Not your average office table

  • Published
  • By Airman Ashlyn J. Correia
  • 157th Air Refueling Wing Public Affairs
PEASE AIR NATIONAL GUARD BASE, N.H. --  Two new Airmen assigned to the 157th Maintenance Group recently completed a project that resulted in a new addition to the Aircraft Structural Maintenance office here.

Airman First Class Kevin Canney and Airman First Class Margaret Wilcox, both aircraft structural maintenance apprentices, spent their 90 days of on the job training designing, fabricating and painting an aircraft wing that just so happens to serve as a a new table in the office.

"I asked if we could build something that had more meaning to it, something that we could use in the shop not just throw it away," said Canney.

Due to the fact there was no aircraft maintenance for the shop at the time, a project needed to be created to help the young Airmen train during their on-job training and to complete as many tasks on their upgrade training to craftsman, or five-skill level.

"They have a 90 day period to get as trained as possible," said Staff Sgt. Andrew Morrison, an aircraft structural maintenance craftsman. "There was no better task then to build an aircraft wing."

Many considerations had to be taken when designing the wing.

"You have to think about how it would sit on the floor and balance and what shape you want it to be, there are all sorts of possible designs for it," said Wilcox. "Eventually we all came up with something that would look cool."

The table itself is unique, not because it's a wing, but because it's made from recycled materials.

"The vast majority of this project, minus the latches for the doors is all scrap materials, including the paint," said Morrison." There was very little waste involved."

The project took about four weeks to complete, including a setback they had when it came to painting. The project was done almost entirely by Canney and Wilcox under the supervision of their three trainers. Tech. Sgt. Frank Stephens, a structural repair technician assigned to the maintenance group, did help with some of the riveting on the trim of the table.

The hard work paid off for these two Airmen, because the shop now has a fully functional table that looks like it just came off an aircraft.

"To see it go from something totally on paper to just being here in the shop is really cool," said Wilcox.