This Week In the Classroom: What Am I Supposed to Make of This?

What exactly am I to make of this?

It sits in the outdoor storage area at work.  What should I turn it into?  My co-workers grabbed it on a supply run I wasn’t invited on.

Oh, and the bikes have been delivered, well some anyways, for the chop class.  Eventually we will get them in shape to participate in this parade in May.

This Week in the Classroom: The Butterfly Bench & Butterfly Growers

I missed Monday and Tuesday this week – my wife was in the hospital with a parasite.  Luckily, the parasite left on his own and we’ve named him Jack.  Jack is our second son, born on Sun 13 at 5:30am.  A whopping 8 lbs.  A beautiful boy.

But this blog is about woodshop & teaching.  Looking over the 3 and a half days this week, the students accomplished many things.

First, they braved the cold – it’s 40 deg here in Houston and while it didn’t put me out much, my student’s had a difficult time with the weather.  Especially because the refuse and/or cannot plan for the weather.  We pulled through.

We finished these:

An in progress shot:

These benches are made of majority recycled materials – my program paid for fasteners & the acrylic paints (orange, black, yellow).

My colleague rescued these from the hard freeze on Tues –

Which are hanging structures for two monarch chrysalises.  The butterflies will emerge and climb onto the triangle stand, dry off and fly away.  Right now, they make incredibly pretty office decorations.  One stays in the science room and I am sure will become a month-long science observation.  This little guy was also rescued, and he’s ready to metamorphasize.

Heck of a time!

Community Watch: Pine Wood Derby Clinics

Saw this during half-time in last week’s Jets-Colts game over at www.coptool.com.

It seems Lowe’s and Dremel will be sponsoring clinics on how to make Pinewood Derby cars. I may have to take a spin by and see if I can snag a few kits. Might have a week-long science lab project there.  I should at least get two sets.  If only to make one for each son  (they are nineteen months and five days old, don’t gimme the “they need to be involved speech”)…

This Week In the Classroom: Gettin’ Jiggy Wit It

In the spirit of my saw guide, I had the opportunity this weekend to build a few jigs for future use.   In about twenty min, here they are:

From front to back:

A bench hook, which I consider a necessity for students to learn to saw by themselves.

A wooden speed square – just a 45 deg. right triangle with a hook on the end.

A shooting board – which I have to learn to use.  It’s used to cut 45 degree angles in a piece of wood or for a block plane to smooth end-grain in mitered cuts.  I don’t know if this design is the best, but it’s a start.

If I would choose one of these for students to build, the best answer is the bench hook.  A bench hook is a large, flat board with a strip of wood attached to each end.  Seen from the side, the jig forms an S shape.  Place the hook against the workbench so one end catches the side of the bench.  Then place your piece against the strip facing up.  Begin cutting.  Like this:

The bench hook gives a nice, solid surface for a student to cut on.  It’s easy for them to build on their own with minimal adult intervention and maximum self-discovery.  I love the fact a student can lean into the hook and steady the stock to be cut.  It doesn’t have to be square to work, but it has to be square to work perfectly – my students can decide on the level of accuracy they believe they need.

The only other way I like to teach sawing is with an end vise – like this (look just behind the blade and you will see the vise):

I love how that picture came out.  It’s my new desktop background at work.

This Week In the Classroom: To Sand or Not to Sand…

Returned to school last week with so much to do and catch up on (I did make it to Boston and missed a long day full of meetings and schedule-making).  I had several gorgeous “woodworking-as-the-way” moments, only one of which I’ll share.  One of my neurologically different students asked to meet the teacher he was making a clock-face for. A huge step for a young man that struggles to hold simple conversations for longer than 5 minutes and finds connecting to others very, very stressful.  Anyways, finished the construction/assembly of these two benches this week:

These are made from recycled lumber, including a black-painted, red oak-esque, plastic deck material (I think!).  Over winter break I created a pattern for the legs (two 2×6’s stacked next to each other) involving a scoop at the bottom and a notch for the apron piece of 1x you can barely see.

Teacher-to-Teacher question:  How important is sanding in this building process?  Sanding is an interesting step in woodworking.  Often necessary, fraught with peril, boring as a smooth-actioned brace.  I find my students lose interest in the zen-like back-and-forth of hand sanding, I burn-out a child’s ears with the power tools and I create pack-a-day-smokers out of eleven year-olds with the dust.  Of course, all this can be mitigated with strong safety practices (which we use) and waiting for a good windy day.

But is all that worth it?  Will the student learn a skill, a philosophical lesson, a metaphor, a connection with the world by engaging in the act of sanding?

I try to engage in as little sanding as possible, to be honest.  I have access to several working hand planes.  We use those to prep stock for finishing (most stuff then needs a quick rub-down at like 220 or 320 grit for me to consider it ready to be finished).  I find the process quicker, more interactive (whole body movement rather than fingers or hands) and finally, safer and cleaner on dust. I have yet to see a student truly gain an appreciation for beauty, or practice their relationship skills or do anything other than make dust while sanding.  So I try to avoid it as much as possible.

But sometimes the project demands a touch of the sandpaper, like these benches.  Then I ask myself: should I do the benches (20-40 min of my weekend) or should the students sand (2-3 days to complete if I’m lucky).  They will be painted, not stained or poly-ed, so I will sand to a rough (80-grit or 100-grit) texture and paint with left-over paint.

Am I on the wrong tack here?  Should I let the students sand?

This Week in the Classroom: Squiggle ‘Bots

Here’s a line on what pre-school should be – I actually thought I invented this project a few years ago when I worked with primary school-age kids in VA.  Obviously, I did not – it’s just rumblin’ around out there in the knowledge sphere.

Teacher Tom goes into some of the skills those little guys learn, but I love building these things out of paper cups, markers and hot glue.  Even though the hot glue can get dangerous, I find this project is simple enough that the kids learn to use and respect the tool without having a tricky joint to make which will get them burned.

I can’t say enough good things about Teacher Tom’s blog either.

This Week In the Shop: A Little Me Time

Just missed my flight to Boston, but on the upside, I get a little me time.  I’ve been working pretty steady this weekend.  I re-organizedthe workspace.  Before:

And then – a new storage bench and some rearranging:

That new bench is a salvaged office door, ripped in half and cut to needed lengths.  It weighs some 200+ lbs.  I have three more planks to use, so I’m thinking a new version of my bench that you see, but this one will have the mass not to shake during hand planing or lathe work.

I still had some time left over in my day.  Quickly whipped together a jig I’ve been dreaming about for a while: a saw guide.

Which’ll set up like this on the bench.

Pretty good for less than two hours of shop time.

 

Happy new year everyone!

This Week in the Shop: The Other Xmas Gifts

I never did get my wife an engagement ring when I should have six years ago now.  I finally picked up a diamond for her.  In order to make it a surprise and get an excuse for “what did you do all day on your week off”, I spent half a week building her a laptop stand –

The top is reclaims stage floor, while the tray is just something laying around.  I added some oak strips for anchoring for the hinges.  I bought the hinges.  The blue cloth is a place mat folded over and held in place with staples.  The hollow was filled with rice.  It took a few days to complete, but I worked slow and spent that time shopping for a ring.

The other scrap project: