High school wood shop must be the hardest environment for…
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High school wood shop must be the hardest environment for woodworking tools
As I wrap up another year of teaching high school wood shop I'm reflecting on how much maintenance I have to put into my tools, not just at the end of the year, but all year long. I wonder if there is a harsher environment for wood shop tools to live in. Our wood shop classes are popular, and we have 7 periods of 18 students per day, and over the course of a year each student makes an Adirondack chair, a folding stool, a cutting board, a mitered box, a top, a pen or duck call, a CNC plaque, and more. I feel like I could be a product testing lab since our tools are treated so badly.
1) Kids don't know righty-tighty lefty-loosey and they strip *everything*. Handles get it the worst, but anything with threads on it has its fate sealed already. Oh, the blade tilt won't move either way? Well pick one and crank it! I have a line of kids at the table saw, and every one of them needs a different blade height or angle, and those handles get turned all day long.
2) We set off 8 SawStop cartridges this year, but none of them were finger saves. One was a kid drawing on the side of the blade with a pencil while it was spinning, one was a kid pushing his scrap out of the way with a metal ruler, one was a loose riving knife (the alignment pins got wallered out and had to be replaced), we think somebody hit a staple on one, and the rest were kids reaching in to get their scrap out while the blade was *almost* finished spinning, but not quite, which doesn't ruin the blade but does ruin the cartridge. We have had years where it did save a finger or hand, but those are fairly rare. Still, there is *no way* I would not have a SawStop. Their customer service is first-rate, and we need a lot of parts. Handles mostly, but also switches and motors.
3) We ruin so many blades. So many. And drill bits. I don't know how we bend so many miter saw blades, but they all end up wobbly. I looked over at a kid drilling a hole in a piece of wood and it was smoking, and he was just trucking along like no big deal, and I was like whoa whoa whoa, but then the switch in the brand new drill press stopped working and we think that was why. They push the wood through the table saw too fast or too slow, or way, way, way too slow and it just smokes. We used to sharpen them, but when we sharpen them we have to adjust the cartridge on the table saw (which is a real hassle) so now we just toss them out.
4) When we take the tape measures out of the boxes and they see that their short life is going to be lived in a high school wood shop I know they scream in terror. Clack! Clack! Clack! Clack! How many clacks can a tape measure take? Sword fight! Poke your friend from across the table! Click! Clack! Click! Clack! We bought these floppy ones a few years ago and it was awesome. They were almost like fabric tapes and they lasted the best of all we've ever had, but they were annoying to use and you could only hook them because the hook was attached firmly. Now we just buy cheap ones and treat them as disposable
We scrap so much wood as well, but that's a bit off topic. Kids will just cut a 10 foot board in half so they don't have to carry the whole thing around. It drives me nuts.
Is there a harsher environment for wood shop tools that you can think of?
#diy
source
As I wrap up another year of teaching high school wood shop I'm reflecting on how much maintenance I have to put into my tools, not just at the end of the year, but all year long. I wonder if there is a harsher environment for wood shop tools to live in. Our wood shop classes are popular, and we have 7 periods of 18 students per day, and over the course of a year each student makes an Adirondack chair, a folding stool, a cutting board, a mitered box, a top, a pen or duck call, a CNC plaque, and more. I feel like I could be a product testing lab since our tools are treated so badly.
1) Kids don't know righty-tighty lefty-loosey and they strip *everything*. Handles get it the worst, but anything with threads on it has its fate sealed already. Oh, the blade tilt won't move either way? Well pick one and crank it! I have a line of kids at the table saw, and every one of them needs a different blade height or angle, and those handles get turned all day long.
2) We set off 8 SawStop cartridges this year, but none of them were finger saves. One was a kid drawing on the side of the blade with a pencil while it was spinning, one was a kid pushing his scrap out of the way with a metal ruler, one was a loose riving knife (the alignment pins got wallered out and had to be replaced), we think somebody hit a staple on one, and the rest were kids reaching in to get their scrap out while the blade was *almost* finished spinning, but not quite, which doesn't ruin the blade but does ruin the cartridge. We have had years where it did save a finger or hand, but those are fairly rare. Still, there is *no way* I would not have a SawStop. Their customer service is first-rate, and we need a lot of parts. Handles mostly, but also switches and motors.
3) We ruin so many blades. So many. And drill bits. I don't know how we bend so many miter saw blades, but they all end up wobbly. I looked over at a kid drilling a hole in a piece of wood and it was smoking, and he was just trucking along like no big deal, and I was like whoa whoa whoa, but then the switch in the brand new drill press stopped working and we think that was why. They push the wood through the table saw too fast or too slow, or way, way, way too slow and it just smokes. We used to sharpen them, but when we sharpen them we have to adjust the cartridge on the table saw (which is a real hassle) so now we just toss them out.
4) When we take the tape measures out of the boxes and they see that their short life is going to be lived in a high school wood shop I know they scream in terror. Clack! Clack! Clack! Clack! How many clacks can a tape measure take? Sword fight! Poke your friend from across the table! Click! Clack! Click! Clack! We bought these floppy ones a few years ago and it was awesome. They were almost like fabric tapes and they lasted the best of all we've ever had, but they were annoying to use and you could only hook them because the hook was attached firmly. Now we just buy cheap ones and treat them as disposable
We scrap so much wood as well, but that's a bit off topic. Kids will just cut a 10 foot board in half so they don't have to carry the whole thing around. It drives me nuts.
Is there a harsher environment for wood shop tools that you can think of?
#diy
source
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