Doors, Saws and the Wall Street Journal

New Doors














Saw After

Saw Before

I got out yesterday morning even though it was raining a little to work on the barn doors. The door on the left side of the photo is finished. It goes up and down and everything. The one on the right still has some work to do on it. I did manage to get the torsion spring apart and straighten out the plastic tube inside it. I took the heat gun to it and it came back pretty close to being right. It's not perfect but it spins on the pipe it goes over, so that should work. I need to cut the spring off a little, however. The piece that fits inside and couples to the spring winder was a little hard to get off and I sprung the spring, so to speak. I can cut off a couple of coils and shorten the plastic tube a like amount and I should be all set to finish the door, as long as I can find the bracket I'm missing. I'll check with the Building Trades instructor Wednesday, maybe he's got it in his trailer or tool box.

The saw in the photos came from school. We teach a traditional woodshop type of class and a construction class. Usually the same guy teaches both so the tools migrate from one shop to another. This year that's not the case. I've been sorting out the woodshop tools from the construction tools so I can keep track of my stuff and the tools won't get boogered up. As you can see from the photo, the cross cut saw was in pretty bad shape. We tried to cut something the other day and it was like rubbing two sticks together. I cleaned it up and sharpened it up a little while I was waiting for the Bear's game to come on last night. It looks a whole lot better and it's a lot sharper. I just filed it by hand but I've done a few of them over the years and I can usually get them so they at least cut. I don't have a saw set to reset the teeth but it'll cut the little bit we'll need it for.

In yesterday's Wall Street Journal there was an article by Rupert Murdch about the Steve Jobs' educational model. In the article he describes the lousy job that schools have been doing and what the role of technology - meaning electronic stuff - should be in schools. It's worth a look but I still believe that traditional shop classes would help the situation tremendously. Colleges continue to turn out technology/engineering educators or whatever they call it and most of them wouldn't know a cross cut saw if they got swatted on the ass with one. Granted, not many people earn their living with a hand saw anymore, but the importance of putting tools in the hands of the students can't be over emphasized. While I'm not a big fan of all the latest and greatest electronic gizmos, I'm not a complete Luddite, either. There's a place for some of the stuff but there needs to be a place where you can learn to use hand tools properly and to have the proper respect for them. Of course if the instructor lets all of the saws rust up and allows the students to cut into nails and who knows what else, how will a kid know any better.

I wish I could somehow prove what I know instinctively to be true about all of this. Whether it was Sloyd, Manual Training, Industrial Arts - you pick a version - there is just so much more to be learned than just the craft skills in "shop class". If you've got 7,000 people per day dropping out of high school, you're doing something wrong. They throw more money and more computers at the problem but the kids aren't any smarter and they still quit school. We started a new committee at school addressing some of this but I doubt seriously if much will come out of it. The committees never have the authority to make the necessary changes so even if we come up with the cure for all the educational woes known to man, someone in authority will say no. The reasons they say no are varied but they always say no. Buddy, when I get to be king, there's going to be some changes made.

Surly's birthday today, by the way. Happy birthday, Sonny.