A society needs different people holding different profession so that they can contribute their various skills to the development of their society. But if you look at Muslims they tend to obtain popular and traditional business that give an immediate reward. then, our society could not be developed as a progressive nation and can be left behind anyway. thus, we should try to train our youths of various professions and skills without further delay, so let's have a look at various types of profession including carpenter.
Carpenter is a skill person who are dealing with wood. Their jobs also, to build something as bigger as building and as small as the table desk you are using now. A carpenter also can be classified as an inventor because they make something new from raw materials such as nails and woods. They make an effort using their creativity while dealing with wood to produce something attractive. Interesting and fun, that are the two most feeling while we watch a show on television about woodworking. Why is it this feeling inside you? This is because you want to know more and more about woodworking. There are many types of carpenter, such as finish carpenter, trim carpenter, ship carpenter, cooper, cabinet maker and others. In some country like Japan and Germany there are training school and programs that are develop by their government. They give their citizen certificate such as degree and diploma.
Furthermore, they also train them to be a professional carpenter while they still young in Universities and schools. Sometimes carpenter need to follow local rules such as where they can used certain materials likes wood. Most of the carpenters follow the same basic steps when getting ready for a job. They must design the product that they wants to sell. Design includes measuring, marking, and arranging materials. The carpenter then cuts and shapes the material. They also use different hand and power tools such as chisels, saws, and drills. Finally, the carpenter joins the items together with nails, staples, or glue. They use tape measures or framing squares to increase the accuracy of their work. We can see they used their creativity and experiences to produce new product from many raw materials. Woodworking or carpentry is sometimes stressful. It often involves standing for a long time, climbing, bending, and kneeling. To be a successful carpenter we need to face this difficulties and learnt to be patients to get the good result. They also risk their life from getting hurt such as slipping or falling, or from working with sharp or rough tools such as saw and hammer. Actually, after the carpenter finish their works to make a new product, they can sell the product. Carpentry or woodworking is also part of business. We can gain profit from our hard work and from our creativity.
The most important thing to produce quality products, a carpenter must know and understanding the properties of wood. Without a tree ,wood workers wouldn't have anything to build from. It’s a shame however, that so little of tree can be used for furniture. The trunk of the tree is where woodworkers get wood for producing good quality products. It seem obvious but it will be surprised about many of the woodworkers don't know why wood acts the way it does. Actually wood changes with the weather and the stresses put upon it. Wood can expands and contracts and can be twist, wrap, or cup depending on the stresses that exist within it. Wood Have two categories that are hardwoods and softwoods. There many types of softwoods such as Cedar, Fir, Pine and Redwood. Other than that, we can see many woodworker loves to work with hardwood such as Ash, Birch, Cherry, Mahogany, Maple and other types of hardwoods. This is
because it gives the variety of colours, textures and grain patterns makes for some beautiful and interesting-looking products. Knowing each types of wood can be able produce a good quality product and can get the same level of beauty of the product without worry thinking the shape will be changing because of the woods we used. To deal with woods we need tools such as nails, hammer, saw, chisels, marking knife and other tool.
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Woodworking is one of the most dangerous work that can get into you. So being a carpenter is like you risk your life to produce something attractive with your own hand. As the result, safety must comes first. Wood is harder than a bone. You need to be careful while dealing with woods. The tools that you used to cut and shape the wood may do real damages fast if you happen to slip and make a mistake while dealing with woods. All the tools are designed to separate wood fibers, so imagine what these tools can do to fingers, hands, arms and so on if mistake happen while dealing with it. Then to minimize the dangers you need to protecting yourself from injury. Use all of your sense, ears, eyes so that you can prevent yourself from dangers. You also need eye protection when work with woods. This is because dust and wood chips constantly fly around. So it may get in your eyes while you are working. So the eye protection is important while you working with woods. Check the glasses, goggles and face shields either it safe to wear or not. Other than that, you also need hearing and breathing protection. Get earplugs and earmuffs so that you can protect your ears. Sometimes while you working the tools you may used produce a loud sound and more loud from a rock concert you ever hear. So if you wants to hear clearly after ten years, wear ear protection while working. Breathing protection also important because it prevent the dust to get into your respiration system. The dust from wood may affect your respiration system and you can get asthma, coughing, sneezing and dermatitis. make sure put your dust masks. It created for you to wear it while cut or sand woods. Keep in your mind safety is important and the first priority is to make your workshop is the most safe places. Organized yourself and your workshop to help you dealing with sharp and dangerous tools. As the result, you can do the woodworking in safety without worry and keep being careful while used the sharp tools.
Other than knowing about categories of wood, we also must have knowledge about how wood is cut. Woods can be cut a log through three main ways. First is through and through. This type of cutting involves progressive cut the log from one side to the other. Cutting a log through and through results in variety of boards. More than that is Plain-sawn, the simplest cutting the log from the outside to the centre on all four side. It gives in plain-sawn and rift-sawn boards. The third ways is quarter-sawn. This cutting is the least efficient way to cut a log, but it produces some of the best boards. Quarter-sawn boards are more stable and attractive than the other types of boards, but they are much expensive. They are also unavailable for some types of woods. To choose the right ways to cut the woods is depend on our budget and the availability of the woods are supplied. This is because the harder the woods like Mahogany and Maple it cost more than soft woods. No matter how this three ways are used, it can produces some great woodworking projects as long as the plan ahead when it cut.
When dealing with wood, you will find cracks or dents, checks or splits, cups or twist, shakes or wraps, or any others combination of these. No woods or boards is perfect. So we need to dealing with this defects. We must faced two defects while dealing with woods and boards. First, is defects that easy to deal with. This include knots, splits, cracks and check. To prevent this problem you just plan the way you cut the board for the projects with these defects in mind. Furthermore, the second defects is defects that aren't easy to deal with. This include wraps, twists, or bows. These types of defects are the result of uneven drying and working with them is time-consuming and often frustrating us when dealing with this boards and woods. The best ways when you see the lumberyard that is wrapped, twisted or bowed, set it aside and choose
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other boards. Moreover, while you faced the defects at home and find some of your boards with these defects, don't throw it away. Sit in your workshop and fix it. It will take some work but you can used the boards or woods again without throw it away.
Then we make sure the woods or the boards is in good condition without any dent, cracks, checks, or splits, we can start measure the product we want to build. Measuring and marking the woods needs you some tools such as measuring tape, rulers, try square, milter square, and others. You must measure the woods or boards that you used accurately to creating a piece of furniture or your product. Unfortunately, it is incredibly easy to make mistake when measuring. When you measuring the woods you must pay a full attention on your woods and the measurement. If not you need to fix the product that you produce or re-cut the woods or the boards. Don’t ever try to get a short cut while measuring and marking the woods or the boards because this step is very important and may reflect your whole product that need to be processed by you. A measuring tape is used essentially when you marking a long wood or boards. This is because you need to handle with ten feet long boards or woods. The recommended for the tape is twelve-foot tapes because they are small and light. When you measuring, you noticed that the hook on the end moved a little. This is not the tape fault because it is allowed you to get accurate measurement while you are measuring in your product or from the outside.
When you measure on the inside, you also need to add in the width of the tape measure to get the measurement. Its size written on the back of the tape measure. When you are dealing with measuring angles you need to use squares. After making the initial mark for length, you probably need to mark a line across the board or one at another angle. This is when the squares is needed. There are many types of squares such as try squares, milter squares, sliding bevel squares, combination squares and framing squares. But the common and basic use for the squares is try square. It is for a basic angle mark. A try square must crosscut boards by hand or if want to check a corner for square. Although squares with rosewood handles are beautiful, choose one with either metal or hard plastic if accuracy is important. The try square give various length blades on them, but 12 inches is the most useful. Furthermore, don’t be afraid to return a square if it is not perfectly square.
In addition, after we marking and measuring the woods or the boards we want to use, we will start using the saws to cut it through. There are more than one way to cut a boards or woods that we discuss. We use handsaw and other types of it. There are several component of the teeth of a saw that a carpenter must know. First is set is on most saw teeth. Second is shape or rip teeth are designed to cut the board along the grain. The last or the third one is size that cover both number of teeth per inch. When we start to cut we must know the step to using a saw. While you hold the saw with your finger pressed against the side of the handle to give yourself more control over the direction of the blades as when we are cutting. Then move our arm in a smooth motion to cut the woods. You also must secure the workpiece with a clamp or vise by pressing it down with your knees as you cut. Last support the part of the board that you cutting by holding it as you finish the cut or the waste piece breaks off before you done and tears the woods or the boards. You also need a copying saw while you handling with curve angle. It will help you to cut the curves by hands. Japanese saws have fine teeth and a narrow blade to helps you cutting the woods or the boards.
After cutting the woods or the boards, now is the time to join them together to make a perfect product. There several tools we need while joining the woods and the boards. There are hammers, mallets, clamps, screw and glue and other types of tools. Hammers is tool that great for driving and pulling nails but it doesn’t substitute for mauls or mallet. Hammers come in many varieties from small finish hammers with lightweight wooden handles to large framing hammers with titanium heads and shafts. They also come with varieties of price. When you used hammer to drive a nail don’t be wimp. Use a committed swinging motion from your elbow and hit the nail with the center of the hammers face. Tapping with a hammer is okay for the first time in order to get the nails set. However, it doesn’t work for driving a nails. Swinging the hammer from your wrist is less accurate and results in missing the nail and hitting your own thumb or your others finger. Managing mauls and mallets is not like handling with hammers. They not suited for hitting other tools or woods. Mauls is actually made of wood and have very large head compared to hammers. Basically it is used to drive chisels. On the other hand, Mallets are made from rubber or plastic and mostly used to tap and joints into place, although many people use them on chisel too.
The last step of woodworking is getting the skinny on sander. We can just purchase the machine in the hardware shop to get a sander machine. A belt sander is the one that we used to make our product smooth and shinny. A belt sander can be remove a ton of wood quickly because the engine used by it more stronger than other. Be careful using the powerful sander and always finish your sanding by hand with a fine paper. So that your product will look attractive and gives the customers a feeling to buy it.
For the last touch up, you can either paint it or not. Some people think wood looks better after it develops a patina. Patinas develop through a process called oxidation. They create a colorthat darker than the raw, freshly sanded wood that the project has right after finish building it. Stains are often used to give the effect of an aged patina right from the start. Stain also used to give a less expensive wood the look of a more expensive one. Sometimes they are used color to even out the color differences in some woods. Paints, on the other habd, are used to give color to a less than beautiful wood.
In woodworking or carpentry world there is a scholar named by Gong Shu Zi or his other name is Lu Ban. To be as great as Lu Ban a master craftsman we need to be like him. He is an outstanding civil engineer and craftsman in Chinese history and was once an official in the civil engineering department. He is a hardworking carpenter that travelled all the way to get knowledge and try harder. He invented many tools we are used now and teaching many of his student about it. Who knew that he can build a wooden bird fly to Chu state to find his sister. Lu Ban also created numerous carpentry tools for the Chinese people, such as the drilling hook, the stone mill, the shovel, dividers, and the ruler. It was said that Lu Ban invented the saw after his finger was cut by a blade of grass. Lu Ban also made the cloud ladder and the nine implements used in warfare. He also made the earliest three-dimensional topographical map, Jiu Zhou Tu, which was highly respected by Chinese emperors in history. Through his inventions, Lu Ban brought great benefits to the people.
The greatness of contribution of Lu ban is not that end, he also said that “Heaven and Earth don’t need the compass or the angle board to make a circle or square". In the real world people need the compass to draw circles and need the angle board to draw squares. We can see how a person from the pass make their own effort to find something new. He has enthusiasm to make their life easier. Hard working and patient is the most valuable thing, when we doing something.
Carpentry taught us about the most important thing in life are love, patient, hardworking, passion in doing something, and to share with other to benefit other person. We can see how Lu Ban teach and shared their knowledge to his student about the tools that he invented. In Islam also it teach their believer to love other person so that we can live in harmony. Islam also taught their believer to make Ukhwah Islamiah that is brotherhood among Muslim. Not only that Ukhwah Imaniah also needed and taught by our prophet. For example to wake a friend to perform solat al-fajr together is one of the Ukhwah Imaniah. So the world of carpentry is one of the way of Islam life. To prove it more from the product a carpenter produced we can sell it to gain profit. Islam encourage their believer to open a business because business is the easy way to get rich under the syariah of Islam. So a Muslim can gain this opportunity to get involved in carpentry and help other people to get blessed from Allah. Other than that, to learned the knowledge about the carpentry is Al-Ilm Al- Fard Al- Kifai to all Muslim. It is under the Al-Ilm Al- Mahdud. That must be acquired by some of the Muslim.Thus every Muslim nation is responsible to ensure that there is enough number of people who master various field of knowledge amongst them including the knowledge about woodworking and carpentry.
As a conclusion, woodworking is the most interesting work. It can be a job or a hobbies for those who have a intuition in arts. Furthermore, it give us strength to cooperate with others and teaches us so many thing about life. As a result, if we do as a hobbies we can save our expenditure to buy new furniture. We can produce our own furniture. So that the money we can buy other thing that is more important. In addition, we also learned to appreciate something valuable to us. We used our own strength to produces our own furniture. Experience from doing woodworking is the most precious thing that someone who interested in arts. The experiences cant never be gain as learn the theories. However it need to try the woodworking and carpentry. Other than that, it also teach us how to be creative as a person. A carpenter actually is a inventor, a designer, a mathematical person, a craftsman and a person who master the types of the woods. It is interesting and excellent job. So it is okay to begin from the start. We can learn more and more to get a better life. All of us start from the bottom and know nothing at all. Then what is the most important to be a successful carpenter is hardworking, patient and tawakkal to Allah because He is the on ly who can help us in what are we doing. So that we can leave in happy and harmony to get blessed by Allah until heaven.[1]
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