I’m pretty good with wood. I’ve done a lot of carpentry – decks, sheds, finishing off rooms, a fair bit of finish carpentry (stairs, railings, wainscotting), and a bit of cabinetmaking.
Metal, however, is not my first choice, and when I do choose it, I’m a bit of a hack. I’ve decided to remedy that, and I’ve signed up for “Intro to Metal Shop” at Makerhaus, a hackerspace in the Fremont area of Seattle. The class started today. There are 7 students in all, 5 guys and two women.
Today was an introduction to the types of metal and how they can hurt you (be cautious machining zinc-coated steel), and how to use all of the tools in the workshop and all of the ways we can get hurt by them. The tools we covered:
- Horizontal band saw (used for rough cutting)
- Drill press (drilling holes)
- Shears (used for cutting metal)
- Brake (used for bending metal)
- Lathe (used for machining round pieces of metal
- Vertical mill (used for general machining)
- Metal sander
- Mig welder (used for, duh, welding)
The machine shop is pretty nice; there are two rooms, one for the clean tools, and then a second closed-off one for the loud and dirty tools. I tool a quick look through a window at the wood shop, and it looks nice as well. It is unfortunately inconvenient to my house, but as there aren’t any spaces like this on the eastside.
So, what do you think ?