Who took shop class in school?

[Steve Ash]

I was able to visit a high school wood shop today. The teacher is a young man that I coached in baseball 15 or so years ago, and have stayed in touch with ever since he was just a little tyke. He is very proud of the projects his students are doing right now, a gun cabinet, set of oak bunk beds, chests, guitar cases and so on.

It reminded me of my old high school shop class and my teacher Mr. Whitens, all the projects we as students were doing. Then I wondered about all the kids that take shop class and if they stuck with it later on.

How many of you took wood shop in school, was it a positive thing, did you have a good teacher, what did you make?

[Jim O'Dell]

Hi Steve,
I took shop as a sophmore. Mr Pryor was our teacher. He was a pretty good Sax player also. (Was in a local band that an upper classman played keyboards in. The upper classman was Garth Brooks keyboard player later on.)
The only thing I remember building in class was a Mahogany telephone stand. It had a shelf in the bottom for the phone book. Arched top on the back piece. Finish was Deft. Man, that was 34 years ago. Now I feel old Jim.

[Fred Voorhees]

I sure did. The trouble these days is that Wood shop is one of the first things cut when budgets get tight. Makes my heart sink when I think of that! I sure do remember my high school wood shop teachers. Mr. D'Orlando was the man! He was a great guy and had a lot of patience with his students. I also had Mr. Dautrechy and he was a little rigid, but still, a wood working teacher all the same. We could use more of them these days.

[Hunter Wallace]

You know...I never did. I often wonder if it had been something
I was MADE to do versus WANTED to do if things would have
been different. It's not that I have a problem with authority or
anything, I just don't like being told what to do!!!

[Art Mulder]

Steve,

I suppose that up front I should admit that I'm 41.

I took shop class in grade school, grade 7 + 8. Learned some basic drafting, a bit of basic metal working, and some woodworking. I still have the small wooden nut dish that I turned, the mahogany serving tray, and I think that is all. My Mum has the bookends. :-)

This was the mid seventies, and things were still segregated: The boys took shop, the girls took home ec. Our school system ran on a six day cycle. Even then, not every school had a shop. We were bussed in one morning per cycle, stayed the full morning, and then bused back to our own school. My sister's kids went to that elementary school years later, and I'm pretty sure that the shop was long gone.

My highschool was too small for a shop, but one year it was offered as an option to bus a group of us out to a larger public school and take shop for 2hrs every Wednesday afternoon. This would have been back around 1980. And I still have the pine magazine rack that we built.

In neither shop were the kids allowed to touch the table saw. In grade 7 we used scroll saws and lathes. In grade 8 we could use the band saw.

But to be honest, while I enjoyed those classes, I suspect that it was my dad's influence that gave me the idea/confidence of picking up woodworking again as an adult. My dad was a finishing carpenter, so we always had a garage with tools in it. I fiddled around in there as a kid, helped my dad out a few summers, and in general gained the confidence to give things a try. So back in '95 when we wanted some bookcases, and didn't think much of the particle-board-junk in the stores, I borrowed some clamps, bought a second hand TS, and things developed from then on...

[Lee DeRaud]

Yes, but it was back when dinosaurs walked the earth and if you wanted to glue two pieces of wood together you had to find a sick horse and skin him yourself. The teacher was missing most of his right forefinger, which didn't exactly inspire confidence but did occasion much snickering when he used the next available digit to point things out in class.

[Rob Blaustein]

Yes, but it was auto shop not wood shop. There was an excellent wood shop class as well that many took (I remember them all walking around with neat chess sets that they build) but I guess the notion of learning to hot wire a Chevy was too much of a draw for me. Ah, public high school in Brooklyn, NY. As it turns out, I made the wrong choice--most of what I learned in auto shop is outdated (when was the last time you sanded your spark plugs or did a tune up?)--probably wouldn't be the case with wood shop.

[Ken Fitzgerald]

I didn't......I ran with the chem, physics, trig crowd! I did take 3 drafting classes and basic electricity.

[Greg Koch]

I had Woodshop, Handi/craft (ceramic, plastic, leather, etc.) in the 7th grade, Woodshop and mechanical drawing in the 8th grade, and Metalshop in the 9th grade. I like them all. I made a protable smoker in metal shop for my parents to take with them fishing. I still have a table I made in Metalshop that I use in my garden.

Woodshop was a lot of fun too, and we had some strange times when we forgot to turn on the fans in the paint room.....Duh!

I worked during my High School years and had no shop classes then...

Greg

[Ron Jones near Indy]

I took 2 years of drafting and 1 year of woods in high school. Must have liked it. I've been teaching it for 38 years!

[Mark Hollingsworth]

I took wood shop as a sophomore way back when. Don't remember the teachers name but I sure remember the day that I dragged my little finger across the jointer along with the board I was jointing. That finger is a little shorter than the one on the other hand.HMMMM!!! But I still have the mug that I turned out on the lathe and the wooden handle that I glued on is still on it too. I remember the name of the glue was Weldwood and it was a powder that you mixed with water. Since its now been 40 years, it must have been pretty good stuff. Thanks for joggin my memory. Mark

[Mike Cutler]

Yep.
Took woodshop in the grades 7,8,9,11. Metal shop in Grade 10, until the teacher cautioned about the metal furnace exploding. I was outta there within the week.
Took Mechanical Drawing in the Grade 10.
I had really good teachers. When I screw up, I look at what I did, and suddenly remember a lesson from a zillion years ago.

Funny thing is. I spent a lot of time on a lathe in school, and haven't touched one since 1976. I wonder if the technique would come back,or if I'd eat a chunk of wood.

[Dewayne Baker]

I took shop 3 years of high school and loved it. I liked the teacher but the projects we where inspired to build where simple. Cutting boards, picture frames and small tables.

Tools where just the basics no router table, planer or sharpening supplies. I found out just how much I didn't know when I took up the hobby 20 years later.

Now I feel I could teach far more than the teacher did way back then.

[Keith Christopher]

Hopefully this won't sound too haughty but I took shop in 7th grade and by then I was helping my grandfather every summer build furniture. so making the simple shop projects was very boring to me. Making candle holders, some birdhouses. . .The teacher was kind enough to allow me to make a chessboard which was cool. (which I still have to this day begging me to put a table around it.) He was a true talent and he often had projects he was working on at home in class. for me, I just wish it had been more challenging but I was exposed to much more than the others.

[Andy Hoyt]

By a fluke of nature there were only six boys in my class during the 7th grade year. Thirty three girls though! What a year!

Since we couldn't field a team for football, the school asked one of the teachers to put a shop class together. He was Roy Bruninghaus and his claim to fame was that he had spent two years pitching batting practice to Ted Williams. We made tie racks in the fall. Spent the winter playing ice hockey with no shift changes. In the spring we went back to the shop and built a desk for the school.

Fond memories. Thanks for jogging them, Steve.