Video: OK, so he had a lot of help from his dad, but this Year 3 student’s school project — a wooden model of the Steel Bridge in Portland — is totally awesome. It has all the moving parts of the real bridge; both the lower and upper decks can be lifted to make way for boats on the river.
The duo made the drawings of the Steel Bridge in AutoCAD and then used a CNC router to cut out the pieces. Frank Howarth, woodworker and father of the year, explains:
We cut the pieces from ¼ inch birch plywood with an 1/8 inch router bit. We glued and pin nailed the pieces together to create the bridge. The model moves like the real bridge – the lower and upper decks can move independently out of the way of boats on the river.