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I Forge Iron

Shop Class?


rockstar.esq

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I'd like to know if middle, and high schools still have shop classes?  If so, are there lessons on how to properly use metal-working tools?

Last week I had and apprentice and a journeyman electrician, both roughly 30 years old who were breaking drill bits and taps at an alarming rate.  We were drilling and tapping holes for 10-24 bolts in 3/16" thick structural steel.  I provided a tap wrench, oil, bits, taps, everything.  I left to get some material and returned an hour later.

They'd drilled and tapped three holes, at a cost of three broken taps, five drill bits, and two pilot bits for carbide hole saws.  I went to get them three more of each, then demonstrated how to drill and tap a hole.  I also provided a demonstration on how to use the hole saw.  I specifically pointed out how important it was to stay perpendicular to the work, and to watch the chips to see if your pressure and speed were good.  Both guy's looked at what I'd done as though it was sorcery.  The apprentice was positive I'd just gotten lucky, so he told me to watch as he gave it a try.  The look of shock on his face when everything worked perfectly was memorable.  I had to repeatedly tell him to slow the drill, or take it more gradual with the tap, break the chip, then turn it back in, etc.  In every case, he finished the work faster, by operating the tool slower.

Sadly, the next day I learned that they had fought about it after I'd left.  The apprentice thought that hardness leaves metal tooling as soon as it's broken.  He was destroying bits trying to "drill out" broken taps or drills.  The Journeyman was proud to tell me that he corrected the apprentices superstition as he told me that he knew that taps won't break so long as you hold them with a tap wrench in line with your forearm!  I got the impression that neither of these guy's had ever had a general metal-working shop class when they were in school.  Looking back, I can say that by the mid 1990's there were no metal-shop classes beyond jewelry and automotive maintenance in my high-school. There was a metal shop classroom, packed with mills, lathes, welders, torches, shears, benders, rollers, and drill presses, but we weren't allowed to go inside.  I learned how to drill and tap a hole by watching my dad, and then later, by doing it myself.  

 

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Similar situation in the UK.

Schools used to have rooms filled with lathes, mills, welders, and many even had forges and anvils. 

Got to the point that everything was practically unusable by the time you had the machines covered top to bottom in guards, extra safety buttons, then liability and insurance reared it's ugly head and it was just too expensive/risky to continue teaching. 

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I teach 32 year olds the difference between straight and phillips screwdriver bits,  and that the washer that goes with a nut and bolt is different that the thing that your mom puts your clothes in. I wish I was joking.

I have to take them from that point up to being fabricators and 6G pipe welders in two years. ******

 

 

******Everyone should be thankful for something: I am glad that I am not a Baptist because this job is driving me to drink!

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Oh come ON guys, if there were still shop classes in middle and high schools students might graduate with a trade skill advanced enough to get a job, earn a good living and not  . . . . <GASP of HORROR!>  need to get a college degree!

I get kids and the occasional adult who has never held a hammer let alone struck anything with one and thinks screw drivers come in different sizes to pry different sized things. Some of these poor guys can't do basic math, like figure the area of a square and two have been college grads. 

Good GRIEF I sound like my Father! He had to drop out of school in the 8th. grade and he sometimes lamented only getting through trig and calculus, he knew there was more useful math. He did both trig and calculus in his head, had the tables memorized or could calculate them from measurements. 

Frosty The Lucky.

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I dont know what is scarier, the lack of training to obtain manual skills so that someone can actually make something, or the common thought that watching it being done once or twice on you tube qualifies as having the skill and knowledge.

It is humorous watching the very rude awakening when the “self proclaimed expert” comes to the conclusion that they don’t know jack

I had shop classes all the way from junior high. When I went to the equivalent of high school in England we had a coal forge, anvils. Learned to make punches and chisels, hardening, tempering, case hardening. Wood working and even some composite work.

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I've wondered why so many folks consider it a given that they will have to play an online game  many many times to learn to "win" it but then expect their first time to be able to forge a complicated item with no prior practice or skills. If folks would come home every evening and spend 2-4 hours smithing for a year they would be much further along in the craft than playing at smithing on Minecraft...

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I feel that way about a Lot of things. People think the Need to go to a school or college to learn a subject. While it might help, I tell them to buy some books on the subject and start Reading. That's the first step. Then if they need more instruction talk with someone that knows more or take a course. They will be much further ahead with knowledge at that point and can follow along easier. 

 

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Lots of great comments.  I have mixed feelings about it.  On the one hand I'm sad that these skills aren't being taught, on the other, I'm frustrated that grown adults in this age of easy information aren't curious enough to figure out what they're doing wrong.

Even if they weren't concerned with the growing pile of broken tooling, it seems to me that a person would look for ways to get more done with less work.  These guy's are perfectly willing to spend their own money to buy cordless tools to replace manual ones to save themselves some work.  One example is using a cordless reciprocating saw to cut conduit.  They run them so hard that the temper gets cooked out of the edge.  One guy had a dull blade within fifteen minutes and a flat battery in half an hour.  All from cutting thinwall conduit!

 

 

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Perhaps they are also used to using "disposable" tools and so don't expect them to last a long time with proper care.  I just received a box of old high carbon steel kitchen knives because the owner wasn't willing to clean and store them properly.  Got some lovely stuff in there including a blade or two that would make one think twice about fighting on a sand bar against the person carrying it...

I don't like battery powered tools myself. Either I'm on line power or I do it by hand---and I have several things that help do it by hand---like the 30" hacksaw with the blade made from bandsaw blade:  Good long stroke and the blades don't break if they hang up.  Or I have a bit for a 'brace and bit' that drives 1/2" sockets---once won a race with a fellow using a battery powered driver. We were putting in lag bolts and the brace was faster over all, could run them all they way down and didn't run out of battery!

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I graduated in 82 and we still had shop classes , but not much longer. I was also buying closed shop machine tools in the 90's for 10 cents on the dollar of new. My 150# Vulcan still wears the school district inventory tag, it was $50.  The community college where I took Machine Tool Technology classes closed the machine shop in the 90's due to low enrollment. I work with guys whose power tools have one speed - max, and they don't do anything by hand. One loves to use his 4.5" Dewalt grinder with a flap wheel for polishing shafts to get bearings and sprockets to slide onto shafts better. The same guy made some stock racks that he welded to the wall of the container outside. Not one cut edge has been deburred, no gussets, no thinking ahead. You would think as much as he likes flap wheelin" shafts he wouldn't mind deburring the edges.

rockstar.esq, as to tool breakage. In their defense the 10-24 tap is one of the most broken sizes due to the thread depth being so deep on a small diameter. I also prefer spiral point taps so I don't have to back them up, and they can be power fed with a mill, or drill in thin material. Now having said that, the guys I work with now, and in the past, will burn through supplies at an alarming rate because they are not buying them. If they had just spent $$ on taps and drills they might take better care of them, but when the deep pockets company supplies them, they don't care how many it takes. And don't get me started on guys drilling stainless sheet....or I should say attempting to drill..

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Biggun,  I've broken a few taps and drill bits myself.  I've never run into trouble with a 10-24, but small stuff like #4-40 just wants to break under a hard gaze.  A lot of the tapping an electrician ends up doing is in sheet metal, and even then, it's mostly cleaning up threads that were painted or galvanized.  Most of that stuff can be sorted out with a notch filed perpendicular to the threads of the appropriate bolt. 

Thomas, I think you've nailed it.  Everything is disposable to them.  I don't have any prejudice against power tools, cordless or otherwise.  It bugs me to see tools getting destroyed, even if they're not mine.  That being said, there are times where the best business decision is to get it done with what's available even if that means destroying some tools.  

Stuff like repairing your vehicle with the chrome-plated putty tools they sell at an all night gas station.

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May I repeat "Business Decision"!  We tend to make idols of some blacksmithing tools from the past; but in some instances they were "consumables". Especially the bridge anvils used for reforging cable tool drill rig bits. (Even nowadays in the patch this is a big deal; when your downtime costs several thousand dollars an hour how many hundred dollar tools is it worth to get you back online 6 hours sooner?)

On the other hand; folks whose tool replacement costs exceed those of others doing the same job and are not more profitable than they are, may have a short tenure on a job...

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Ya, ya, ............... the youth of these days, my grandfather complained about the generation of my father my father complained about me, and by now I am the one who complains about the youth of today :P.
Have myself found a cure for me, take them by their hands and teach them your skills, give it a second chance if necessary and if they do not want to ....... let them leave. Just as someone of you quoted, if you yourself have to pay 90 dollars for a broken 3/4in tap you will learn how much beer you could have drink for the same amount in the pub, and you/he will be more economical and more aware of the material.

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I did have to learn ( and am still learning) proper tool usage pretty much on my own. I didn't get to learn from my grandfathers, my dad is lucky if he can screw in a lightbulb, and they didn't offer a whole lot on many different tools in schools. I learned a lot on the job from others and the rest was figured out the hard way ( some times at the broken tool replacement cost factor). I try to go about things smarter now. 

And yes I have replaced many drill bits from trying to drill stainless in the past. <_<

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Well I have several shop class textbooks, generally cost me a dollar apiece, and when I want to work on something I haven't done before I'll read that chapter in the book(s).  I think the sections that have stood me in good stead are the concept of "Speeds and Feeds" and "draw filing".

I even have an old Farm Shop Manual which is interesting in the wide range of things a farmer ought to know.

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On the same line of thinking as the folk who watch something online and think they can do it too are the larger demographic who think buying the tool gives them the skill. The, "If I had one of those (whatevers) I could do that," crowd.

I know I'd like to have some of my metal shop text books but some from the: wood, auto, print, craft, etc. shops would come in handy often. I graduated in '70 and shop classes continued at least another decade before they started to fade. My last two years were in "Occupational Heavy Metal" shop class. Class was two hours and started an hour before the rest of the school but our day ended an hour early so we were the envy of other kids. 

In jr. high (middle school) metal shop we spent a couple weeks learning to file with the section final exam being a steel cube, size our choice with a +/- 0.001" tolerance, edges and corners to be broken no greater than a 0.01" radius. Almost all of us made a 6 die, mine was 3/4" from 1" sq. parent stock. The 12" steel rule I made my Father was always in a top drawer in his top box. I made it to his specs, he wanted one side fractional and one decimal. That got me extra credit, it was a bear to lay out and get right.

I'll show anybody who wants how to do anything I know how to do. I don't keep a tally but I think maybe 1 in 15 or so come for a second session.  

On the other hand I don't look up a 70 yr. old machinist if I'm having trouble with my computer! 

Frosty The Lucky. 

 

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Around 1990 I got to forge in high school shop.  I believe it was a natural gas Johnson forge?  looked like a troth with a thick lid on a swing arm for a top.  Made things like punches, chisels, etc. and case hardened them.

This week, my 14yr old son is using the same forge in his shop class.  He said they are making lantern hooks/hangers.

This is a small country school.  I graduated in a class of about 50 students and I think my son's class is slightly less.  This school always had good shop programs.  Woodshop, metal shop, CAD, small engine shop, Agriculture were some of the offerings.  I guess it is the benefit of living in the country and going to a school surrounded by farms.

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My son was in the shop and needed a ruler to measure with. I told him to go out in the yard and get a stick about the size of his thumb and one that was 2 to 2-1/2 feet long and NOT straight. We peeled  off the bark hit it lightly with sand paper, and proceeded to use his bent stick as a ruler for the entire project. Put the end here, and make a mark when you want the other end to be. Transfer that stick and measurement to the metal and cut on your mark. Works for inside or outside measurements. 

At the end of the project his bent stick ruler had done it's job well. He ask how it could be that he made the entire project and never touched a standard ruler. I told him it was because, to start with, he had chosen a smart stick. 

He came back a couple of months later and said he figured out what I meant by the bent stick ruler being smart. He had to use a yard stick for another project and none of the pre-existing marks were in the right place. The marks were always too long or too short and never right on. His parting comment was that straight sticks are dumb.

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10 minutes ago, Glenn said:

At the end of the project his bent stick ruler had done it's job well. He ask how it could be that he made the entire project and never touched a standard ruler. I told him it was because, to start with, he had chosen a smart stick. 

Reminds me of stick quiz. Answer a question wrong and get hit with a stick. Twine makes a good measuring device too. Heck, try dividing a circumference in quarters or thirds without a string. 

Frosty The Lucky.

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