Many of my horticultural therapy classes require lots of upfront work. My class on pressing flowers requires more than normal as I decide to give my clients a nicer flower press than I have in the past. But I admit I enjoy the challenge as it often brings out my inner Macgyver and engineer to deliver solutions on a very limited budget.
Sometimes when it comes to materials like wood, more is less so I buy a sheet of 1/4 inch luan plywood that I will be able to use for other projects in the future. One of the tricks of running an HT program is to buy materials in bulk so that your costs are reasonable over the long term. This plywood will come in handy in the months to come for other classes.
I then decide to make the flower presses 6×9 inches. This lets me fold a standard piece of letter-sized paper in half that will fit inside the press. It also lets me get 10 presses out of 1/4 a sheet of plywood with hardly any waste.
Getting out one of my favorite toys, a table saw, I take each quarter sheet and cut it into its parts trying to minimize splinters. There are a few, but part of the exercise for clients will be to sand off the rough edges. I then need to drill four holes in each little rectangle. So the holes line up, I drill two together. It takes me a while to develop the right technique so edges don’t crack or splinter excessively.
There are a lot of cuts and holes to be drilled but in a couple of hours I’m finished and only need to cut some cardboard pieces that will be in between the sheets of plywood. It’s a good project.
(Unfortunately, because of the extreme heat and potential issues with my clients’ health, I had to cancel today’s class at Ann’s Place. That didn’t stop me from prepping for it, however. Well, next Summer’s class will be ready way in advance.)
