Makershed Project

I bought this kit called "Soldering: Time" from the Makershed. Makershed is a company that has do it yourself projects, some of them hard and some of them a little tougher. They make these kits wher you buy the parts an then you put it together. I picked the watch kit so that my son and I could try it during Summer vacation.

This is the first week of Summer vacation, so I wanted to pick a few things to do with him that we could make together. Earlier in the week it was paper airplanes of Star Wars ships that  got him at his school book sale the last week of school.

After Emma went down for her nap, we cleared off the table and I got out the soldering iron. I have not used the soldering iron so this was a bit intimidating to use an instrument that could A) Burn me or Jack, B) Burn the table or C) Both.

It turns out, I am a natural. The soldering spots were tiny and looked very neat, like a machine had done them. I was quite pleased with myself.

After assembling the unit, it was time to put it together in its housing and attach the screws and wrist strap.

Jack learned about soldering, clipping the leads, the circuit board and some of the things that go on the board. The only problem is that after all of this, it doesn't work.

The LED display only shows "12:00" but doesn't reset or let us set the time. But we did learn some good stuff. We are going to take it apart and see if we can figure out what went wrong. Sometimes trouble-shooting is the best way to learn about something, it also gives you are real appreciation for the process and taking pride in your work.