Habitat for Humanity, 4200 Kingston Rd.

Tidbit break!
Toenailing is when you drive a nail on an angle through one piece of wood and into a second perpendicular piece. In framing, this is useful to secure the bottom plate of a frame in place temporarily while you build the length of the frame and the top plate around it. When the piece of frame is complete you can still lift it into place, what will happen is that since the nails holding the bottom plate in place were driven in at such an angle, the weight of the frame has increased, and the force needed to left the frame is great enough, the nails will just lift right out.

March 16th
This week’s tasks came on a gray, windy day during the highschooler’s March break, where we had a bunch of them drop by to put in some of their volunteering hours. I began my day by bugging Bruce about crew leading. His response was somewhere along the lines of: So you want to be a crew leader, you’ve got the urge to be a crew leader, you’ve got the nerve to be a crew leader – so go ahead and be a crew leader. Take these kids, and put nails into these pieces of wood.
No problem, right? Wrong. That was the worst crew leading experience I ever had, and the end result – I was fired from being a crew leader that day, and sent off to work with Mike, to put up a frame that would be a door, and essentially learn how to properly drive in a nail. Ouch. This re-assignment came after a ‘general’ lesson that Bruce gave to everyone, all the while looking right at me, almost chiding me for my nailing skills. He ended it with “lesson learned”. You’re not kidding! It’s a lesson I will never forget!
So, off to build a piece of frame with Mike, to learn about how to drive in a nail, what K, J, and X/C meant (thank you Brian later on for your addition of Q to the mix … Quota? Queen? Haha, very funny, we think we are SO SMART, don’t we?)
Later on that day I learned another lesson. When building a frame, make sure you get your measurement for the bottom plate right first thing, and then toenail the bottom plate to the floor. This will prevent you from realizing later on that you cut your bottom plate about 6” short of the mark, and need to build an extra 6” of frame. Oh, that was NOT fun, either. But at least I learned the basics of framing and nailing!

Tidbit break!
My signatures: that day Caroline was quite insistent that I sign somewhere onsite, even though I told her I didn’t really want to, so I scrawled my initials; VMK on the wall. Caroline mad a big stink about the illegibility of that bit of chicken wire, so I drew it all nice and pretty for her, and explained what it stood for. Then I put the date mm over dd over yy to create a Braille cell arrangement of numbers beside my initials. Since then, I have evolved a tradition out of what Caroline MADE ME do, writing a descriptive sentence under each one. It would almost be a game now to try to find them all, but some are buried under things, like the bottom plate of a bay window frame on the second floor.

Habitat for Humanity, 4200 Kingston Rd.

Tidbit break!
Making fun of each other seems to come as part of the rapport between regulars (people who volunteer on a regular basis) on-site, to the point where putting up with, and participating in this is almost a pre-requisite to becoming part of the team. Bruce’s most recent remarks to me, as a new crew leader, seem to indicate the fact that I do not know enough vocabulary. When I have been talking to him of late, if I don’t know the term (or at least the term he uses) I will either use a term I used from my days at RONA, or just say ‘thingy’ – the universal technical term. So lately, he has been helping me out. When I am stalling for words, drawing diagrams to him in the air, or just describing what I am doing when I don’t know the actual tool I am using, he helps me out by filling me in with the universal term. I usually leave it at that, satisfied that he knows exactly what thingy I am talking about, and we continue happily along with our conversation, the both of us arguing about terms all along the way!

March 9th
SIP Panels on 2nd floor: This day I DO remember. I learned about using the heat-knife thingy to melt off a layer of Styrofoam from the middle of the SIPs, which is the process that produces an interesting smell, and a lot of ‘snow’. The rest of the snow comes from cutting the pieces down. I wasn’t able to learn the whole process from one day, but I did experience some of it. Think of a SIP as a giant ice cream sandwich, consisting of two pieces of particle board (the 4’x8’ panel that looks like it’s made out of a bunch of wood chips compressed together, which, in fact, it is), that surround a Styrofoam centre.
1. First off, you need to know what size to cut these 4’x8’ panels down to, so that they fit according to the floor plan, like where a window or door would go.
2. The first step is again laying down plates, which only involves a 2x4 this time, (with the required Acoustiseal) as the flooring provides a perfectly straight and smooth surface.
3. When putting the first piece of SIP in (I’m thinking moving out from the concrete wall that splits the townhouses in half, where I was working that day) you also need to make sure that there is a piece of 2x4 bolted directly to the concrete.
4. Once you are ready to put the SIP up, (yes, I skipped steps in here, insert flurries of snow, checking measurements, and checking to your sketch of the floorplan) you align the SIP on either side of the plates, and sledgehammer it down.
5. I am a little fuzzy on this bit, but I remember it being quite an issue to Caroline that the SIP be level. Hmm, that wouldn’t have anything to do with the fact that the SIP was the initial wall and structure the next level would be built on, would it? So we set up a brace, and when we were sure that the SIP was level, we would secure the brace in place.
6. Putting up the next SIP required that we affix a piece of 2x4 between the boards on the open end of the panel we just put up, securing the connection with nails, using expanding foam to fill in the gaps between the Styrofoam and the piece of wood. This 2x4 would extend out from between the edges of the SIP by about an inch, creating the Duplo block effect that Caroline used as an example to explain how the pieces would fit together. (LOL, I didn’t get that explanation myself until just now as I am trying to envision the process to write it down! I guess while I was in the middle of things there was just too much snow in my brain!
7. Repeat steps 4 and 5, traveling around the back and unit 10 side of the entire block of houses.
8. Ta-da! There you have it. SIPs in a nutshell. Now come on, Caroline, that wasn’t so hard, was it? ;-P
N.B. That day marked the realization (and ensuing embarrassment) with the fact that I couldn’t hammer in a nail for my life. Trying to nail down a brace that day took me 36 hits, and yes, pretty much every single stroke was a hit, to put in one nail. By the time I got to my second nail, the whole crew had left, and Caroline took over either in impatience, or in an attempt to spare me any last shred of dignity I had left!

Putting up the SIPs involved over a month of work, and so it’s understandable that Caroline wanted to take on the job, and train a hand-picked crew to do the work, so that she would not have to re-train the people every time. I think in the end I am glad I was not one of them, as her crew came out of every single day thoroughly snowed on, even though they learned everything there was to know about putting up SIPs, and picked up some other useful skills besides, like the ability to sink a nail in 6 hits. I was also able to build up my knowledge and round out my skills by not doing the same thing every time I was there, and I think that helped me in being able to get my orange shirt in the end.

Habitat for Humanity, 4200 Kingston Rd.

Tidbit break!
Flooring panels have black lines drawn on one side, and usually tongue-and-groove edges. These differentiate them from “wall panels” OSB (?) which have their gridlines inked on in green, and have green edging. One of their other key differences; the wall panels are thinner.

March 2nd
Flooring: what a day! I was helping Caroline hang(?) TGI beams from joist hangers (does the verb I’m using make sense?) in the morning, until circumstances changed, and there wasn’t quite room for me in that group any more. So I moved up to the second floor, and bugged Bruce and Roger until they got me helping to lay down the floor panels. (BTW, it’s still 3+ layer and coat weather out). The highlight of the day came when, in his efforts to get the tongue and groove matching on one the floor panels and the corresponding panel it fit into, Bruce was instructing us to turn it this way and that, flip it, etc. When we finally put it down, put the sealant on (was it Lumber Lock?) and nailed it down, we stepped back to inspect our work on that panel. “Uh, Bruce? Should I be able to read the words that say ‘this side down’? Tell me again why we flipped this panel over?”

The Human Machine

This particular entry is one that I have taken the time to copy straight from a book I love; The Human Machine, by George B. Bridgeman. It was originally published in 1932, and it is a brilliant little book using 200+ illustrations to explain the musculo-skeletal marvel that is the
human body. His illustration style is absolutely beautiful, and presents the human form in its ideal. I use this book as an inspiration for my art (my sketches, when I draw!) and also for my own personal fitness, as his description of the human system allows me to focus perfectly on the muscle I am currently working, what effect that particular exercise is achieving, and how the muscle itself operates in relation to the tendons and bones. It works with any muscle from those tiny ones in your fingers, all the way up to the difficult to work (in my opinion) obliques at your core. Without any further ado, here is the exerpt:

IT APPEARS to be a fixed law that the contraction of a muscle shall
be towards its centre, therefore, the subject for mechanism on each
occasion is so to modify the figure, and adjust the position of the
muscle as to produce the motion required agreeably with this law.
This can only be done by giving to different muscles a diversity of
configuration suited to their several offices and to their situation with
respect to the work which they have to perform. On which account
we find them under a multiplicity of forms and altitudes; sometimes
sometimes with one tendon to several muscles; at other times with
muscle to several tendons. The shape of the organ is susceptible
of an incalculable variety, while the original property of the muscle.
The law and line of its contraction remains the same and is simple.
Herein the muscular system may be said to bear a perfect resemblance
to our woks of art. An artist does not alter the native quality of his
materials or their laws of action. He takes these as he finds them.
His skill and ingenuity are employed in turning them such as they
are, to his account by giving to the parts of his machine a form and
relation in which these unalterable properties may operate to the
production of the effects intended.