Welcome to English as a Second Language podcast number one thousand and eleven.
Building with wood and metal.
This is English as a Second Language podcast episode one thousand eleven.
I'm your host, Dr Jeff McQuillan, coming to you from the Center for Educational Development in beautiful Los Angeles, California.
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This episode is a dialogue between Hugo and Shauna about...
Building things with wood and metal.
Let's get started.
Wow.
When you said that you did some woodworking on the weekends, I thought you meant refinishing furniture.
But this...
This is a real workshop, and you're actually building furniture.
Yeah, this is what I'm working on right now.
I'm building a dining table and chairs.
The grain is beautiful on this piece of hardwood.
It certainly looks better than the plywood furniture I have in my house.
What is all this?
Just some basic tools, saws, chisels and drills.
And what is all this metal for?
I'm adding some grill work for the back of the chairs.
I don't usually do metal work, but I'm keeping it simple.
This doesn't look simple.
These pieces have been welded together.
And is that used for soldering?
You got it.
When all is said and done, I'll have a new dining room set with a large table and eight chairs.
Wow, I'm impressed.
Want to try your hand at it?
No thanks.
You see these ten fingers?
I'm rather fond of them.
This episode is all about building things.
We begin with Hugo saying to Shauna Wow, when you said you did some woodworking on the weekends, I thought you meant refinishing furniture.
Wow is an expression of surprise.
Hugo is surprised when he sees what Shauna is doing.
Shauna is doing some woodworking.
Woodworking is making things out of wood, the material.
Wood, of course, comes from trees.
You cut the tree down in order to get the wood that you use to build things with.
Shauna is interested in woodworking, and she does it on the weekends, on Saturdays and Sundays.
Hugo thought that Shauna had been refinishing furniture.
To refinish furniture is just to make the surface or outside of the furniture look more beautiful, to do something to the wood in order to make it look better.
This is very different than actually building something, of course.
What Shauna has been doing is building things, not just changing their appearance on the outside.
Hugo says, but this, this is a real workshop, and you're actually building furniture.
A workshop is a large room where people do work, especially physical things like building furniture or repairing motors.
The term workshop is also now used in other ways situations where we're talking about an area or a place where everyone is working on the same thing.
Sometimes we use this word for a type of meeting, a type of educational meeting, where everyone gets together and learn something new or applies the knowledge that they have to make something.
It may not be something physical, however.
Here it is something physical.
It's furniture made out of wood.
Shauna says, yeah, this is what I'm working on right now.
I'm building a dining table and chairs.
A dining D-I-N-I-N-G table is a table that you would put in a large room in your house and you would eat there at that table.
It's the table you would use for eating.
To dine, D-I-N-E, means to eat.
Shauna is working on a dining table and chairs.
Hugo says the grain is beautiful on this piece of hardwood.
Grain G-R-A-I-N, when we're talking about wood, refers to the lines in the patterns on the surface of a piece of wood.
If you look at a piece of wood that has been cut from a tree, you will see that there are lines in the wood.
These lines are called the grain of the wood.
Hardwood is a special kind of wood that is very heavy.
That is typically used for making houses, for example, or constructing things that you need to be very solid, to be very stable.
We use hardwood very commonly in houses for the floors of the house.
My house, for example, has hardwood flooring, meaning there are pieces of wood that you walk on.
Now, of course, most floors are made of some kind of wood.
Hardwood is a special kind of wood that is, well, very hard.
Hugo says, it certainly looks better than the plywood furniture I have in my house.
Plywood P-L-Y-W-O-O-D is a cheap, that is to say inexpensive board that is made from a flat piece of wood.
Usually it's used by gluing different wood materials together.
Plywood is not very strong.
It's not very hard.
It's used often in order to save money because it's inexpensive.
It was very popular in the 1960s and 70s for people to put plywood on the walls of their rooms inside of their houses.
So you wouldn't be painting your walls.
You would have this wood.
In my house where I grew up, in the basement in the bottom part of the house, we had plywood on the walls.
That was very popular in the 1970s.
It's not as popular anymore today.
Hugo says his furniture is made from this cheap wood.
Then he asks, what is all this?
He's obviously looking at or pointing to something.
Shauna says, just some basic tools.
Saws, chisels, and drills.
Tools are instruments you use in order to make something.
A saw, S-A-W, is a tool that is used to cut wood.
It has little sharp points on it, what we call teeth, just like the teeth in your mouth.
A chisel, C-H-I-S-E-L, is a long tool that has a sharp end on it.
Usually it's made of metal.
We use a chisel to remove small sections of the wood.
A sculptor such as Michelangelo uses a chisel in order to remove pieces of marble or stone in order to make the sculpture.
Here we're talking about a wood chisel, not a chisel used with a very hard rock such as marble.
A drill, D-R-I-L-L, is a tool that puts a hole into something, in this case, into a piece of wood.
The verb to drill can mean to put a hole into something like wood.
It can also mean to practice something over and over again.
If you play basketball or any sport, your coach probably has you do certain drills, certain exercises over and over again.
We also use this verb sometimes in school when we give students things to practice over and over again, often used with things that teachers want students to memorize.
Hugo then asked Shauna, and what is all this metal for?
Metal, M-E-T-A-L, is...
Something like steel, iron, silver, gold, copper, brass.
All of these are examples of metals.
Shauna then explains, I'm adding some grill work for the back of the chairs.
Grill work, G-R-I-L-L-W-O-R-K.
Here refers to metal bars or wires that cross each other in order to make a flat surface.
So the back of the chair is actually going to have this grill work on it.
The grill work will be used basically as the back of the chair.
A chair has three parts.
It has a seat where you sit on, where you put your behind on, or your butt, we would say informally on.
It has legs that are on the ground or that are placed on the ground.
And it has a back typically where you can lean back on.
You can put the back of your body on the back of the chair.
This chair is going to have grill work made of metal on it, which doesn't sound very comfortable to me, but it's not my chair.
Shauna says, I usually don't do metal work.
That is, she usually doesn't work with metal.
Hugo says, this doesn't look simple.
It does not look simple.
These pieces have been welded together.
And is that used for soldering?
Hugo's looking at the metal grill work and saying that different pieces appear to have been welded W-E-L-D-E-D together.
To weld means to join two pieces of metal by making them very hot together so that they are able to be connected, so that when they are cool they are then permanently connected.
Solder S-O-L-D-E-R the L is silent is a material that you use To connect two pieces of metal together that might be difficult to connect directly using welding.
Solder is a soft material that you heat up.
And when you heat it up, it melts.
And then when it cools down, it stays solid.
And that's how you connect the two pieces of metal.
Shauna says you got it, meaning that's correct.
When all is said and done means eventually, in the end.
This expression is often used when we are trying to give a summary say of a story, or when we are trying to tell someone the final result of something without giving them all the details.
Hugo says, wow, I'm impressed.
To be impressed means that you really think it's wonderful.
You are really surprised at something in a good way.
Shauna says, want to try your hand at it?
To try your hand at something means to try to do something for the first time, especially if it is difficult and if you don't have very much experience doing it.
Hugo says, no thanks.
You see these ten fingers?
I'm rather fond of them.
To say you are fond, F-O-N-D, of something means you like something.
You think something is good and interesting.
It's an expression that you still hear in conversational English, although it isn't as common now perhaps, as it was 50 years ago.
Hugo says he's rather fond of his fingers.
Rather here means very.
Why does he say this?
Well, because he is saying that if he tries to do what Shauna does, he may cut off one of his fingers.
And because he's fond of his fingers, that is, he likes his fingers he doesn't want to try his hand at woodworking or at metalwork.
Now let's listen to the dialogue, this time at a normal speed.
Wow.
When you said that you did some woodworking on the weekends, I thought you meant refinishing furniture.
But this, this is a real workshop, and you're actually building furniture.
Yeah, this is what I'm working on right now.
I'm building a dining table and chairs.
The grain is beautiful on this piece of hardwood.
It certainly looks better than the plywood furniture I have in my house.
What is all this?
Just some basic tools, saws, chisels, and drills.
And what is all this metal for?
I'm adding some grill work for the back of the chairs.
I don't usually do metal work, but I'm keeping it simple.
This doesn't look simple.
These pieces have been welded together, and is that used for soldering?
You got it.
When all is said and done, I'll have a new dining room set with a large table and eight chairs.
Wow, I'm impressed.
Want to try your hand at it?
No thanks.
You see these ten fingers?
I'm rather fond of them.
We are very fond of the wonderful scripts here on ESL Podcast written by our wonderful script writer, Dr Lucy Say.
From Los Angeles, California, I'm Jeff McQuillan.
Thank you for listening.
Come back and listen to us again right here on ESL.
English as a Second Language podcast is written and produced by Dr Lucy Say, hosted by Dr Jeff McQuillan.
Copyright 2014 by the Center for Educational Development.
