The Crookston High School’s Community Projects class is always working to create new and improved projects for the community and the school, and recently, a team of four students came together to add another completed project to the school. Crookston High School students Evan Christensen, Mason Owens, Elliot Bartrum, and Eric Coauette built a new front admissions desk at the entrance of the High School.
Community Projects class teacher Travis Oliver always believed that the front desk used to collect admissions for basketball, volleyball, and other sports games was too dull and in need of an upgrade and assigned the team of juniors and seniors to make a new and improved desk. Senior Mason Owens took the lead on the project, conducting the planning and main construction of the table. “We designed it to look like a figure of a ship. That was the idea behind it.” Senior Mason Owens explains, “If you feel the wood on the top, it feels uneven like the deck of a pirate ship. The top is made of hickory wood with hickory corner posts and alder wood on the sides with shiplap joints to connect the boards together.” Senior Evan Christensen assisted in cutting the boards and painting with Junior Elliot Bartrum, and Senior Eric Coauette helped with staining and applying polyurethane to the final project.
Owens then went into the details of the process of building the desk and some of the new additions he and his team added to it to improve it from the original desk. “First, we built the framework, using the same construction techniques as if we were building a wall in a house. We then added the sides with the shiplap and the corners and the top, where we biscuited and joined it together with glue.” Owens explained, “On the inside, it’s all plywood-backed and painted black, so it’s all shadowed out when you look in there. We added shelves on the inside to help hold purses or money containers for the people running admissions.” Other features added to the desk is a metal Pirate sign attached to the front and the addition of wheels to the legs of the desk that can make it easier for people to move if they need to and position it in any way they would like, but this led to some problems the team had to overcome as they were building it. “We had trouble with the wheels at first because we made a measuring mistake, and the cut was too high, so we had to adjust the legs.” Owens explained, “But when we put the wheels on, it was “tippy” so we had to figure out how to balance the legs so it wouldn’t rock, but we were able to fix it, and other than that, building it was pretty slick.” The team also had the challenge of working short-handed for a while as Senior Eric Coautte was away during some of the construction.
All four students agreed that the project came out well and believe that the admissions collectors will enjoy the new features they added to it. They reported that they also have more projects in store for the rest of the year, including a new display case for the Leo Club for all of their awards they received over the years, according to Owens. Junior Elliot Bartrum is working on a new scrape wood table that will be given away to a local business in a raffle. We will continue to check back in with the Community Projects class and its students when they have the latest projects completed.
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