As did mine - but that was in Scotland, and a long time ago. Both woodwork and metalwork were compulsory subjects for the first three years of secondary school. After that you could opt for technical subjects (which included technical drawing and applied mechanics) as one of your courses, with the choice of woodwork or metalwork. So not really different from a secondary modern.
I was aware the order would be delivered in two parts (5m length of handrail and pre-made balluster posts Germany) and (all the bracketry from Newcastle under Lyme) guess which arrived first?
The posts are very nicely factory finished, excellent weld between tube and base flange, they have used flowdrilling to form a ~6mm internal thickness for the M8 tapping.
Clearly I got lucky. Not only was I allowed to do woodwork, I was allowed to do CSE woodwork because the O-level woodwork wouldn't fit with the other O-levels I wanted to do. (The head of department eventually taught me enough technical drawing to let me take the O-level anyway.)
(I'm pretty sure I've used woodwork much more than I would have used metalwork.)
All tube cut (only 40mm spare, so not much for practicing on after all).
Marked (thanks to neighbour with scribe, automatic centre punch and decent set of squares).
Drilled and lightly countersunk (thanks to a friend of a friend with the pillar drill).
Ready for rivnutting tomorrow, so will find out, I think they'll be more or less invisble, banister can be fitted.
Then wait for balustrade glass to arrive mid-week (920x1300x11.5mm, toughened, laminated, sandblasted, polished edges, radiused corners).
Toughened AND laminated??
Jim K
Yes, that seems to be the done thing by all the balustrade installers, overkill perhaps, certainly on the thickness, but I don't want it to even *hint* of flimsiness ...
The two do different things: toughened is a lot harder to break, but when it breaks it just fragments (which in a balcony situation could be very dangerous to people below as well as the balcony users) whilst the laminate interlayer holds broken glass in place. So not overkill IMO
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