Drilling Begins

We all met in the workshop at 07h30 this morning to begin drilling holes in our C-section for the balustrades.

We began the morning by talking to Peter Kesley (the workshop manager at Wits University) and briefing him on our project and our design for the beerhall. He’s a really knowledgeable man and I really get the feeling that he enjoys imparting his knowledge and experience with students who are eager and willing to learn from him.

We had a really good production line happening with Catherine marking the various hole positions on the steel. Guy was next in the production line- he drilled the 5mm pilot holes and then lastly I drilled the 12mm holes, with the help of Robyn, who held the steel in position and applied cutting paste to each of the holes that I drilled.

Drilling began in the workshop. Started at 07h30 and finished at 10h30.
Had a great production line- Catherine marked the position of the holes on the steel, Guy drilled the 5mm pilot holes, I drilled the 12mm holes with the help of Robyn who carried the steel and applied cutting paste to each of the holes I drilled.

The process of drilling was very quick and we were done by about 11h00. We then took along a sample piece of steel to site with us for the purposes of marking off the hole positions on the concrete structure.

Guy bought along a really fancy and incredibly useful piece of land surveying machinery that assisted us marking out the holes on the structure. This process went smoothly and when that was done it was time for us to start drilling the holes.

We borrowed a cordless pneumatic drill from Richard at Fischer to drill approximately 80 holes in the structure. This was a really great piece of machinery although, being battery powered, the drill could go on forever and we had to keep stopping to charge the battery.