Requesting Advanced Woodshop Class

Education Interest Check
#1

In another thread it was mentioned to have woodshop office hours and SME’s and what qualifies someone to be a SME or teach the classes. The below points were mentioned. I believe it would be a great value to the woodshop if we had quarterly or some other semi-regular offering of an advanced woodshop class. We could even call it woodshop instructors training. I would love to help out the more I learn and as my skills advance, but this type of class could be a huge benefit to the woodshop overall. The more people who can confidently align and fix machines and help the newer members, the better the shop would run. Maybe a pre-requisite is you must have taken the woodshop basics, CNC mulitcam, and lathe classes before you can take the advanced class, that way everyone has a minimal knowledge base coming in. I know there seems to be interest in more woodshop basics classes, so more trained instructors could help.

Suggested SME/Instructor Qualifications:
Can you confidently answer questions like "where is this [tool | item | consumable ] located or stored for all things Woodshop related?
Can you confidently point members to DMS related online information resources like DMS Wiki, Talk forums, tool information & status pages, and classes/events calendar?
Can you confidently tune (align) a table saw?
Can you confidently change the sandpaper on the various powered sanding tools?
Can you confidently change the cutters on the planer and jointer?
Can you confidently take a length of greenwood log and turn it into a mountable bowl blank for the lathe?
Can you confidently sharpen chisels, planes, and lathe gouges
Can you confidently plane and joint a board square, and/or cut dovetails, and/or cut mortise-&-tenon joints by hand?

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#2

As an aside, I would hope that people willing to volunteer to fill that role would inherently be qualified to do so. It would just be a colossal waste of their time otherwise.

I guess I just have the sort of face where people ask me questions… you know: wearing a hat, respirator, and hearing protection. I would say common questions are along the lines of “How do I reset the drum sander when the feed kicks off?” or “where is the on switch?” with a few “does this look right to you?” mixed in for flavor.

#3

There is a clear, obvious, practical obstacle with this request: we clearly don’t seem to have enough members that are ready, and/or willing, and/or able to teach the Woodshop Basics classes that are required.

Not blame-storming here…it is essentially a classic chicken-and-egg problem.

Additionally, experts aren’t produced from attending one or two classes; it’s a journey. The good news is there are places in the Dallas area (e.g. https://www.woodcraft.com/stores/dallas/classes) that do teach a reasonably comprehensive set of skills, as well as a serious woodworking school in Waco I can recommend highly, as well as serious woodworking schools in other locations around the country (https://www.marcadams.com/ that comes highly recommended from people I know).

I realize all this is probably generally unsatisfactory for you based on expectations that you might have at this point regarding DMS.

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#4

Valid points. Eagerness can far exceed skill and experience.
I will say it is slightly disappointing to hear the suggestions to go take classes elsewhere if you want to learn instead of seeing more opportunities and classes at DMS, but without the ready, willing, and able to teachers as you mentioned, that may be the best avenue. My contributions for the foreseeable future may be cleaning and helping where I can, and when the skill and experience catch up I’ll start contributing with teaching.

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#5

@mblatz was just saying that it is hard to justify using our limited supply of teachers to teach non-required classes when the demand for the required Basics course is so high. You can teach Woodshop Basics by shadowing and assisting teaching it. You don’t have to be an expert to teach people how to be safe and operate the tools. You’re likely more able than you realize.

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#6

Ok, I misinterpreted @mblatz and that explanation makes a lot of sense. I’ll try to see about doing some shadowing of a few more basics classes and try to assist teach. Thanks for the information.

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