Hi, my name is Emily Watson and I am a Home Builders Institute (HBI) student. On the date of August 14th 2012, our instructor, Mark Martin assigned HBI a task for the American Folk Festival (AFF) that is held in Bangor, Maine the weekend of August 24-26, 2012. He told us that we were going to build a floor for the VIP tent for the AFF.  He had already ordered the supplies and we started on the floor the next day.  We had fifteen sheets of ¾” ply wood 68, 1X3’s, 10 lbs of 1-14” screws and 15 gallons of polyurethane.  

The first thing we did was plan out how we were going to make the framing on the bottom.  We made it so that the plywood sheets fit together like a lapped joint, so that the sheets could be screwed together when assembled. We made the top, sides, and bottom flush.  We also put five pieces of bracing in between the perimeter pieces.   We did this on all 15 sheets.  About a week later, we brought them outside to polyurethane them.  We put three coats of poly on each piece.  We let them dry for three days and then laid out tarps and began putting them together.  After some minor adjustments, they fit together perfectly.  We finished putting them together and numbered them so we knew which piece went where when the time would come to assemble them again.  After that we numbered them and piled them up in order. On Friday August 24^th, we loaded the plywood onto a truck and Mr. Martin took six HBI students with him to the AFF. We then set up the floor within the VIP tent.  It took about 20 minutes to set it up.  Then we grabbed a couple of screw guns and began screwing the pieces of plywood together.   Carin Sychterz, Developmental Coordinator of the AFF told Mr. Martin that we did a wonderful job and it looked beautiful.  I had fun doing this project and I hope we have more opportunities like this.