By: Claire Stephens (6th)

Reporter: “These sixth graders were on a mission to create an amazing keyrack, and it might even have a secret compartment. Their teacher, Mr. Yeagle, has let us interview some of his students on the project.”

Safety

Hailey: “Safety was a big part of the process. Every class period, Mr. Yeagle would make us repeat the safety instructions and rules to him before we could start doing anything. He also would demonstrate how to use the machine multiple times and be right next to the machine when we were using it, just in case something happened.”

Step by Step - The Making

Mitchell: “We used many different machines here in the workshop. We used the jointer, drill press, band saw, planer and disc sander, just to name a few. We first smoothed out the edges of the wood. Then, Mr Yeagle ripped the wood into the correct width. We then went to the band saw and cut the wood to the correct length. After the band saw, we glued our two pieces together to get the correct shape and waited for it to dry. Once we did that, we went to the planer and smoothed it to the desired dimensions. We then sanded the ends of the wood. Once we did that, we went to the router to smooth the edge and the end of the wood. While we were waiting for the routers to be free, we sawed dowel rods to use as the hooks for our keyracks. After that, we went on to the drill presses. We drilled 5 holes, one for our secret compartment. Now, I am going to hand it off to Izzy to tell you a little bit more about how we made our keyrack.”

Izzy: “Thanks Mitchell. Once we finished drilling holes, we went on the sanding, because nobody wants a rough and splintery piece of wood. We had an electric sander and sandpaper. After that, we got to make our own laser engraved token to put on top of the secret compartment. We could do infinite designs to make the keyrack more personal and custom. Once Mr. Yeagle laser engraved our tokens, we got to do the final assembly. Now, I’ll hand it of to Estella to tell you about the assembly process.

Estella: “Thanks Izzy. The final assembly was so fun. Just seeing all of our work come together into a final project was just so much fun. We inserted the dowel rods into the holes we drilled as well as putting in 3D printed stoppers so that we could hang it up on the wall. Then, the last assignment we needed to do was to write an essay explaining how we manufactured the entire keyrack, kind of like this, now that I think about it.”

Wow. That was fun!

Reporter: “Thank you everyone for reading this article on these amazing 6th graders at our local Colonial Middle School. Have a good night, bye!”