 45s. David helped hold and rebolt the arches and purlins. Delvin and Zane worked on the wood blocks that set the connection between column and arch. The rain started to pick up and that was the end of Friday’s work day. Oh believe. Alot was completed. Sanding, drilling, sawing, and graining. By the way, who wrote the message about graining? Oh no I said too much again!

Learning Objectives-

C) Develop skills in using materials and tools- It is quite a shock to know what the human hand is capable of without electric saws. The chamfered column by Alex and Blake is surely a marvel. 

L) Develop a commitment to personal development- It is extremely hard to get along with others when a job depends on cooperation amongst everyone. We all need a helping hand in the personal development area before we try to say that we can cooperate with others.

Next Week- The tracks are set for this train. We will place a bit more coal to get that fire burnin’ because the big day is just around the bend. Check over all tasks and make big decisions prior to next Wednesday.

After working at Lions Park for a week and getting ready for the GRAND opening we went back to work designing an entry for Perry Lakes Park. We were determined to get our design to work and make it an effective, yet subtle, park edition. Monday we began the day finalizing a design that we felt created an appropriate experience upon entering the park. We finally reached the point where drawings were of no help and that we just needed to go out and actually mock-up an example of our design. After lunch we gathered all our materials and headed to the backyard of Morissette to test the scale and experience of our entry proposal. It took us only three hours to build the mock-up and at the end of the day we were quite pleased with the results.

LEARNING OBJECTIVE C_ develop skills in using materials and tools: You’ve seen this objective once and I’m sure you’ll see it again. Instead of constantly drawing them, we just had to physically work with the creosote railroad ties, get the feeling for them, and decide if they really work.

In addition to our mock-up construction on Monday, Tuesday we continued to test certain features of our design. We poured concrete and tested the appearance of concrete dye. Since we had two extra letters to play around with, we were able to experiment with contrasts between the dye colors and the aluminum finish of the letters. We also drew up new drawings in order to easily illustrate our design ideas during our review later in the day with Andrew Freear. There were many useful things brought up in the review that made us reconsider our design. In the end we had decided it was better to push back the entry, realizing things could be so much more simple, yet just as effective.

Wednesday was a difficult morning getting started. Under strict time constraints and having developed this one design for a couple weeks, it was hard to open up to a new location and new design. We began the morning by heading out to the park to analyze and measure the new site for our sign/entrance. After toying around with new sketches and designs all morning, we decided to do a few simple mock-ups out at the park. Our new designs all boiled down to the letters being suspended in the air so we attached a few letters to rope and strung them across the road. We tested their visibility from many distances and experimented with a variety of heights.

Friday we continued to explore our new design idea brainstorming on how to connect the letters to whatever they would attach to and how to create an effective experience leading up to the sign. For several hours we drew up rough sketches of how to make it all work, but every time it just seemed like too much and that there must be a simpler solution. Towards mid-afternoon we came up with the simplest of all our designs. The aluminum letters would appear to be floating in mid-air, and only by taking a closer look would you notice they were attached to some sort of cables that disappear into the trees. Out of all our designs, this design seemed to be the least but say the most. Friday afternoon we had another review with Andrew and it seemed to go really well. Now it all boils down to if we can make it work. If we can properly execute what we’ve drawn up, we could have a potentially successful project.

LEARNING OBJECTIVE G_ develop a commitment to high quality: When it all comes down to it, it’s not all about fancy things or a lot of stuff, it’s what works. We feel the answer to the signage issue is simplicity, creating the highest quality language to communicate to others.

Next week we will begin dealing more with the engineering and structural aspects of our new found design. We still have a lot of work to do and little time to do it. It looks to be a busy rest of the month…

This was a huge week for the arch team, as we reached our deadline for having all replacements done.  We needed to have every piece ready to go by Wednesday so that the epoxy we’re using for repairs would have time to become structurally sound.  Unfortunately, that didn’t happen.  Because of weather and other uncontrollable/unforeseeable events, the placement of the arches has been pushed back a week.  This was a very tough decision for us to make, because we’ve been planning on April 7^th for quite some time.  We had finally gotten all of our equipment rentals lined up, all visiting helpers from thesis as well as back at Auburn were ready, and we even had lunch on the schedule for the first couple of days.  However, as we sat in Red Barn one lonely rainy day, we realized that the most realistic and intelligent decision we could make was to postpone arch week until the next Monday.

learning objective G_ develop a commitment to high quality, accurate work. This week we were faced with many challenges. In the long run, we made the decision to push the arch-raising deadline back a week so that we could be certain of the structural capacity of our repairs and so that we could spend more time ensuring their precision. 

With that huge decision made, we were able to get a lot accomplished this week.  We finished the majority of our repairs, leaving one large arch piece the only repair remaining for next week.  Because some of the pieces are so large, and the cuts need to be extremely precise, we took several repair cuts to a woodworking shop in Selma to prepare the pieces.  A couple of the larger pieces that we’d been waiting on were ready on Friday, but when we got them back to the site, we realized that one piece needs to be planed down further to fit the original wood we are splicing it with.  We tried to get that piece glued at the end of the day, but as the rain approached, we realized it would be better for us to take our time and get the piece right than to rush it and have an ugly arch.

The rain day ended up being one of our most productive days of the week, as we divided and conquered with a vengeance.  Kristy and Gwyn got real on the site plan we will be proposing to the Cahawba committee at our next meeting and made some great AutoCAD and SketchUp designs.  This is very important to our team, because it gives us a chance to add some of our own design to St. Luke’s.  Franklin once again headed up the team of the church model builders, who worked on what will surely be another legacy of this semester’s group.  Alex and Blake got a chance to learn some old school carpentry methods as they prepared new pieces to be spliced onto broken dovetail purlins.  They decided to cut and detail the pieces themselves rather than wait on the woodshop.  Four sore forearms and one wicked chisel slice later, the pieces were done.

learning objective L_ develop a commitment to personal development.  This week we decided to take a more hands on approach to some of our repairs. The condition of several splices requiring chamfering presented us with an opportunity to learn the techniques that would have been used when the church was originally built. It was a wonderful teaching tool, and made many of us more respectful of the original builders.

Next week will not be quite as hectic as we’ve been planning for it to be all semester (thankfully), but it will be busy nonetheless.  Once we finish our repairs and get a few other minor details completed, we can help the walls team on the church and finish getting the site prepared for the cranes, cherrypickers, and dozens of people that will be visiting us on the 14^th, 15^th, and 16^th. 

Won’t you join us?