It’s not a pretty thing, but the design has a long gestation. Chris Schwarz has been promoting his conversion to hand tools for years now – and he finally documents the slow spiral in “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest”. He’s got a book, I guess I have a blog. Either way, I decided on a 24″ by 18″ by 18″ dovetailed box. The moldings and bottoms were nailed and glued on, while the top has a split piano hinge as it’s method of movement. Most of the dovetails are splined for strength (because I can’t cut a tight dovetail) and I used a L-N low angle block plan to get the pins and tails even. I only used power tools for milling the wood.

Let’s take a trip inside. First, a tool tray with a small selection of hammers, nail sets, wrenches, etc.

A chisel/gouge/trisquare rack,

a saw till,

and some places for hand plane storage.

Over the next few weeks, I will be attaching handles, finding some storage solution for safety glasses, paint & varnish and a chain to keep that lid from banging around. I’ll keep you posted.

Make it safe & keep the rubber side down.

and I was able to build some supply lockers out of salvaged art crates.

A few more pictures and a little bit more poetry on my teaching site: www.woodshopcowboy.com

—WW

The table:

The chair (the rails are too close together):

The result as he knows it:

A side shot of the chair. It’s a little skinny:

I attached the top with a few screws. You can deduce the construction of the side with this shot.

Make it safe & keep the rubber side down this weekend. I’ll be back next week with some year-in-review posts and hopefully, a picture or two of some wood drums I’m currently building.

There’s a saying in electronic/maker/hacker circles. Sometimes, you just need enough junk before you can start doing cool stuff. You need a “critical mass” of stuff. This trestle table came together because of a “critical mass” of junk. The pressure treated base was scrap pieces from a variety of sources (work, my own projects, etc) and the top came from a neighbor’s remodel. As any maker will tell you: if you don’t collect the stuff somewhere, you don’t get the idea to use it. The process works and I got a cute little grilling table out of it.

I enjoyed this build – I just wish that front right corner didn’t dip so much. A matchbook oughta fix that little twist.

Posted the build at www.woodshopcowboy.com

The full design & build process can be found here.

www.woodshopcowboy.com

Be back soon with a new project I hope. Personal shop time has been pretty short lately.

Hope you spin by for a look.

—WW

I’ve never used/taught shaving horses before so this weekend and Monday will be spent in the throes of research.

I’ll be putting up a build post on this bad boy on my teaching site at some point. Keep yer ears open.

finished hours before the house flooded and my home shop became closed until further notice.

I’ve got the birch sitting around, so Ill probably build two or three more. The diameter on these drums isn’t exactly right for its height & I want to make a tin drumhead rather than stretched poster-paper. The mallet came out well though – if I ever make a xylophone or something, I’ll use the method I used here.

—WW

Wordpress.com made it one of their “freshly pressed” posts, but I’m most happy with Makezine.com making a little dough on it…I made the post to be part of their Woodworking Skill Set – and they put it out there.

Thanks for the lumberjocks that helped me out with the post here – Your input helps keep my kids safe.

—WW

I have a perfect record in the woodshop. No fatalities.

I have had two injuries though this year (I average about one a quarter or semester). Both happened due to good sawing habits gone bad.

This picture shows my basic hand-saw set up when I teach how-to cut a board to size. I’m right-handed and for south-pawed students, I mirror the set up.I would saw about an inch from the edge of the table. Notice I use a bench hook to keep slips/movement to a minimum and pinch my thumb in so I don’t catch it on a saw (though I’m lazy with that index finger!). I have the kids put their weight into their left hand to steady the workpiece. I generally build the workbenches 30”-32” high to accommodate younger statures. I’ve never had a student cut themselves after setting themselves up like this, righty or lefty.

Trouble is, sometimes that’s not the most accessible way to hand-saw a board. Small pieces for example, or a face-vise set-up in the left side of a bench like this necessitate a different technique:

Now pretend you’re a student. You go to make this cut (a rip down the pencil mark) and the board naturally wiggles. Remember how I teach to use the left hand to steady the work? Well, my student’s see my “good” habits and this is their solution:

And so, midway through the cut, this happens:

And there goes the finger! Nurse! Nurse! We got a bleeder!

Both finger injuries have happened in this manner – a cut at the end of wood when the lumber is chucked/clamped down on the student’s strong-hand side. I researched a bit and I’ve seen two ways to avoid this from happening. One hand behind the back,

or the two-handed approach.

The one-handed technique is great for students to gain a “feel” for cutting the wood correctly. A saw should glide through the wood with minimal downward pressure for the user – the saw does the work. Long strokes produce cleaner and faster cuts than short strokes. Move your body so your arm swings in a straight line in the direction of the cut (similar to a proper stroke of a pool cue actually). I will (once I re-teach the safe way to saw during this cut!) ask the kids to try a one-handed approach to reinforce proper technique. Then the students will switch to a two-handed approach to gain speed. Also, remember to teach how to re-adjust the placing of wood in the vise to minimize board movement, the original reason the second hand got involved in the first place.

So, a few things to remember when teaching woodworking to young students:

• Different cuts, different set-ups must be taught as separate units. Young people don’t gain adult-like abstraction skills until fifteen or so. Young people’s brains haven’t developed those brain cells yet. If you change the pattern, you must re-teach the technique.
• Watch yourself first because monkey see, monkey do. In this case, my habits in one environment (and the habits I ingrained in my students) did not translate to a successful skill when the situation changed. Look at your habits and think about how those habits might affect the students’ thought patterns.
• Re-evaluate and research your own skills – this is why I blog here, why I’m working on a Master’s in Ed, why I play in the woodshop on the weekends. I can’t expect my students to be satisfied with the projects and level of production I see now. I must plan for the future and improve my teaching toolkit.

Two sites which enlightened me on my quest to solve the sawed finger mystery: http://woodworking-kids.com/ & Doug Stowe’s Wisdom of the Hands. If Any lumberjocks have any more tips for how to teach a kid to saw, drop a line, I’d like to improve my technique here.

Make Magazine will be doing a woodworking skills showcase over the next few weeks. They will be going over the basics in woodworking, so many of us will be experts. But if you are interested in something creative other than woodworking, you ought to check the site out – and leave a few nice comments for the nOObs with soldering irons. It’s a cool mag.

I moved a cow today at the woodshop – I’m still not understanding why. Strange things happen in fourth period. Catch the pictures here.....

I have an interesting post on www.woodshopcowboy.com planned for this weekend – a question regarding quality, woodworking and grades. And woodworking teachers are welcome to come by and chat.

Here’s the link to the photo- for some reason the picture loader isn’t working….

The other two projects I failed to take a picture of. On Mon or Tues, I’ll put up a picture of those two projects.

spent a majority of my time this week networking with the community-at-large and negotiating class objectives with other teachers. I have a few interesting classes being put together:
Two Art Car themed classes. One focuses on building a parade float, the other will design bicycle-based alternative transportation (think trikes, scooters and quad-cycles).

Working on the Homies. A home-improvement themed class for adults with neurological differences to gain skills and confidence in home-care. I hope film some work done by the students to use as a home-improvement show assignment.
Environmental Maintainability. The academic objectives for this class is to learn about and how to maintain the man-sculpted environment of the school. We have thirty trees to plant over the next few weeks, and about twice that number to water. I won’t have enough time to do it all, but we’ll try.

A woodshop production class & a woodshop master class. The main difference between these two classes will be the driving force of the projects. Masterclass students choose their work within skill level, production students produce what the student business classes need them to.

part of a long(er) post at www.woodshopcowboy.com

I would walk through hell on Sunday
just to keep my rose in Paradise. —Waylon Jennings

The progress on the rose garden I discussed in this blog entry.