Eagle Scout Project

Background

My Eagle Scout Project was an opportunity for me to lead a group of Scout in helping better my community. For my project I designed and lead a group of scouts in building two helmet cubbies for a local little league field. The previous cubbies had clearly deteriorated due to the rain and normal use. I made sure to keep these points of failure in my mind when designing the new cubbies.

This project was a big opportunity for me to show off my leadership skills I had developed and learned while being a Boy Scout and having held several leadership positions within my troop.

Designing and Manufacturing

When designing the cubbies, I wanted to ensure that they appeared the same on the outside, but that internally they were much stronger and able to standup to being outside in the "rampant" California weather. To amend these issues I planned to use Marine Grade Plywood to reduce the amount of deterioration overtime, and bending aluminum caps to fit overtop the cubbies to reduce the affects of water build up on top of the cubbies. Additionally I slotted each of the interior panels so that they would slide into one another, and increase the strength of the overall cubby.

In order to actual manufacture both of these cubbies, I enlisted the help of my fellow Scouts. I organized a date, location, and time, and prepared all the materials for us to all sand, paint, and finish the cubbies. This required lots of coordination and planning to ensure all the tools and supplies would be ready and available for us to start working. Prior to our workday I used a circular saw and my small portable table saw to cut the sheets 4'x8' plywood sheets down to the correct dimensions. This preparation allowed the workday to go smoothly with minimal problems.

After having sanding and painting all of the panels, it was time to assemble them together. Thanks to my slot design, this step was simple and just involved screwing the outer casing together and locking the internal slotted panels to the casing using some more screws.

Lastly, I cut and bent the aluminum roofs. I began by drawing out all the cuts I would have to make, and scoring over them with a utility knife and straight edge. This allowed me to bend and fatigue the metal until it tore down the score line. I then bent the metal around the top of the cubbies, and fastened it on using some short roofing tacks. I then filled away any sharp edges, and gazed upon my completed creations.

Installing and Finalizing

After having worked for weeks to assemble, prime, paint, and finish all of the cubbies, I went with a few scouts to finally install them. However, upon removing the old cubbies, the bolts holding them on completely snapped. It appeared that the bolts had been so completely rusted that they snapped as we tried to remove the nuts holding the cubbies to the wall. This required another week of emailing back and forth with the community center, contacting someone who could install new bolts, and then organizing another day to install the cubbies.

However, after having the new bolts installed, we were able to try again and finally install the cubbies. This time it was much more straightforward, the only change in the procedure had been to cover the new bolts in petroleum jelly to prevent them from deteriorating again. To get the positions of each bolt, we used a large piece of cardboard that we pushed each bolt through, giving us a template we could use to mark the location of each bolt on the cubbies. We then drilled the holes and, with some force, the cubbies slid onto the bolts and stood proudly on the wall.

This was an extremely fun and memorable experience for me. The opportunity to engineer something to help improve my community filled me with joy. Additionally, being ably to do this with my fellow Scouts who I had know for nearly a decade made the experience that much more fulfilling. I hope to continue to use my engineering knowledge to help people in the future, and continue to better the world around me.

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