Day Three - From Swift Progress to Tricky Details

A quick note from last night. When you have a hammer everything looks like a nail. When you're a trained circus performer, everywhere's a stage. Zada on the rope

Althea on the rope

For Sophia, Frannie, Addison and Josh the day started with a change of plans. Assumptions of structural integrity, supply constraints and a few pieces cut a little to short dramatically changed the shape of their camper.

Frannie and Addison change the orientation of the cross beams

Across groups today was a day of re-dos and delicate finagling. Where yesterday and even this morning held huge surges of noticeable change, the majority of today was incremental iterations on complex and hard to see problems. From big boxes and chop saw cuts to toe screws, bolt locking and wheel mounting.

Althea and Blake work to secure the base of their pyramidal door to their bike-camper

Jonah finagles a bolt trying to strike a balance between tight enough to hold and but loose enough to allow for pivoting.

Groups begin the precision work of mounting their wheels, deciding how to connect to their bikes, and how to allow for intuitive steering. Given the nature of the work it becomes time to take out the drill press. One of the most dangerous but understated tools in the shop. With torque that would put a chop saw to shame and RPMs on par with any other tool, it's a tool to be respected. In fact, we operate it with two hands; one on the lever arm and one on the off switch. It's amazing power is to cut perfectly straight holes through nearly anything. This is absolutely essential for the precise work of mounting an axel and creating a wheel box.

Josh does his drill press demonstration

Ben uses the drill press

Sophia uses the drill press

Wheel mounting involves making sure everything is perfectly parallel as any source of friction will be our enemy when we try to pull our campers for 4 miles. Then we have to consider leverage. This is literally where the rubber meets and road. It is where every lbs of weight in our structure ultimately gets supported; only shared by the other wheels. Every step matters.

Elizabeth starts mounting their front wheel

Anya works with her team to lock their wheel box in place

Sejal cuts a hole for her wheel box

Neil secures a connection

Katia keeps her eye on the action-end of her driver

Celebrations are in order when the wheels hold the weight of the team

Blake works on accessorizing his team's camper with a motorized flad and a small cabinet

Jonah's initial test

Addison and Frannie build a saw horse so they can use it to jig-saw their ply

Blake has become a more knowledgeable of our inventory of odds and ends than anyone on staff. He uses this knowledge for good; helping other campers and creating some spectacular gadgets.

Things are taking shape

Portrait of a Goat

Evan falls pray to the focusing power of fire

Addison and Sophia secure the new floor of their camper

Katia works on skinning their camper with a tarp

At tinkering school each kid takes care of their own dishes. After every time we eat they clean them themselves and hang them to dry for the next meal.

Trials begin in the world of connecting to bikes and pulling. They started rough and have gotten sophisticated fast.

An attempt at a trailer hitch

Sophia ran with an idea and invented something strange but effective

We ended our day by hanging out with the animals, eating a delicious meal and running ourself silly playing infinity tag (also know as banana tag, chaos tag and everybody is it tag).

We lure a gopher out of its hole with grapes

Herb cooks us some steak and asparagus

Everyone is it and the game works startlingly well