Period Furniture Education

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Jeff L Headley

Well-known member
I think that a priority for this organization should be to promote period furniture construction in our local schools. Demonstrations are an easy start. Contact your local school and volunteer for a hour program. Let us promote period construction where it counts, in our future! 
 
Jeff, I couldn't agree more... but it won't be easy! Last year I went to the final auction where they sold off the last of the equipment from the Cabinetmaking and Millwork program I attended in Vo-Tech. It's happening more and more all the time. What school shops remain have their focus almost solely on cnc and not just for the obvious "technology" reasons.  The schools are so afraid of getting sued by parents whose child gets injured in shop (doing something viewed as unnecessary since they'll never do it for a living anyway) that many of the schools would rather just not bother anymore! On top of that their liability premiums are through the roof which discourages them even more! Just think of your own insurance rates for your classes. For years I went back to my middle school shop to help out the teachers I befriended there and share what I could with the students since that was where the woodworking bug really got me. Now you have the kids who are allergic to dirt and/or work! They've been taught everything is disposable so why bother to learn to fix it or make it when you can just buy another one? Even before I was a teenager my family would give me every broken thing they had from alarm clocks to lawnmowers to rip apart and figure out. As the years went buy I began to find what was wrong, fix them, and give them back. Thirty-some odd years later I'm a maintenance man in a commercial woodshop mainly because of those opportunities I had that kids just don't get now so they never develop an interest in the first place. I wish it wasn't true but many schools will be a dead end. I certainly don't want to discourage anyone from trying! I can however see the neighbor kid being welcomed into our own shops as being much more likely to make an impact.
 
Hi Jeff, Mark
Jeff, I couldn't agree with you more. But, I think Mark experienced the same situation I have. I now own some of the same shop tools I used in high school shop class. Last week I attended another school shop class auction.I offered to show students at our local school how to French Polish and was told  because of the alcohol, flammable, it couldn't be done. They only use water based. One of my sons runs a cnc machine. When you think about it ,between a lazer and  cnc machines, human hands are hard pressed to keep up. As far as the restoration field, the line has already been drawn. Much of the furniture made today can not be repaired, do to  finishes that can't be repaired or thin veneers on MDF, or the fact that much of it isn't worth fixing. Top it all off with the fact that young people don't have an interest in antiques.  Well, I wish my experiences have been different,or in the future will be different.Most of these trades are on the brink of automation.  All said, machines still can't French Polish,  Yet!!
Do Good Work!! Randy
 
Mark and Randy: I agree completely!
But! I meant as an hour ( or 1/2 hour) demonstration. Very basic! Put something together from your area using Period joinery. Roy style! Tie it into your community. It has to be entertaining!! Leave them wanting more. It could work.
 
Science and Math! Plus local resources. Add a little animal waste, our children will love it! It's like Jello. My favorite flavor is Black Cherry and it holds wood together. Dog on it!
 
Hi All
 Over the weekend I made some calls to some friends that are in the teaching field,both teachers and administration. I asked what the thinking was behind the end of shop classes. I'm a former instructor my self. So under stand that what I found didn't make my dust settle too well. Basically, I was told that the schools try to prepare students for the future, so they try to plan courses to trends 10-15 years in the future.  With automation exploding in manufacturing field, hand woodworking as well as other manual trades are no longer seen as a future employment opportunity. Robotics/CNC machines are replacing people as a work force and they think it's better to train students to operate machines rather than [ get this!!]  obsolete manual methods.    Traditional woodworking as well as other trades are considered more of a hobby than a trade for the future.
 I guess when you consider the age and number of us on the SAPFM Forum that actually make a living woodworking[ not counting those who work as a hobby], I think you will find are numbers are quite small.
    When I was teaching, the school had the biggest machine shop course in the state, now it has no machine shop course at all.
 Mike might be right,   We might be destined for the history centers, What do you think?
http://www.woodworkingnetwork.com/wood-blogs/karen-koenig/Are-Robots-Taking-Over-Woodworking-Jobs-186825231.html  
 Randy
Cherry Jello as a pore filler with a blond stain!!
 
I have had a different life experience that they educators envision.  I was fortunate enough to go to an old fashioned hign school that did not teach woodworking, they taught patternmaking - I admit it seemed somewhat perverse at tthe time;  no walnut pump lamps for mothers day ? In fac twe made things that were worthless in terms of utility because it wassa series of wood patterns that just happend to introduce the student to measurng, marking, and woodworking hand tools by a series of carefully thought our projects building on each as we went.

Now, I have never made a pattern in anger in my life, but I can tell you that the experience has been unsurpasesed in equipping me to be an effective engineer my whole life, and my interest in furniture off to the side is just a bonus. I have also had the opportunity to make a few patterns along the way for my projects and am glad I know how.

By way of example the schools have abandoned teaching how to make change, and if the computer goes down, McDonalds staff have to get out battery calculators to sell me a burger. Making change is not vocational training, it equips  studnets to  live life.

I have a similar concern about CAD; what hope does a young student have of understanding how things are made if he is taught that a machine can design, which it cannot, it can only be used to draw up a design, or manufacture it.  I seriously doubt that we are training a generation of CAD operators any more than we were training a genaration of woodworkers. The stuff has been thought of as "vocational training" for too long - there is much, much more to it than that.

Karl
 
I'm 29 and we still had woodshop, drafting, and machine shop in our school during my time.  However, I consider myself very lucky that I was allowed to study drafting / design / machine shop at a local community college for half the day during my last two years of high school.  We learned first how to make things in the shop, then how to draft them in CAD, then finally how to design new parts.  This culminated in the manufacture of a custom articulating dump trailer for a garden tractor in my senior year.  I wouldn't trade this training for anything, even though I don't work with metal.
 
As mentiioned above, times are changing in public education.  I grew up with "shop class" starting in 7th grade with double periods of shop twice a week.  You never missed school on the days you went to shop class!  We were introduced to woodworking, drafting, and metalworking for one third year each.

By 9th grade, basic electricity, graphic arts, and small engine repair were added to our experiences.  When scheduling for 10th and 11th grades, you chose 2 areas to focus on and by your senior year you could select only one to major in.  The point is, I was exposed to all of these areas, and got a basic working knowledge in all these fields that has stayed with me to this day.

Having had an outstanding woodshop teacher my junior and senior year, I decided to become a woodshop teacher myself (this was in 1970).  I welded my way through college (metal shop teacher!), got a job teaching woodshop/ furniture making/ drafting for thirty-five years.  I designed, built, plumbed and wired my own house and shop, can repair almost any gasoline engine, and tear down and repair almost any machine or appliance.  Why?  Because "shop class" was more than making pump handled lamps.  Problem solving skills,  organization skills, basic design and engineering skills, heck- reading a ruler and adding FRACTIONS!- all learned from taking shop classes.

As Randy mentioned above, many schools don't offer classes, as in the past, to expose students to these experiences.  But if you want to get young people interested in woodworking, I would also encourage you to approach your local school district to see if they have any programs still going on.  Also, 4-H and the Boy Scouts may be a place to develop interest.  Lastly, offer to mentor in your own shop.  It could be your neighbors kid, your poker buddy and his daughter.....

 
Hmmm, I grew up with shop class, too, really was a natural woodworker who made her first shelving project at 11. However, I wasn't allowed to take shop, or go to UVA, or be any number of things I wanted, including a woodworker; so I concentrated on college prep and finishing and carving and pretty much carried on on my own. If you wanted me to support shop classes, you'd have to open them up significantly.

But then I'm still very reluctant to watch the boys play ball for money, since I couldn't even get a basketball or tennis scholarship to college, had to work at the soda fountain for paltry sums. Women's tennis is very good.

Pam
 
My son is a senior in high school taking several AP classes and even calculus on campus at a local college. He started the year with his first "study hall" and was bored so he signed up for a woodworking class.  They have two SawStops, a big planer and a couple large lathes. Pretty nice power equipment. They started with a simple project which required hand sawing and planing a board. Not sure how they could plane anything as the ten or so #4s I looked at were so dinged and dull they couldn't cut butter. I offered many times (to my son) to come in and discuss period furniture, but all I got was a strange look from him. All their projects were painfully simple: a little table (screws - argh!), simple peg shelf, and a turned gavel. I wish they would have done a dovetail box or something. Good experience, but I can't see anyone taking the class and walking away from it after a year with anything but the most basic of knowledge or skills.
 
My post was not meant as a resurrection of the standard wood shop, agricultural, home economics program. But a hit and run entertainment type of situation. Come in for an hour and be gone. Leave them wanting more. Spur on the interest for their future. It only takes a few moments of inspiration to add a life long interest. Maybe add Pirates. Arghh!
 
No one has mentioned home repair. If no one is taught general construction then how will the average home owner rehinge a door or add shelves in their laundry room. Dahh! A saw will be something they missed while viewing their local fireworks show, a plane will be the thing they saw flying in the air, a level will be their soccer field, a dovetail will be how to encorporate two mega merger's incorporatons. A motise and tenon will be something they have no idea about and then will forget about. Dog on it! If you can't find it on your computer then it can't be worth much!!! Dag nab it!
 
We home schooled our kids. They had wood shop, sculpture class, computer classes, built lego robots. There were no crowded classrooms, boys and girls were treated equally. My 19 year old daughter was just home from college, she decided to try turning on the lathe and also helped make some taps for wood, she wants to rebuild a 1970s motorcycle, learning all the time is what we taught. It is much easier to teach someone that is interested at the time of their interest then to do it based on a schedule.
My High school had 2 woodshops and i lived in there, my college had a woodshop as well. My brother was in the Army and he said they had great shops for just about everything.
My son uses computers, he is currently taking an electronics class that requires him to build an amplifier, he wants to come home and dovetail a case together so that his will standout from the fabricated metal boxes that the others will use. He is in a club at University that is building a solar vehicle to race across Australia, They built one last year that ran from NY to Minnesota. These kids are the only team that makes their own motor. Sure a lot of it is CNC and 3d printing, but there is a ton of just hands on shaping as well and the thing will go over 90 miles an hour and run on sunshine. They speak a language that I don't understand, but I see the light in their eyes and I know the time they put in. It's a different world for them but for those that want it there is something out there to build, sure it is carbon fiber and aluminum and lithium ion batteries. I wish I could horn in there somehow and go with them but this is their adventure and that was ours.
I find it interesting that his interest and mine are at opposite ends of the fossil fuel using era.
http://www.umnsvp.org/
https://www.facebook.com/umnsvp
There is a verse in the old testament that says, "ask not why were the former days better than these for it is not out of wisdom that you ask it"
We haven't really learned or changed much in over 2000 years
 
I AM SORRY!!! VERY SORRY!!! EVERYONE IS MISSING THE POINT!!! Period Education should be the point! Combine this with a well rounded modern educational policy for today's youth. STEM's for today's education: Science, Technology, Enginierring, and Math

Science:
Using your resourses and understanding their seasonal changes

Technoogy:
How to take advantage of your enviroment with both tools and material

Enginering:
Traditional Period Joinery

Math:
Layout and Proportioning


All should be considered as a well rounded education

 
Hi All
  I for one, understand where your coming from Jeff. I'm about the same age and in the same boat you are. Fact is we are about to be run over by technology. When I talked to my friends at school, STEM's was brought up. Difference was they plugged in Cad's ,CNC's and Lasers. I once had a business restoring wooden yachts, now I have the only wooden boat in the marina.  There will always be a few Period Builders, in the future, but like gasoline, there will come a time when it/they are too costly too use. I think our generation will be OK, but I know I can't do what a Laser can. 
Hang in there Jeff, maybe someday we'll work in the same history center.Ha Ha!!
Do Good Work  Randy
http://www.cabinetmakerfdm.com/88694.html
 
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