Written by Daria Bychkova, who runs a playground design firm in Russia
We started the day with the overall check of all the materials we have for the boardwalk fabrication. By then it was kept in the Hooke Park workshop space ready to be transported to the site. Then Clem divided us into two groups – one was to travel to Kingcombe Centre for the site work and the other one was supposed to stay in the Hooke Park workshop to produce pre-fabricated parts for the boardwalk.
Team 1 traveled to Kingcombe and started working on the site. First of all we finished stone covering under the path. After we measured the distances between the beams to know exactly the lengths of each joist. Then the group of two people started marking up the joist lengths and cutting them producing the joists. Some of us including myself learnt to use a circular saw (quite a heavy thing but so effective though!) and have got to feel as real builders!!!!
The Team 2 meanwhile the workshop in Hooke Park and started the production of all the elements for the hand railing using the tools in the workshop – actually very similar ones to what we had on the site but much more precise. So we’ve got a nice combination of a delicate result of the workshop work with the in-studio tools and more let’s say rude but landed on the site result of the work in Kingcombe Centre.
The Team 1 got back to the Hooke Park for the shared lunch and after that the whole group got a chance to watch some forest operation work. We traveled to the forest and saw this huge mysterious machine parked right among the trees (I would never imagine it was possible to get into that place by and machine!) And the guy working with the machine carefully explained us the whole process of cutting down the trees in a very efficient way: this huge mechanism could hold the tree close to its base, cut the trunk with the in-built saw, cut all the benches along the trunk by just moving the “metal hands” along the tree body and then measuring the lengths and the diameter of the trunk with the in-built rolling wheel. After that in just few seconds the volume of the timber can get calculated and sent to the client’s and the operator’s mail of phone getting back with the information if there is still some more wood to be cut to satisfy the required volume for the client. Most interesting thing is that all the actions could be done by just one man sitting and driving the car. No other assistance or participants needed!
After the forest operation demonstration we’ve got back to work and thus spent our first real “labour day”. A happy sunny and productive day!