As the table Saw buzzes, sawdust flies as the Boards are cut for cabinetry II students’ annual personal projects. From desks to dog ramps students are allotted $150 worth of lumber to build and keep whatever they can imagine using the knowledge that they have gained from cabinetry I to build their custom piece.
Cabinetry teacher Anthony Mashaw looks forward to the project annually. “I look forward to doing that every year. It’s one of my favorite projects because you get to see what everybody wants to work on and you get to see if anybody’s learned anything”.
Seniors Austin Valdes and Haley Dendy worked together to sand down boards that will be used to make a desk for their project. Valdes pointed out that it was a great opportunity to gain experience through applying already learned knowledge and even more importantly, you get free stuff.
“I thought that was a great opportunity to get a custom-made piece of furniture for absolutely no cost to me,” said Valdes.

Senior Joshua Bowen also decided to build a desk, however, his wood choice was mahogany instead of oak. Josh chose to use mahogany due to a personal preference.
“I love the darker look of the mahogany, as opposed to some of the other choices that were available. I had to make a small desk though, because the mahogany costs more.”
Sophomore Warren Brown decided to choose a rather unorthodox design for his project. Brown chose to make a curved headphone holder, he did this by cutting extremely thin sheets of wood. He then layered the thin slits in wood glue until it was a quarter inch thick, then placed the glued wood into a premade mold and left it to sit overnight.
“Mr. Mashaw helped me come up with the design and make the mold and he helped me clamp it,” Brown said. “The real hard part was cutting it down to size, and then polishing it up. The problem is because of the weird curve. It was hard to trim the edges off cleanly.”