Interesting German Carpenters Group on Facebook

[Steve]

I speak no German but it seems to be a apprenticeship training and competition program. Some really cool projects - to bad there is not something like this here in the states...

https://www.facebook.com/ZimmererNationalmannschaft

[ernest dubois]

It seems like one of the feeds leading up to the Works Skills competition. Most of the countries you might think of participate, from Asia, Africa, Latin America and Europe. Germany always does pretty good in the carpentry section, but I don't think the US participates. Here it gets organized through what you might think of as high school, but then the ones orientated towards practical or technical education. I think the US system is sort of out of step and so there arises a compatibility problem in terms of their participation.

[Chris Hall]

Oh the US system is out of step all right. It's not even taking steps.

There really isn't a significant trade training program here, not on a national level. There are a few colleges here which offer programs in carpentry and even degrees. Lots of community colleges have courses in framing and 'finish' carpentry. It's really basic though, and indeed most of the work doesn't call for much more.

Even if the US decided to get involved in World Skills, where would they find the teachers? Virtually nobody does developed geometry-based carpentry in North America. It seems, in this country, that such carpentry practice is something just a few individuals have interest in and passion for, however probably 99% of the carpenters out there don't even know it exists.

I have run a program in such carpentry right here, and it has been very difficult to sustain interest. Starting out with more than a dozen drawing group members a few years back it dwindled down to two, and then one. It's really cool stuff, but it takes effort to learn. I remain somewhat mystified why there aren't more people interested in it frankly. Neko ni koban, as the Japanese would say (like a gold coin in front of a cat)

[Dennis]

It is my understanding that currently in the states, shop classes in junior and high school have much been eliminated from the curriculum. Budget cuts are needed, they say shops have to go. I had some very inspirational shop teachers, really good guys that were there committed for their students. Tragic to lose that as an alternative or at least a supplement to what are often other subject boring and stuffy classrooms with the clock not ticking fast enough.

[Chris Hall]

Sometimes the football program needs a bigger workout room, and the school shop is ripe for the plunder.

That's how I came to own my dust collection system. If I hadn't bought it, it would have gone for scrap.

[Paul Atzenweiler]

First - I will admit to being a moron and a little "simple", but I thought we had to choose from one or the other of the forums. I would like to do the Drawing study.

[Chris Hall]

...I thought we had to choose from one or the other of the forums. I would like to do the Drawing study.

Uh, hope, that was never the case. The thing is, the initial study group was for drawing only. After a while I began to realize that carpentry drawing was a specialization that did not appeal to huge numbers of folks and decided to open a second group for the study of joinery. People who were already in the drawing group could freely access the joinery study material. People who joined the joinery study group had read-only access to the drawing group material.

The reason for the difference in access is easy to explain:

-There were no perquisites as far as joining the joinery study group. Open to anyone, and the projects may be tackled in any order.
-The drawing study required the completion of several perquisites, and the mailings come in a sequential order, building one upon the other. To understand the material well requires actually laying out and making the projects.

As the drawing group already existed, and I added a new group, I also felt it was reasonable to paid-up drawing group members to give them access to the new group's material. Smoothing the path to a new forum arrangement with new members.

So, for someone who joined the joinery study group and had not worked their way through the material required for drawing study participation, the drawing study mailings really would have largely amounted to just pretty pictures.

That was then, this is now. The drawing study based on sequential completion of mailings did not work out so well in the end as membership engagement dwindled down to one individual. So, I am reassessing what to do.

While I still believe that the only way to really understand the drawing material is to lay out and cut out, I realize that insisting upon material completion dooms the enterprise. I've made available the TAJCD essays to any buyer (and Volume II, IV, and soon-to-be-released Volume V are all based on the drawing group mailings) so there really is no reason that further mailings for drawing study could not be made available to all who wish to subscribe to them, regardless of how/when they wish to engage with the material.

I also had a selfish motivation in adopting the mailing-by-mailing approach: it was a like a carrot which kept me working away at getting the mailings out the door. They take a lot of work to put together, and if I know people are waiting to receive them, keen to progress in their study, then that motivates me to produce the material. Producing the material and having no feedback from people engaging with it and constructing projects will be a tougher challenge for me I'm sure.

So, my thought for the study group, when it gets going again in January, is to have the option for members to be in either joinery study or drawing study, which will cost the same per month, or to be in both groups, which will cost a little more per month. I will complete mailings for either group and not make the reception of further mailings contingent upon completion of material.

Just trying to figure out the best way to do this, and that's where I'm at at the moment.

[Dennis]

Good on the dust collection score, Chris.

School wood shops had good gear. Northfield or Oliver, I think was pretty much the standard from years back. Some person would make the rounds to various schools, doing regular maintenance on the equipment. Scoring that machinery when it became available was often a big plus.

[ernest dubois]

These programs also went through a gutting throughout Europe in the 70s. Many of the schools here had beautiful Fromia machines which are also lucky scores when they can sometimes be got, much of them shipped out to Africa when they were glad to have old machines.

[Chris Hall]

It's largely a continuation of a process starting in the late 1800's, where factory-made components which can be assembled by semi-skilled workers gradually supplant products made locally and by the carpenters themselves. Craftsmen are little by little replaced by assemblers. The economics are obvious enough: cheap and fast wins the day. Bigger companies and their economies of scale and their resources in terms of marketing and distribution. Toss into that mix the rise of the engineering profession, and their love for materials which are uniform and easily quantified/certified, like steel, glass, concrete, and engineered wood products, together with the rise of the insurance industry, and you get a powerful tag team which gradually debases the place of the traditional artisan in our constructed environment.

In the US it happened soonest I think because the old world trade guilds never took hold here. Many in fact came here to escape their rigid structures, along with other rigid social structures. The 'land of opportunity' and all that. The pattern was established early by the English colonists - the New world was a place to come to make your fortune, to extract great wealth by whatever means you had, then retire back to the UK with a tidy pile of cash and a title. The approach seems to have stuck, as very little has been done or built here since with any sort of eye to the long term. Now, with globalization, the system is spreading elsewhere, and rapidly.

There still is a role for traditional craft work, and many respond positively to things made outside of the mold of the factory, however it is a tricky business in which to survive. Many artisans focus so much on the technical development of their art that they neglect other critical aspects of running a business. 'If you build it they will come' can work, but not reliably and not over the long term. It's often the non-technical aspects of running a business as an artisan that make or break the business, mean the difference between semi-starving and prospering. And even when times are good, it seems you must always prepare for change in circumstance.