Wood Protection

1. Polyurethane Varnish - Sprayed or painted on with matte or gloss finish.
2. Stain - literally stained wood. soaks into the grain of the wood, so it can't be used after the wood has been varnished.
3. Oils - Rubbed into the wood and enhances the colour of the wood, whilst protecting it from moisture.
4. Preservative - Normaly in the form of tanelised timber that is bought from a timber yard, the timber does not need any other protective coating. A preservitive is injected into the timber forming a 5mm band in the inside of the timber, increases the life span of the timber by 4x, which is then use primeraly outdoors. the intitial timber for tanalised timber tends to be spruce.
5. Paint - The timber must be primed before it is painted with what is nomaly an oils baised paint.

Woods - Natural Timbers

Lumbar - Freshly felled tree trunk
Wood - The material gained from Lumbar
Timber - Processed wood (material)

Hard woods
-Comes from deciduous trees
-Slow growing
-More expensive than soft woods, due to time taken to grow.

Soft woods
-Comes from coniferous trees
-Relatively fast growing
-Relatively cheap as they take less time to grow - Better land use.

You can tell the age of a tree by the number of 'age rings' (annual rings) in its trunk.
Light rings signify summers
Dark rings signify autumn/winters - when a tree collects resin to just underneath the bark to protect the tree from the colder temperatures

Wood is a fibrous material with fibers running the length of the wood.
It's 55% cellulose and 28% lingin resin, which holds the structure together. Thins means that wood is classed as a 'natural fibre reinforced polymer'.

4 stages of processing wood.
1. Harvisting - the cutting down of trees
2. Conversion - Cutting trunks and large branches into boards - Slab sawn or Quarter sawn
3. Seasoning - Releasing of the moisture content of the boards - Natural or kiln seasoning
4. Board preperation - sawing the boards to size and planing them e.g PAR (planed all round)

Slab sawn
Not much waste. Not very stable - likely to warp and twist. this is because the grain will want to form a straight line so it will bend in the opposite direction to the grain.

Quater sawn
More waste than slab sawn boards. More stable - less likely to warp and twist.
Used for expensive hardwood timbers.
Produce a more attractive grain.

Rough sawn timber
When timber is sawn it is measured in imperial units but once it gets planed it is measured in meteric units.

Edge Joints
Carpenters tend to edge joints of narrower timbers, alternating the direction of the grain, to produce wider, more stable boards.

Pop Art Chair

Well, I wish I hadn't bought that

Recently I bought a pair of Skullcandy Smokin' Buds, basically earphones designed by Skullcandy, for about £12 from HMV. On face value they looked amazing for the price, great bass with well balanced treble, from a well respected company and they looked good too!
As a design, the ear phones themselves were great; looking good and delivering great sound, combined with ear buds that were well rounded and perfectly sized so that they didn’t fall out of your ears, no matter what you were doing. In addition they were easy to change over, if the size wasn’t right, or if they broke.
The cable as well, was well thought out; at 1.3 meters it was the perfect length with just enough exes that when you pulled your music player out of your pocket you could hold it at a comfortable angle to see the screen. As well as the length, the cable also had a volume control wheel built in, which was a little unnecessary as the target audience of the product likes there music loud, but a usefull thing to have, all the same.
But the thing that let these headphones down was the build quality, where the cable met the 3.5mm jack plug. Within weeks the cable had frayed and broken away from the jack, first leaving me with full sound in one ear and fragmented sound in the other and the cable frayed further, leaving fragmented sound in one ear but none in the other. If Skullcandy had only though about the quality of there cable ends and the driection that they meet the jack, not on a right angle but straight on, these would have been brilliant headphones.

Stuff

Just so i know how things are looking.