Reading the Yeeee-Hah!!! thread, it got to wondering how my high school woodworking experience might differ from others. My impression was that our projects were relatively small compared to other schools, possibly due to overcrowding. We had "Industrial Arts" from grade 7 to 9, age 12 to 14. But anyway, two questions come to mind:
What did you make? What did your teacher make while you were occupied?
I got to make
- candle holders (three pieces of wood, two holes)
- lamp, styled like an old water pump
- model rocket nose cones (our own individual design)
- adjustable record rack (our own collective design) (That's it? Less than I thought after three years! Last year was wasted in a metal shop with a new teacher in a new school. Can't remember even lifting a single tool. Sigh.)
My teacher was making some double-helix carved lampstands. Very inspiring.
Maybe you can give me some age-appropriate ideas that my own children will like to try. So far my 13 year old has had NO formal shop instruction at school. But that's a separate thread.
I made a small, 8 inch tall jewelry box fashioned after an upright piano, with a drawer in the knee area, keyboard, and a lift-off top, lined with felt. I won the coveted Golden Hammer Award, for outstanding student in carpentry, two years running. That was 36 years ago, and I'm looking at both on a nearby shelf right now. We built the first separate classroom on campus in this area that was not done by the county staff. Design was done in the drafting class, carpentry by the woodworking class, and wiring by the electrical class. I was fortunate enough to be in all three. The local area high schools here now build a house on the school grounds each year as a student project. It is then auctioned off to pay for the next one, and someone gets a house for a reasonable price. My son helped build two of them during high school. He is now an electronics engineering student in college. Go figure. Then again, I'm not a carpenter, either.
Jr High shop: step stool* and poorly executed turned black walnut bowl. Asked by instructor to make a new pattern for the sheetmetal scoop project. He was impressed with what I produced, which was nice to hear.
HS shop: group project making toboggans--ply deck, conduit runners, man that thing flew over snow and ice. Made hideously complex desk pigeonhole thing of my own design. Don't know what happened to it over the years.
*That pine stool got a lot of use in parents' house, got it back when swmboII came along. Took weeks in shop class. Whipped out a copy one day recently, cuz the old one was finally cracking to pieces. Guess I've learned something along the way.
Instructor spent his time making one of those lights that responds to music frequencies. Cutting edge, back then.
============== I am now in my 60's and never took woodshop in High School BUT I was lucky enough to take woodshop in Junior High... (Grades 7 8 & 9)
The only thing I remember is some dumb kid ahaking the "can" of glue and dumping it on his own head...
However I did make my Mother a cutting board ...and she used it reliously over the years ...when she died I got it back and it now is "framed" and hung in my wives kitchen... (lol)... I can not cook worth a damn ..unfortunately I learned to hit a baseball in my youth I should have learned how to cook)
Anyway I do have to thank you for bring back some memories of my mother... and I had a good laugh remembering the look on that kids face after he dumped that glue on his head....
I made nothing. No shop in our school. Probably because it was before the iron age and the only tools we had was a rock.
My son made a box with a hinged lid. My grandson made a shelf with a curved pack and angle brackets. It is hanging in the downstairs hallway.
I took a four day course at a Woodcraft store and we made a CD shelf. It is a fairly simple design, but you had to: Select the wood joint plane layout cut curves on the bandsaw scrape and sand round over edges cut a tenon cut a dado fit everything with handplane and chisels drill and dowel one shelf
Ten people to a class and we learned basics of wood movement, sharpening tools, story sticks, safety, saw demos of tool use, etc. Instructor (or his assistant) did all the setups. Finishing was not done in class but some time was spent discussing various finishes.
I would think most high school students would be interesting in having a CD shelf or similar item. this was about 30 hours of class time but could be done in more or less depending on what the kids already know.
Yep. The first semester was tools and material, culminating in a box, a bracket shelf and a spice rack, which I considered a reasonable analog of most furniture. Those who cared made box-jointed drawers, those who didn't made dadoed shelves.
HS made pretty much what they cared to, ranging from Armoire to Futon to - spice racks and chessboards. Grades included "degree of complexity" points.
I made time to help the kids. Some of them made time to help me keep the machines in repair and help in the little kid classes.
The high school I went to had 2 carpentry classes. One was for woodworking (grades 10&12) and the other was more for home building (11&12).
Some projects I got to make in the woodworking shop were:
3 drawer jewlery box
6 in high step stool Router table Some clocks And we did somethings for the school itself
In the Home building shop:
We got to build a scaled down (but almost full scale) model of a house. Get this it was big enough to fit in the shop.
And in my 12th grade year we contacted by a local fire company and built a Fire Saftey House. They could take to local elementry schools. That was probably my best project I ever worked on.
Sun, Feb 20, 2005, 9:36am snipped-for-privacy@iosphere.net (Owen=A0Lawrence) claims: We had "Industrial Arts" from grade 7 to 9, age 12 to 14.
We had SHOP, period. None of this pansy "industrial arts" stuff. Tood shop from grade 4, it was mandatory, up thru grade 12, stopped bing mandatory at grade 9, I believe. Shop covered everything, woodworking, metal working, welding, automotive, all the fun things.
I still have a welded magazine rack, from maybe grade 11-12. And, a solid cherry bookcase, designed, and made by me in grade 10, I believe it was.
Started out in grade 4 with a wall hanging plant holder. Neat lille thing made of wood to hang on the wall, and the "pot" it self, was made from a motor oil can, cut, and soldered. Pretty basic then, apparently pretty advanced now. All hand tools until grade 10, as I recall. Ah yes, we also had the use of a forge, from about grade 7 or
Made a cold chisel with that, should still have that too, it was/is as good, or better, than any you can buy.
I remember sanding the tip of a finger or two off, in about grade 8 or 9. "Everyone", including my parents, put it down to carelessness on my part. Which it was. Lesson learned? Don't do that again, and I haven't. The shop teacher also demonstrated kickback on the table saw, when I was in grade 9 (that's we moved into the new school, and had a saw available). He said, don't do that, and stand out of the way, just in case. I listened, and no kickback, and stand out of the way, just in case. Then he proceeded to turn us loose, and went in his office, and smoked his pipe. We survived nicely.
Back then it was considered that if you did something stupid, it was your own fault if you got hurt, especially if you had already been told not to do it. Nowadays, it seems to be the norm to put the blame on someone else for your own stupidity, regardless of how many times you've been told not to do it.
JOAT Intellectual brilliance is no guarantee against being dead wrong.
Woodshop & metalshop was in the 8th grade. Made a few small things I can't even remember, and a potters whell for mum. It had a kick arm to keep a flywheel going. Metalshop was a center punch and the "biggie" was a firewood carrier/holder. It was a circular piece of sheet steel with 4 hunks of chopped off heavy aluminum angle rivetted to it for feet and a beefy hunk of aluminum bar rolled into a circle that wrapped arount the curved steel carrier for a handle. It was also rivetted to the steel shell. The wood carrier is still in mum's house though no more in use as she had a NG insert put in the fireplace. She's too old (93) to use the potters wheel, and it disappeared a few years ago, hopefully to one of her great-grandchildren.
Mostly baseball bat paddles for the other coaches in the district ... this was about 47 years ago and, unlike today, discipline was applied topically to the area where it was thought likely to make the most memorable impression.
middle school: a small shelf consisting of a board and 2 plexiglass shelves. disappeared. fox head sihoulette (sp??) which I still have. In high school, for the beginning class, everyone made a bedside table out of wood of their choice (mine was pine :). I still have it, and now I understand why I got a poor grade on it! :). For the advanced class, I made this humungous computer desk out of oak ply and oak facing. That was a big heavy sucker. I designed it around my Atari 400 system at that time. got rid of that. Also made a few small pieces.
"Edwin Pawlowski" wrote in news:Dq4Sd.33295$ snipped-for-privacy@newssvr19.news.prodigy.com:
This month, I've spent each Saturday with a bunch of Boy Scouts, who, for the most part, haven't had any shop class either. One of them, now
16, is working on an Eagle project.
We started a year ago January. The head woodchuck in our woodworker's club has an Alaska chainsaw mill. Someone from church had a goodsized (for suburban California) Western Red Cedar, that had to come down. Bill cut up the cedar into slabs, and the boys carried and stickered the wet slabs for drying.
A year later, we've got them built into two benches for the John Muir National Monument. These are vaguely based on a design from the Shaker Hancock village, which is in one of the major museums. The kids have learned what it takes to go from a big tree to a finished piece of outdoor furniture, and have something to donate as part of the process. Except for the BSA-precluded power tools, they built them themselves. Handsaws, chisels, mallets, and some big, honking Stanley planes, wherever possible.
I could have built a couple of benches between breakfast and lunch, if that's what it was about.
Shop never was really about building things, if done right. It was, and should be, about opening minds to creativity and capability. That's why Owen's questions brought back recollections many decades old. Mostly good ones, too. At least amongst those who 'got it'.
BTW, back in the 60's, I was a potter, at school. Carpentry, and masonry, I did with my dad, on weekends. Thrice blessed.
The two I remember were the walnut crescent moon lamp and the wooden-based hammered copper ashtray. It's been a looooong time since I made them. 1967 for the ashtray, and Mom asked me if I wanted the crescent lamp back 2 years ago when she moved. (I didn't)
By great good luck, I made an 8-foot sailboat called a Sabot. I took woodshop in my senior year of high school because I knew I'd blow calculus and hate it. Our teacher in coastal San Diego was a sailor and had built a Sabot jig that one student per year got to use.
As I remember it, he spent all of his time helping students and never made anything for himself.
At my HS, freshmen had only one choice for shop, "Introduction to the Industrial Arts". A quarter each of wood, metal, drafting, and electricity.
In that short quarter-long class, I made a simple bookshelf strictly with handtools. I still have it.
Sophomore wood was a semester and I built a small cherry chest. The wood teacher offered to buy it from me to give to his wife. I had real trouble coming up with the money for the materials, so I almost took him up on it. But, instead, it's sitting across the room from me. I also made my Grandmother a cutting board.
Sadly, there was just no way that I could pay for materials in later wood classes on my own. So I've had to wait for, oh, 15ish years to get going with it again.
In my school district, 1 year of "industrial arts" for guys (home econ. for girls) was mandatory -- 8th or 9th grade.
The Industrial Arts class was one semester of mechanical drafting, and one semester of 'shop'. "Shop" was a smorgasbord -- learning how to set hand-set type, and running a manually-powered printing press; sheet-metal work -- building simple metal box (learning to use break, shear, tin-snips, and the 'spot welder'), also a funnel, with a rolled-wire rim (other tin- knocker tools, also forge-heated soldering iron, for water-tight joints in the body/spout; 'Forge' -- made a cold-chisel; *and* "wood shop". everybody did the same things: 1st project was one of those three-piece book racks. You know the type.
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Second project was a hand-carved bowl. shape, etc, up to the student, although overall dimensions were constrained.
For those who took shop in 8th grade, there was an 'optional' course for
9th grade. Hey! *power* tools. 1st two projects were 'required' ones: #1 was a knick-knack shelf/box. Not a terribly _practical_ thing, but you had to use quite a variety of joints -- miter, rabbet, dado, butt, "egg crate" (I forget the proper name of that one), and "I forget, completely" for the sixth one. :) And a five-sided piece of Masonite for the back. (to prove you could cut proper 'non-square' cuts when you needed to.
Second project was the traditional checkerboard. Underlying lesson was precision measuring _and_ cutting "counts". :)
2nd semester you could make 'what you wanted' -- had to have plans, and the teacher had approve it first. This was mostly to keep things down to a scope that _could_/_would_ get finished by the end of the school year.
I built a magazine table. working solely from an about 2"x2" picture from a 'kit' ad which ran in the Wall Street Journal.
For the 2nd question, the teacher didn't make *anything* -- he was *fully* occupied: (a) _asking_ questions of the students -- *LOADED* ones, like "what are you going to do about ....?" when somebody was about to barge ahead with something they hadn't thought all the way through. (b) _answering_ (not necessarily "constructively", but forcing 'education') questions from the kids -- "how do I do ..."; (c) _helping_ as needed -- there were frequent situations that called for "more than two hands", he provided an extra pair. Sometimes he even got a few minutes to just stand around and look at everybody "productively occupied". *grin*
Wood shop in high-school was more of the same -- "find a project you like, and build it".
I had discovered R/C model airplanes, and built a field toolbox for flying. from _my_own_ design and plans.
Also a faux "King George V" Library table.
And, senior year, a full-blown solid mahogany Dining Room table. Fixed frame, expandable top, with 4 drop-in leaves. Seated up to 14 people.
*MOST* of what the teacher did in the H.S. shop, was 'safety steward', stopping people from "doing something dumb" _before_ they did it. (In three years, I believe the *worst* injury was of the 'hit the nail on the thumb' variety.) And 'check testing' kids on the proper use of the various pieces of power equipment, to make sure they knew the proper safety procedures, before letting them use the gear themselves.
He was also available to answer questions about 'how to' perform a particular task, or assist in reading plans, or help in design/drawing ones own project.
"shop" _was_ an elective, so everybody present _did_ have at least a moderate background in woodworking, one way or another. This reduced the need to 'instruct', considerably. Many worked 'within the scope of their knowledge and/or experience', the rest were not afraid to *ask* for help/guidance when appropriate.
An apt description of the teaching 'style': lots of "guidance", very little "instruction".
Admittedly, this was all 'cabinetmaking', not 'construction trades'. And there is a big difference. :)
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