Reflecting on the Final Project

Originally thinking about what to do as a final project I was a little unsure as to what to think or even as to what to make. Excited but unsure. However the more I thought about what might be useful it seemed to make sense to build a golf ball display case for the golf team office in the Bell Center. I think that initially I was intimidated by the building process and whether or not I could create a project that would stand up to what I had envisioned in my head. However I found that through the whole process it was really the drafting process that was the most difficult, researching and trying to see what other similar cases looked like whether they had trimmed finishes, which I'm not really a fan of anyway, and what size they were, and then trying to see how could I create something similar but that might fit my taste a little better. I found that in the drafting process it was much easier for me to put down what I wanted to create using pencil and paper and drawing it out, some of my drawings being to scale with others just hand sketches to get an idea of what I wanted. I honestly think that for me the most helpful part of the drafting process was a sketch I created of how the frame would fit together, with the four pieces mapped out on a piece of graph paper, showing how my grooves for the plexiglass and backing panel would fit into the frame.

After having some hand drafts as to what I wanted to and getting out my ideas on paper I found that using SketchUp to be kind of painful. Don't me wrong it was a cool program and I found it interesting to be able to create 3D models but I was very antsy to start building and did not really have a lot of interest spending time computer drafting when I had a pretty clear picture in my head as to what I wanted to achieve.

Once I had started the construction of my project, which I started a little earlier than I think I was supposed to, I felt like i was off to the races I felt really at ease with what I was doing, and really enjoyed creating my display case, and had gotten the majority of the work done in my parents warehouse space during the thanksgiving break.

After getting back for trinity I felt like I was pretty much done with my project with only a few steps to completion, namely I needed to putty over and clean up the project sanding it down and connecting the plexiglass to the lift mechanism, and then finish it so that it would be ready to put in the team, room. All of this in honesty took way longer than I thought it would, at least the sanding and putty, the plexiglass work was pretty easy seeing as all I had to do was countersink the plexiglass, and screw it onto the lift mechanism. However there was one difficulty with the plexiglass as it tended to bend a little and I found that putting a knob on the face made it easier to slide it into place. 

As a whole I was pretty please with how my project turned out, it took a lot longer to complete than I had expect, even after all the putty work and sanding the priming of the project as well applying the paint coats took what felt like forever... Although that might have had more to do with the amount of time it took for the coats to dry so that I could continue working. But I really felt like the finished product surpassed my expectations for what I thought I was capable of doing or or building, and looked really clean especially after the coating of the semigloss paint.