My observation of our group this week is that we work far more independently and the "delay" in carrying out our task derived more from the discussion we have with each other than previous "not knowing what to do". One of the discussion points example was how the two pieces for the stem cap was to be joined Brett allows us to decide in the end. Our decision agreed upon to join the two pieces with the joining parts to follow the line of the chine. However this does not make any difference as Brett later told us that we are going to paint the boat hull and so the aesthetic reason we have for our decision is in vain. Nevertheless it is a learning point.
Our pace is also slow down this week by waiting for confirmation from Brett on whether the steps we are to take are correct - out of fear of making mistakes which can be costly at this stage of the small craft built. Our fear was not anymore lessen with Brett;s cautioning us not to make "big mistakes. One of these mistakes (though not big) was my overzealous attempt to sand down the front of the hull when we had made the box scarf - not realising that the objective was to leave the length when the chine "comes" into the stem short and apparent. Other minor "mishaps: (not mistakes) were the middle section of the starboard side of the hull appear to be not fair. We had to use the excess filler glue (which John wrongly mix for the glue for the stem cap - instead of using glue powder) to fill up the :"hollow" in this section. However this filler powder which John has made did not go to waste as we used it to cover up all the holes which had been left on the hulls from the many fasteners we had used.
We have also begin to handle more resin, glue powder and acetone starting from last week. Having worked in chemical plants before, my main concern was the safety issue with handling these chemicals. Gloves are a must although I still get glue powder and resin onto my bare hands (when helping out with the fastening of the planking and the other parts of the boat. The smell of the resin and acetone are quite obvious during the sessions these two weeks.
The surprise to me this last two weeks was the large number of holes we make on the hulls and planks when attaching the planks to the temporary frames as well as when scarfing the 12 mm and 6 mm pieces of plywood together for the bottom and topside planks. I did read about using fasteners to attach planks to the frames but it did not dawn on me until I see it as used in these two weeks. All along my perception is the boat should not have "holes" in them. So when I was told to put a nail or screw to fasten the planks, I was "taken back".
As we progress on our learning journey to become consciously competence in the tasks we have learned, there are still many aspects of "ah- ha" learning situations for me. These were confirmations of the various readings I had done before coming to this course. To me there is a huge difference between reading from books and seeing it "live" at this course - leading to me to conclude "so this is the way they do it". Thus this practical course at UNITEC is a great booster to me to my interest in boats. One of these Ah-ha learning was the marking tools for transferring the reference points from the interior surface of the hull to the exterior points when Yin and William had to mark the reference points to install the gunwale. Previously James did the same thing but with a different self made tools to mark the positions of the chine for reference points for the upper top hull planks to be attach/glue onto the lower planks (I am not sure of the names for these planks - one is called the blige or something).
We seems to have "lose sight" of the timeline we are supposed to follow and update with the many activities since the start of the small craft built. We however did update the cutting list of the materials we had used so far.
The reading we were assigned to read - Chapter 17 of the Gougeon Brother book was on frames - entitled mold frames and permanent frames. My reflections on this reading are:-
1) The suggestion in this chapter to use the lofting drawing to draw and construct the frames highlighted to me the importance of good lofting. The frames both temporary and permanent form the shape of the boat and if these are not precisely construction - this first step will lead to further disaster when the boat is to be built. Our group found this out when the temporary frames for the Dory was plane off too much thereby creating a hollow onto these frames and we had to replace a number of these frames - Frame number 0.5 for example very much later into the stage of the small craft construction. we had to take corrective action for frame number 4 and 5 by glue on extra piece of wood and then plane them off to the correct bevel angle.
2) Stephan and I used the method as suggested in this chapter of having nail heads laid out along the outline of the lofting drawing to create the shape of the stem.
3) Beveling on temporary frame is much "safer" than on permanent frames. Corrective action can be taken on either type of the frames but the aesthetic for the permanent frames will be much different while the temporary frames being temporary is not part of the boat. In this perspective, I come to realise that I may not be correct to assume there are lot of wastage/costs in having temporary frames. Temporary frame especially those we used of custom wood materials are much cheaper than the cost of mistake when made on permanent frames.
4) The need to provide margin for the thickness of the planks as mentioned in this chapter brought to my mind - how we did not provide enough margins for our first attempt of the cutting of the topside planks. "Better to have more than less:" is a good learning point when we are cutting although this would lead to more energy in having to plane off more wood. Softwood is easy to plane off but hardwood like what we have to work on for the skeg this week is not as easy. It is hard work but both John and I today in cutting and preparing the two pieces of skeg.
5) For one off (home building boat), temporary frames still seems to me an avoidable cost. Why not so permanent frame. For production building, the temporary frames could be used many times. For commercial houses producing economy of scale of many boats especially those building with composite and non wood materials, they used molds or temporary frames. The heavier investment for them would be in the mold itself and so they need to have big number of enjoy that economy of scale.
6) There are also other building method which do not use any frames in the initial stage - stitch and glue for example. The permanent frames are added much later after the boat has "taken shape." in the finalsing end of the building process. Still the frames used are intentions to hold the boat shape and give the boat the structural support.
Wednesday, June 29, 2011
Wednesday, June 22, 2011
14th week - UNITEC CAT course
This week progress seems to be slower though we have gotten to glue together the 12 mm bottom and the two 6 mm bottom bilge planks. Yin, John and I worked on the two other top 6 mm pieces of the top bilge planks. John and I having done the previous two pieces measurements and scarfing were able to use our learning to work on the latter pieces and became some sort of "coach" in peer learning with Yin. Personally I dud learn some new pointers in this process of building on what I had done. We had shown a much faster and determined pace of marking and cutting out the pieces and then scarfing and joining the scarf was much faster. Our level of confidence also seem much higher than the our previous attempt - a consequence of the what Argyris & Schön (1978) called "double loop learning".
The pointers which Brett gave to James, Stephan and some of us were timely; examples how to measure the positions/points for the chines on the bilge pieces. This I see as similar to what Toyota Manufacturing system concept of JIT delivery- Just In Time; in our case it would be Just In Time learning. Though this did cause some levels of frustrations experienced in our works as evidenced by remarks of "Why did he tells us earlier", Nevertheless I see this as appropriate timely interventions by Brett even though we had to "redo" what we had done. In the process, we had "relearned" what we should not do. Added to tension, is the fear (which get heightened as we progressed) of making mistakes, resulting in our pace of working and efficiency getting slow down further. At several points, we had to stop (paralysis) in order to double check with Brett whether our proposed actions would go in the "right direction". This paralysis was nevertheless good for our learning journey as we had to take time to reflect over before we take action. I could also attribute this fear to the fact that there is a "client/owner" to our Dory project. Brian's appearance each time at the workshop could become an unwelcome sight. However this is a very real phenomena in a real working world - dateline and client's expectations and reviews or progress reports.
More positive points this week were my personal assessment that each one of us is gaining some level of mastery over some tasks we do. This is not to say that we have "arrived" but rather we are getting near to the destination. This can be seen in the Half Model project where I had lesser degree of hesitation and more apprehension and independence on carrying out the task ahead though there are areas in the half model building which I had not fully understand.
The level of teamwork in our group is also to be commended. Everyone present put in their share to get the work done (*much thank to Tiger who was not even part of our group) - when we had to work late on Tuesday to have the two planks scarfed and glue ready for the next day. However I was disappointed that we did not manage to glue on these two pieces onto the half finished Dory at the end of Wednesday.
I could also see many aspects of Action Learning taking places over the last couple of weeks in our group. Building on what we did (rightly or wrongly), we took the next steps using what we had learned to further advance the Dory building project. I could sense that there is a lack of reflective on the parts of the some of the members when I heard remark like "I am getting bored". Getting bored would to me means that there is some gap in our learning progress - why are we getting bored? Is it the expectations we have not being met? If it is, how then can they be met by us not someone else? Action thus lead to questions/reflection and then further action and then reflection again - this is where learning take place (from what I had learned about Action Learning). This will be also where double loop learning take place.
A personal point of observation from a person new to boat building - there seems to be lot of costs/wastes to the building process such as temporary frames. Maybe the answer to this personal observation could come from the reading assigned for Chapter 17 of the Gougeon Brother book. .
Another observation is the cultural differences among the whole class. Some are more reflective while others are more talkative/playful. Some however seems to be at a complete loss especially during the theory sessions. Being absent from class could also make the loss even greater. Like the Indian villager proverb says " each one of us has to face our own tigers" - less we get eaten up by the tigers (that why they wear a face mark behind their heads while working in the jungles of Northern India.).
The pointers which Brett gave to James, Stephan and some of us were timely; examples how to measure the positions/points for the chines on the bilge pieces. This I see as similar to what Toyota Manufacturing system concept of JIT delivery- Just In Time; in our case it would be Just In Time learning. Though this did cause some levels of frustrations experienced in our works as evidenced by remarks of "Why did he tells us earlier", Nevertheless I see this as appropriate timely interventions by Brett even though we had to "redo" what we had done. In the process, we had "relearned" what we should not do. Added to tension, is the fear (which get heightened as we progressed) of making mistakes, resulting in our pace of working and efficiency getting slow down further. At several points, we had to stop (paralysis) in order to double check with Brett whether our proposed actions would go in the "right direction". This paralysis was nevertheless good for our learning journey as we had to take time to reflect over before we take action. I could also attribute this fear to the fact that there is a "client/owner" to our Dory project. Brian's appearance each time at the workshop could become an unwelcome sight. However this is a very real phenomena in a real working world - dateline and client's expectations and reviews or progress reports.
More positive points this week were my personal assessment that each one of us is gaining some level of mastery over some tasks we do. This is not to say that we have "arrived" but rather we are getting near to the destination. This can be seen in the Half Model project where I had lesser degree of hesitation and more apprehension and independence on carrying out the task ahead though there are areas in the half model building which I had not fully understand.
The level of teamwork in our group is also to be commended. Everyone present put in their share to get the work done (*much thank to Tiger who was not even part of our group) - when we had to work late on Tuesday to have the two planks scarfed and glue ready for the next day. However I was disappointed that we did not manage to glue on these two pieces onto the half finished Dory at the end of Wednesday.
I could also see many aspects of Action Learning taking places over the last couple of weeks in our group. Building on what we did (rightly or wrongly), we took the next steps using what we had learned to further advance the Dory building project. I could sense that there is a lack of reflective on the parts of the some of the members when I heard remark like "I am getting bored". Getting bored would to me means that there is some gap in our learning progress - why are we getting bored? Is it the expectations we have not being met? If it is, how then can they be met by us not someone else? Action thus lead to questions/reflection and then further action and then reflection again - this is where learning take place (from what I had learned about Action Learning). This will be also where double loop learning take place.
A personal point of observation from a person new to boat building - there seems to be lot of costs/wastes to the building process such as temporary frames. Maybe the answer to this personal observation could come from the reading assigned for Chapter 17 of the Gougeon Brother book. .
Another observation is the cultural differences among the whole class. Some are more reflective while others are more talkative/playful. Some however seems to be at a complete loss especially during the theory sessions. Being absent from class could also make the loss even greater. Like the Indian villager proverb says " each one of us has to face our own tigers" - less we get eaten up by the tigers (that why they wear a face mark behind their heads while working in the jungles of Northern India.).
Wednesday, June 15, 2011
Week 13th - A good ending
Week 13th ended well for me as John and I managed to complete the cutting and scarfing of the bilge panels (with heaps of help and prompting from Brett after he sensed and told us that we were lacking behind). As a consequence of our earlier "failed" attempt in cutting the 12 mm bottom front piece, John and I developed a phobia about cutting the wood. Couple with the frustration from Monday works on measuring the dimensions of the 6mm panel, we spent consideration amount of time to discuss and ponder over the dimension and shape of both bilge panel - the whole morning of the Tuesday. Before the end of Tuesday, we had cut and prepared the plywood for scarfing and joining.
On Wednesday, we started on the scarfing of the 4 cut panel. Our first attempt was almost a disaster with the ends of the scarfing breaking off and we had to "redo" the scarfing. From the lesson learned about providing more margins for the wood, we had more leeway to "redo" the scarfing - by cutting away (15mm) from the parts when the panel are to be joined. Manual scarfing was a dreaded task initially and after some practice, we began to get a hang of it. Nevertheless personally I felt there are still plenty of room for me to improve on how to scarf. The article of Duckworks Magazine - http://www.duckworksmagazine.com/07/columns/nichols/index3.htm gave insight on how to scarf with a sander and jig as well as manual scarfing .
We had also started on the half mold plug this week during the Wednesday morning theory session. John and I did the cutting list aspects. We drawn out a total of 26 pieces of pine wood of 150mm x 20mm of various lengths starting from 3.1 metre to 5.49 metres long. The cutting list was then given to Turtle and another copy to "Paul" via Leon.
The radiata pine wood pieces were later docked and dressing down to 3.1 metre pieces by another group. Each member of the class (both Brett and Matthew groups) then took a piece and with the cut out of the various pieces for the plug mold, we are supposed to mark, and cut the 3.1 piece for ourself.
Lessons learned and reflections this week:
1) The discussion and caution we took before moving ahead to cut the 6 mm panel were good for me even though we took more time than necessary.
2) We were struck at several points of our tasks and the just-in-learnings (promptings and advice from Brett) were excellent - several learning point examples were the joint of the two pieces together with two pieces wood screwed in and then using the joined panel pieces to read off the MDF frames is an example, Marking reference joining points to allow more accurate joining of the two panels is another. These I would refer to as the "arts" of boat building as opposed to the science. The "science" of boat building seem to me to have taken a back step now that we are on the actual construction phase.
3) My personal comfort zone in learning is constantly being expanded after the 12th and 13th week sessions. Prior to this, it was all "head knowledge" about boat building which had been gathered from books and website. Now the CAT course is getting more interesting to me as the Dory is starting to take shape (I hope). However I had to constantly remind myself of the safety implication as I moved on my learning curve especially with the handling of the powered tools and the epoxy resin (now that we are doing lot of gluing of the wood.
4) We had forgotten about the timeline - our daily tasks we undertook is a complete deviation from the timeline we had set for ourselves. We need to build in time for "backtracking" and "relearning" as we proceed along the timeline.
5) The cutting list needs to be update as well as we moved to on to use more and more materials.
On Wednesday, we started on the scarfing of the 4 cut panel. Our first attempt was almost a disaster with the ends of the scarfing breaking off and we had to "redo" the scarfing. From the lesson learned about providing more margins for the wood, we had more leeway to "redo" the scarfing - by cutting away (15mm) from the parts when the panel are to be joined. Manual scarfing was a dreaded task initially and after some practice, we began to get a hang of it. Nevertheless personally I felt there are still plenty of room for me to improve on how to scarf. The article of Duckworks Magazine - http://www.duckworksmagazine.com/07/columns/nichols/index3.htm gave insight on how to scarf with a sander and jig as well as manual scarfing .
We had also started on the half mold plug this week during the Wednesday morning theory session. John and I did the cutting list aspects. We drawn out a total of 26 pieces of pine wood of 150mm x 20mm of various lengths starting from 3.1 metre to 5.49 metres long. The cutting list was then given to Turtle and another copy to "Paul" via Leon.
The radiata pine wood pieces were later docked and dressing down to 3.1 metre pieces by another group. Each member of the class (both Brett and Matthew groups) then took a piece and with the cut out of the various pieces for the plug mold, we are supposed to mark, and cut the 3.1 piece for ourself.
Lessons learned and reflections this week:
1) The discussion and caution we took before moving ahead to cut the 6 mm panel were good for me even though we took more time than necessary.
2) We were struck at several points of our tasks and the just-in-learnings (promptings and advice from Brett) were excellent - several learning point examples were the joint of the two pieces together with two pieces wood screwed in and then using the joined panel pieces to read off the MDF frames is an example, Marking reference joining points to allow more accurate joining of the two panels is another. These I would refer to as the "arts" of boat building as opposed to the science. The "science" of boat building seem to me to have taken a back step now that we are on the actual construction phase.
3) My personal comfort zone in learning is constantly being expanded after the 12th and 13th week sessions. Prior to this, it was all "head knowledge" about boat building which had been gathered from books and website. Now the CAT course is getting more interesting to me as the Dory is starting to take shape (I hope). However I had to constantly remind myself of the safety implication as I moved on my learning curve especially with the handling of the powered tools and the epoxy resin (now that we are doing lot of gluing of the wood.
4) We had forgotten about the timeline - our daily tasks we undertook is a complete deviation from the timeline we had set for ourselves. We need to build in time for "backtracking" and "relearning" as we proceed along the timeline.
5) The cutting list needs to be update as well as we moved to on to use more and more materials.
Monday, June 13, 2011
13th week - an unlucky number or simply illogical logic?
John and I continued working on the topside panel dimension. We did more than 4 attempts to figure out why the dimensions were different each time and did not add up to the length of the temporary frame side. At the end of this Monday, both of us were exhausted trying. Upon reflecting at home, I figured out that it could be that we were measuring a right angle length against the ideal arc length Chris came by and his advice was to get the bottom piece into place and then worked on the topside. This advice did not make sense to me at that moment as it is illogical to have difference dimensions when we were measuring the "supposedly" same length of the side of the temporary frames from the straight line drawn on the pattern. Furthermore the cut pattern seems to fit well onto the topside area.
Yin and William and Stephan were more successful in their areas of work - these were the bright spots to remedy otherwise a very frustrating Monday. Yin and William worked on Transom and later made the gunwales. Stephan worked on the bottom piece and finally we got the piece clamped onto the temporary frame. Stephan further plane down the sides when the bottom piece will meet the topside pieces.
This week Monday seems to have everyone in the class busying on their own small craft and the single tutor (Brett) was unable to feedback and answer questions from all of us. There were occasions when we had to wait and cannot move forward in our works. This is attributable to our fears of "making mistakes" after having being reminded that it was costly in material for the marine 12 mm plywood. A smaller student to tutor ratio would be great help for faster learning. We are lacking behind.
The prospect of becoming a boat builder to me is less attractive after the last two weeks. Unless these are beyond my comfort and recognizing the greater learning take place in the uncomfortable zone, I will press on.
Another thought on my mind - is that there seems to be a great deal of "wastage" in term of the materials used in our limited exposure to small craft - especially for a one off construction. Temporary frames is one such material. Can we do without them? I suppose we can - after I have looked up other means of boat construction. However the strongback still remain as a "compulsory" element in any boat construction except those commercially molding methods. There again this latter method has the cost of the molds which can be more extensive for a one off construction. In my mind, maybe that why boats are so expensive - more expensive than cars. The only method I have read so far which does not seem to incur such "wastage" is the stitch and glue method. On the other hand, there are also limitations on how far and big a boat one want to build using stitch and glue method.
My conclusions is that added material cost of boat building is a major factor in competitive boat building. With offshore competition , the boat building industry in New Zealand could compete only on designs and new technology not traditional methods of building a boat. Otherwise they have to compete on economy of scale which is not as easily available as in the automotive industry which requires huge capital investment in plant. Boats such as those built here are more for the luxury\leisure markets and such a boat does get utilize as frequently as a car. So there are fewer buyers which add to the competition.
Yin and William and Stephan were more successful in their areas of work - these were the bright spots to remedy otherwise a very frustrating Monday. Yin and William worked on Transom and later made the gunwales. Stephan worked on the bottom piece and finally we got the piece clamped onto the temporary frame. Stephan further plane down the sides when the bottom piece will meet the topside pieces.
This week Monday seems to have everyone in the class busying on their own small craft and the single tutor (Brett) was unable to feedback and answer questions from all of us. There were occasions when we had to wait and cannot move forward in our works. This is attributable to our fears of "making mistakes" after having being reminded that it was costly in material for the marine 12 mm plywood. A smaller student to tutor ratio would be great help for faster learning. We are lacking behind.
The prospect of becoming a boat builder to me is less attractive after the last two weeks. Unless these are beyond my comfort and recognizing the greater learning take place in the uncomfortable zone, I will press on.
Another thought on my mind - is that there seems to be a great deal of "wastage" in term of the materials used in our limited exposure to small craft - especially for a one off construction. Temporary frames is one such material. Can we do without them? I suppose we can - after I have looked up other means of boat construction. However the strongback still remain as a "compulsory" element in any boat construction except those commercially molding methods. There again this latter method has the cost of the molds which can be more extensive for a one off construction. In my mind, maybe that why boats are so expensive - more expensive than cars. The only method I have read so far which does not seem to incur such "wastage" is the stitch and glue method. On the other hand, there are also limitations on how far and big a boat one want to build using stitch and glue method.
My conclusions is that added material cost of boat building is a major factor in competitive boat building. With offshore competition , the boat building industry in New Zealand could compete only on designs and new technology not traditional methods of building a boat. Otherwise they have to compete on economy of scale which is not as easily available as in the automotive industry which requires huge capital investment in plant. Boats such as those built here are more for the luxury\leisure markets and such a boat does get utilize as frequently as a car. So there are fewer buyers which add to the competition.
Wednesday, June 8, 2011
12th week - not another big "mistake"
John was proven right with his level of pessimistic perception that something will go wrong after the redemptive work we had done yesterday. True to his words, the bottom pieces was cut too short. It was a mystery as to how this had happen as we follow the drawing plan dimension. Later we were told by Brett that once we started construction, the drawing become secondary in importance. I can only conclude from this that Boat Building is both a science and an art. The art element come in after the initial tools of science like lofting and reading drawings, understand angles and all those calculation of the centres of gravity, loading, etc... and areas and wetted areas. It became an artistic piece of work once actual construction starts.
I could sense that the group is also getting paranoid about making mistakes after mistakes. Some are avoiding their discomfort zones. However this avoidance could means loss of learning opportunities. The cost of me now is only the time taken to redo and remedy the mistakes we made. Mistakes only become mistakes if they are repeated.
However it was still a "good ending" today for the group as everyone "chip in" and help to plane the bottom plywood. It was quite demanding physically as the area to be scarfed was quite extensive- 100 mm for each side. Brett also helped us in the last part to finish off the scarfing as we were afraid to make mistakes. I left at the end of the class today with good feeling about the group cohesiveness.
I could sense that the group is also getting paranoid about making mistakes after mistakes. Some are avoiding their discomfort zones. However this avoidance could means loss of learning opportunities. The cost of me now is only the time taken to redo and remedy the mistakes we made. Mistakes only become mistakes if they are repeated.
However it was still a "good ending" today for the group as everyone "chip in" and help to plane the bottom plywood. It was quite demanding physically as the area to be scarfed was quite extensive- 100 mm for each side. Brett also helped us in the last part to finish off the scarfing as we were afraid to make mistakes. I left at the end of the class today with good feeling about the group cohesiveness.
Tuesday, June 7, 2011
12th week - redemption!
Today back to class and we managed to sort out the problem of the stem and hopefully the temporary frame issues (John though is not confident that we will not see more problems later; to me however problems are parts and parcel of a learning environment). The stem "seems" to fit like a glove after we redo the frame number zero after much discussions and efforts trying to address the problem. The root of the stem problem was in the frame number measurements - we could not really ascertain the original measurements after the sides had been planed down. With the frame number 2 re-make (by James), and aligning it into the strong back, the stem fit nicely into place.
John, James and myself worked on the starboard side frames to plan to receive the batten. The fit I think is ok but John thinks that there will be problems coming up later when the 6mm plywood for the topside will be laid. John and I then worked on the 12mm plywood for the bottom of the Dory. We hope to cut the plywood tomorrow (we have yet to finish the lofting on the plywood today) and then glue the joints to have the required 3.8 to 4 metre length. Brett gave us a few pointers on how to cut and make the bottom pieces (after we had done some lofting on the wood). So it will be a new starting tomorrow for the lofting exercise all over again with these few pointers.
William and Yin continue to work on the transom and making good progress on it. Well the transom is "installed" as I can see (frame number 6 had been removed - some of us question why we have to make the frame number 6 if it seem to be of no use in our perception). Though I am "not around" while they worked on this, I did see Brett giving them a few pointers as well. All these are parts of the learning process. Nevertheless the level of frustration is not as high as the previous week - in fact the frustration is very much tone down for all of us.
In a corporate environment especially in an American company where I used to work - "mistakes" like these we had made in the previous week could at the very least earn the employee a strong warning letter if not the sack. American company is known to have a "hire and fire" policy (yes they pay you to leave no doubt to avoid legal issue unless it was a clear case of gross misconduct). In fact I had "fired" (and paid them off) several people over my HR career with American companies. So it is better to "make mistakes" in a learning environment than in real working environment.
In future, I need to be more precise in my work and take extra precaution as over planing and cutting of materials resulted in poor work quality and is a cost even in a learning environment..
John, James and myself worked on the starboard side frames to plan to receive the batten. The fit I think is ok but John thinks that there will be problems coming up later when the 6mm plywood for the topside will be laid. John and I then worked on the 12mm plywood for the bottom of the Dory. We hope to cut the plywood tomorrow (we have yet to finish the lofting on the plywood today) and then glue the joints to have the required 3.8 to 4 metre length. Brett gave us a few pointers on how to cut and make the bottom pieces (after we had done some lofting on the wood). So it will be a new starting tomorrow for the lofting exercise all over again with these few pointers.
William and Yin continue to work on the transom and making good progress on it. Well the transom is "installed" as I can see (frame number 6 had been removed - some of us question why we have to make the frame number 6 if it seem to be of no use in our perception). Though I am "not around" while they worked on this, I did see Brett giving them a few pointers as well. All these are parts of the learning process. Nevertheless the level of frustration is not as high as the previous week - in fact the frustration is very much tone down for all of us.
In a corporate environment especially in an American company where I used to work - "mistakes" like these we had made in the previous week could at the very least earn the employee a strong warning letter if not the sack. American company is known to have a "hire and fire" policy (yes they pay you to leave no doubt to avoid legal issue unless it was a clear case of gross misconduct). In fact I had "fired" (and paid them off) several people over my HR career with American companies. So it is better to "make mistakes" in a learning environment than in real working environment.
In future, I need to be more precise in my work and take extra precaution as over planing and cutting of materials resulted in poor work quality and is a cost even in a learning environment..
Saturday, June 4, 2011
11th week at UNITEC CAT course
This week was a bad week for us as John discovered that James over plane the temporary frame number 4 and 5 on the starboard side. We had to take corrective action to glue pine strips onto the frames with James participation. However James "disappears" after the theory session on Wednesday morning. John and myself had to work on the corrections. The stem (which I am responsible) also seems not to be aligned to the centre line and this had added to the group's frustration. Our group seem to be lacking behind in our project timeline with these setbacks.
Taking these as learning experiences rather than "mistakes" helped me to lessen the frustrations within. At least I learn how to "repair" such "mistakes". How did these "mistakes" come about? I needed to reflect on these and draw out the learning points/principles. Miscommunication and lack of clearly set goals/objectives? Are these parts of the issues. Being absent from most of the initial week of the small craft built on James's part could also be a contributing factor. Too many hands could also be an issue - with the resulting lack of communication and common ground for the expectations of outcomes, goals and objectives.
Taking these as learning experiences rather than "mistakes" helped me to lessen the frustrations within. At least I learn how to "repair" such "mistakes". How did these "mistakes" come about? I needed to reflect on these and draw out the learning points/principles. Miscommunication and lack of clearly set goals/objectives? Are these parts of the issues. Being absent from most of the initial week of the small craft built on James's part could also be a contributing factor. Too many hands could also be an issue - with the resulting lack of communication and common ground for the expectations of outcomes, goals and objectives.
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