Wood

Rich Cohen writes a "Back When" column that appears in the Saturday/Sunday Wall Street Journal. The latest: Shop Class Taught Me About Myself and The World sounds a bit lofty, as if without shop class Mr. Cohen might be writing columns from a correctional facility. Saved from a life of crime by sawdust. I jest.

The sub-heading is a bit less lofty: Amid the dangers of the circular saw, we learned how to achieve things step by step. Definitely true.

I think about my shop class nearly every time I work in my woodworking shop in what was once a one car attached garage here in a New York suburb. Even before we moved to the suburbs, I had woodworking shop in our cellar in Flushing, Queens. It's a bit more extensive now.

Mr. Cohen describes his teen-age experience with a circular saw. There may have been a circular saw in our shop class, and I'm sure I used it, but I don't remember it. Probably a table saw, an item I wouldn't go near these days. My own shop has a 10" radial arm saw I bought from Sears in 1978 for $250.  I remember the drill press and a planer. There may have been a lathe, but we didn't use it. There was a band saw, and a friend of mine nearly lost part of a finger using it.

The columnist Jimmy Breslin once cracked wise that any kid in the city with a German surname was set to learn how to use a lathe. Germans were big woodworkers. I always regret never having been taught how to use a lathe. It's one of the standard pieces of equipment I do not have in my shop

My high school was in Manhattan, Stuyvesant, in what is now referred to as an "elite" public school. There is still an entrance exam, but the curriculum was a small part vocational, and the rest academic. My father went there in the '30s. No legacy admissions then, or now.

Woodworking shop was an elective. I also took ceramics. The great thing about these electives was they were double periods. You got to be in the same space for an hour and a half.

The school offered a wide array of courses where things were made, something that Mr. Cohen feels has gone out of education. I would agree.

My guess is the school no longer has woodworking shop, which is a shame. You did learn how to follow a plan and create in my case a straight back chair, using every piece of equipment the teacher assigned.

I remember the plans called for a round tenon, but since we weren't shown a lathe, the teacher created a jig that allowed us to safely insert the piece of wood in the jig on the table saw and create a rounded tenon at the end.

A good friend in the '70s advanced my woodworking horizons when he suggested I buy the radial arm saw. Shop class didn't have us using a router, but a router is perhaps the most vital piece of equipment in a shop. I like to compare it to the Queen chess piece. It can do everything. It is absolutely essential. I have two.

One is mounted on a router table and lets me do rabbeting and dado cuts. Another router is a hand-held plunge router that lets me do all that nice edging you see on furniture pieces, ogees, chamfers and cove cuts.

Over the years I've made lots of things. Anything I need I either design myself or follow someone's plan I've made several Adirondack chairs, cabinets, tables, bookcases, benches, frames, and end tables with dovetailed drawers.

At 74 I feel it's a bit too late to start using a lathe. I've ducked any project that would call for using one. I get  away with mortise and tenon joinery with a mortise machine and the table mounted router to cut the rectangular tenons. I have a dovetail jig that I've used sporadically, and would really love to go for the $1,800 PantoRouter that lets you do dovetails and other router cuts easily. The video on this piece of equipment is so enticing, but I don't think I can justify getting one for the few things I make these days.

Mr. Cohen extols the virtues of learning to make something, as opposed I guess to using something. Playing video games is using something. Computers have taken over, but unless you learn how to program then, you're just a user.

I can't find the copy of a Russell Baker piece he wrote in the late '60s or early '70s titled "The Paper Working Stiff."

Obviously, this was long before computers and computer users, but even then Mr. Baker was pointing out that it seemed we didn't actually know how to make things anymore.

A long time ago in Flushing we had new overhead garage door installed for the two-car unattached garage. They were a big improvement over the two double glass topped swinging doors. that dated to 1923. When my father and I started to stain the doors with a rag he commented did I know where he learned how to apply stain. I knew the answer. At the high school we both attended.,

Perhaps it's the logic of following steps, but when I think of woodworking and the programming I did I find great similarities. Any programmer I ever met also made things around the house. They followed plans, step by step. 

One IBMer I know even has a lathe for metal. You should see what his place looks like.

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