Billy Benson Senior Project

 Our last day of senior project. Honestly, I can say that is has flown by effortlessly. Today we focused primarily on finishing up and final touches on our skateboard decks. Our special quest, Kerri, showed up today to help us paint on of the decks. Kerri is a great artist and is actually going to college partly for art so she showed us up with her skills. Hers came out really well. For my board I choose to paint the Charlotte skyline (my home town) and then on top of that, paint the 704 (my area code). All of the other boards turned out awesome and will be on display during express fest. Tune in!

 As the end of senior project draws near, we look to wrap up our project. Today we decided to install our sign. We thought of a perfect place to put it, next to the The path that we cleared during our first week of park restoration. Greg supplied us with necessary tools such as a drill and some screws. He has been A huge help throughout these two weeks. From providing us with dimensions for our sign to giving us any supplies that we need to construct it, we can’t thank you enough Greg! It’s nice to see all of our effort starting to come together. I personally just can’t wait to graduate!

Week 2 of Senior project is in the books. Due to the fact that the majority of the materials that we ordered for our project came in this week, we were able to get a lot of stuff done. While the first week we focused more so on cleaning up and making improvements to the actual park, the second week were did things such as constructing and sign, painting skate decks, and adding to our TikTok. Early in the week, we made a wooden Andover Skate Park sign that we will drill to a tree on the path that we cleared out to the park. Towards the latter half, when our decks came in, we turned our focus towards painting them. Another thing that we were fortunate enough to have plenty of was just straight-up skate sesh. With the park cleaned up and Sams longboard's arrival, we all had a board to skate on. We took advantage of this as we skated around campus and hit the skate park multiple times throughout the week. Malcolm taught Nate how to drop in on a feature as well as Sam how to Ollie. I re

Waking up with a good nights rest always feels amazing. This was partly because today we had our Senior lacrosse game today. Although I mentioned that we were most likely going to apply the resin today, we did not get around to it. Because we did not have classes, as senior varistiy lacrosse captains we had to due some work getting things ready for the game. However, on our way to breakfast we did in fact have a little shred session. Vibes. I hope to get into the art room this weekend to finish up my painting and my skate board deck. I am have currently the Charlotte Skyline painted on it currently but I was thinking of adding a 704 as it is my area number. We working on the other extras as well.

Game Day! Today marks the start of our last series of game and this time it is with Tilton. Today we had a seminar at 11am and a game at early in the afternoon so we had a much lighter day. Our 9 am wakeup brought along hungry stomachs. We got breakfast and went to Greg, discussing what our best choice of resin was. Due to our limitied time until we had to leave for our lacrosse game, we decided to push off the resin application untill tomorrow. We worked on our skateboard decks. To add to that, we also documented that aspect of our day on tiktok. you can check out our tiktok account with the username @carrskatetok. We ended up beating Tilton 10-15.

The boards FINALLY arrived! Earlier the day we skated around with our sign looking for faculty members that could help us or know how to apply resin to the sign. We want to do this so the sign will be able to resist the harsh northern elements but we need to greg to help us choose the right resin. Anyways, we had trouble finding the time to get into the art room to paint our decks. However Corby was having a open studio later that night, so we decided to finish our remaining hours there. We used Acrilic paint for the boards as it was fast drying. Malcolm was able to finish his but I still have some work to do. I hope to get in there sometime in the upcoming days to finish it off so we can put a layer of clear sealant over it.

Today we made significant progress on our skate park sign. Yesterday, with the help of Spencer and Malcolm's advisor Greg, we were able to cut out a piece of wood that fits our specified dimensions. Fortunate enough for us, Spencer allowed us to use the laser engraving machine to decorate this sign. We went to the Tech office below the library, a nice break from the new arrival of hot weather, and got to work setting up our sign. Spencer showed us how to use the computer program as we had to design it on the screen first before it got translated to the board. With help from Spencer's puppy, we started up the machine and went to lunch. The sign turned out really well, to our surprise. We also made a Tiktok of this process. Go check it out at @carrskatetok.

  Today, we started the construction of our skate park sign. Throughout the past few days, we have been deciding what our sign will look like, discussing what type of material, dimensions, and design. We settled on a 28inch by 17inch wooden sign. Sam came up with the idea to laser engrave the sign using a laser printer. He had talked to his comment Spencer about using the one in the computer lab. Fortunate for us, Spencer gave us the green light and the dimensions that we had to work within in order for it to fit in the printer. Malcolm brought us over to the woodshop as his advisor, Greg, gave us some lumber to work with. Hayden and Greg helped us cut the board to our preferred dimensions. We plan to make progress on laser engraving our sign. We also hope to add a coat of sealant to shield it from the weather.

 Week one of Senior Project is in the books! Thoughrought the week we have made multiple steps to improve the skate park and it is nice to see our progress come together. Prior to our efforts the skate park was not in an ideal state. There were hazardous rocks skattered across the pavement, weeds growing out of every crack and crevasses, and inches of dirt in every corner. Cleaning the park was no easy job, however we all need to do some manual labor from time to time to keep us honest. There is still some work need to be done but its definetly looks a lot better than when we started. We were originally planning on building our skate boards the first week, however due to a delay in the shipping, we were not able to start our first week. So instead, we focused on cleaning up the park on our first week. I do not know the exact date, however I know that our blank decks are getting in sometime early this week. I'm excited to work on theses and decorate them. I have a couple good ideas

     Today is Game Day, however we unfortuantely lost. We played Brewster at their place on lake winnepasake and it was beautiful. It reminded me of the summer and Lake Chautauqua so I was set in a good mood. This morning we were able skate around campus and to the skate park, however we did not have loads of time due to our early departure. One improvement that we agreed on adding to the skatepark is a cool sign. Jill bought us materials and we plan on using wood from Greg. We were split between using metal or wood, however we all setteled on the idea of wood. We also came up with ideas on how we will decorate it. 

Today was a fantastic day. I am a sucker for warm weather, and it was sooo nice outside throughout the day. We finished up some our work on the path from the previous day. In addition, we also started breaking up and removing dirt that has built up in the crack and crevasses throughout the park. I also got in a nice thorough workout over at the gym. Although we didn't spend as much time on the cleanup as we had done in days past, we supplemented our time with other activities. The black flies weren't as bad today because there was some wind that worked to blow them away. We also made a TikTok that compiled videos of us cleaning up the park from the past two days. You can check it out through our TikTok handle @carrskatetok

  Today we went back out to the skate park to expand our progress from the prior day. However, before everything, I started out the day with a nice, big, healthy breakfast. Again, the maintenance crew let us use some of their equipment (rakes, shovels, brooms), and we headed on over to the skate park. Today we focused on clearing up the path that leads to the skate park. We cleared it from debris such as leaves, rocks, and sticks. The black flies were AWFUL, swarming our faces every second we weren't swatting our hand. But we still managed to have a good time with a shred sesh on our skateboards after

     Today was our first real day of clean-up. We were fortunate enough to have maintence at our backs as they provided us with necessary supplies to kickstart our project. We collected brooms, rakes, and shovels and headed on over to the skate park to get started. Ben Bartoldus, our mentor joined us today because it was his day off. We made significant progress on the skate park, shoveling, raking, and sweeping dirt and leaves that had build up in every crack and crevasse. We also noticed that many of the transitions from the park features to the ground had very large cracks that made riding skateboards quite sketchy if you didnt know what you were doing. To fix this, we plan to get some sealent (looking into exactly what we need) that will make these transitions smoother and less treacherous. Overall, we made some solid progress today on cleaning up our skate park.

     Today my group and I woke up at around 9:00 today to kickstart our first day of senior project. I gotta admit, it is really nice to not have to take any more classes. Its was huge burden that was lifted off my shoulders. We went to the mailroom and till Jill to start planning our skate board construction. We have ordered blank decks that we will paint and turn into working skate boards by adding trucks, wheels, bearings, griptape, and any other necessities. I am curious to see how this will turn out. We also skated over to the skate park by Andover Elementary and hung out there for some time. It is nothing impressive but the features that it offers are ideal for skaters just starting out. We made our first tiktok, the first of many, that showed the park before its restoration and cleanup. For anyone curious on checking out this tiktok, the accounts name is @carrskatetok. With that being said, our first senior project day was a fun and production experience.