The Lakes District Secondary School’s metal class has been getting a lot of practical work experience with work being done by the class for PAPC as well as the Burns Lake Community Forest (BL Comfor).
Recently, the metal class by Blaine Hastings, worked on a project for creating a batch of specialized tools for the BL Comfor.
“One of the landscape hazard abatement wildfire activities that we are trying to do is hazard abatement assessment post-harvest and pre-harvest and that requires a certain type of tool called a Go No-Go gauge and I wondered if the metal class could do something for us and Blaine Hastings said he could,” said BL Comfor General Manager, Frank Varga.
The BL Comfor will be handing out the gauges to their contractors and according to Varga, being able to provide these is a big deal since the tool, being very specialized, is not widely available.
“I had them make 20 pieces and it is really neat how it all came about. This is just a way to engage the class locally and get them interested in what we do in forestry. Something like this could create interest in what we are doing,” said Varga.
Hastings, who teaches the shop class is also very happy with the kind of work his class is getting from the community. Late last year, the shop class worked on a massive order for the PAPC. The class was able to learn many metal shop basics such as cutting, bending, drilling, grinding, painting and came to the table with the official PAPC local custom mount.
“We made a prototype for DTU and they liked it and so they ordered 40 mounts. They ordered 50 more from us. So we sold them to DTU and they went ahead and retailed them. We bought some amazing equipment for the metal shop with those funds,” said Hastings.
Some of the mounts also ended up getting sold to contractors working at the Kitimat end of the project. The funds that the metal shop earned during this project helped them with their budget for supplies and materials. They were able to purchase a new chop saw among other items.
“When things work out well with various community groups and businesses, it does help us provide for and purchase pieces of equipment that we normally wouldn’t be able to afford for sure,” said Hastings.
Hastings also said that the metal shop had been cutting signage for people such as monograms and things to hang as decorations for several years and now the local mountain biking group would soon have them work on some bike racks according to him.
“It is real-world stuff where the students are actually doing some manufacturing and getting the chance to work on things and use cutting-edge technology and that’s really great,” he said.
Priyanka Ketkar
Multimedia journalist
@PriyankaKetkar
priyanka.ketkar@ldnews.net
Like us on Facebook and follows us on Twitter.
