WWA Info Exchange

While teaching wood shop at the local school since the regular shop teacher is out, I had the students make some simple boot jacks to demonstrate drilling a large hole first before cutting the "V" to prevent the band saw blade from binding in the bottom of the cut.. Clamping the board while drilling the hole. Conterboring the screws in the bottom "lug" so that the screws don't show when put in from the bottom rather than putting the screws in from the top. The metal sop teacher from across the hall came over at lunch and said he heard some of the students say that they finally built something that they would use in shop class.

Very good, that is always encouraging . It was a real problem in the metal shop here. The "hammer" project that we used for the introduction to all the operations on the metal lathe and mill wasn't really very useful as a hammer but it was sort of a good shelf display item. I really miss the "job" there. curses on the Covid pandemic.
...lew...

One of the projects I had them make was a wooden mallet since the shop did not have any.The lesson presented was first determine the size of the head three times the thickness of the wood used wide, and three layers glued together. Length 1&1/2 times the width. Then had them cut off pieces long enough to make five heads after cut to length.Since this would give them a glue up of a little over 25 inches allowing for the ccurf cuts. This was a reasonable length to joint, rip, and route. Glue up the pieces making sure the clamps were on properly, next day joint the glued edges and round off the corners on the router table using the fence to take the large cut in three passes, Then cut to length and dowel reenforce the glued joints, using the drill press with a fence to clamp on, and depth stop for drilling the holes through two layers spacing the dowels in 1 inch from the end. Pointing out that the glue should be applied with only a small amount in the hole and the dowels coated to prevent hydraulic action with the glue breaking apart the joint.The class wanted to fill the hole with glue then drive in the dowel. Sand off the dowels flush. Drill holes for the handles from the opposite side through two layers, cut the wooden dowels to length figuring how many handles of reasonable length could be cut from 48 inch 1 inch oak dowels with no waste. This allowed for the handle dowel to reenforce the glued seam just as the two smaller dowels reenforce the other side joint. Finally sanding the ends of the mallets corners since using a router on the end grain would split off pieces.For the last step they used a wood burner to put their name on their mallets.This left the students with a useful mallet and several lessons presented.I mentioned that if they had any rawhide a layer could be put on one end to prevent the mallet from denting soft woods.I showed them one of my mallets with a rawhide end. The school did not have any rawhide or leather to work with.