Woodworking courses @ CEPT

1 class - 80 students!! from furniture design & interior design. – Taught by one principal teacher with four assistants.

Each student gets a set of chisels including two standard and a morticing chisel. They also get a large saw, a small saw, a file for sharpening their saws, a ballpeen hammer, and, a wet stone for the chisels, a machinist’s square, and a marking gauge. All this for one low costs of 1000 rupees or just under 16 American dollars.

Tool set

Assistant showing student how to file saw teeth

                                                                                            

Their first lesson is sharpening the tools, which all come (saws & chisels) dull. I don’t necessarily know if it is a lesson more than a told to do it. Keep in mind this is 80 students in one class. It was interesting to watch them go at it and it took all my effort to let them do their thing. Needless to say, do doubt there are many overly sharp chisels down there.

                                                                            

Sharpening Chisels

Their first project is a mortice & tennon joint, which they call tongue & grove, cut from teak wood, a very hard wood full of silica that dulls tools quickly.

 

  

For those in the know, the entire shop here is approximately the size of the bench room at Iowa State and contains all the power tools and benches.  There is also plenty of counter space outside the studio on which to work.

BTW: Design Innovation & Craft Resource Center (DICRC) and my “office” is just above the wood studio and I and sitting here just now listening to them torture some poor machine while running teak through it… 

In regards to the tools at my disposal, for some reason there are plenty of belt “disck” sanders, there is a combo machine - table saw, jointer and planer all in one. Also a few other tools I might find will come in handy including a pantorouter. Go figure. There is also a metal working area, really just another part of the wood shop, that has a couple of lathes, a milling machine, a plasma cutter and a couple of different kinds of welders. There are several shop techs who seem to be quite helpful.

Pantorouter

 

Tablesaw, jointer & planer all in one!

I am looking forward to getting in there at some point soon. Today as I was walking by, the techs were setting fire to a box full of newspaper and green Neem leaves in the shop’s doorway. Apparently this is their version of a citronella candle for warding off mosquitos, which are out in mass right now! I have a mosquito coil under my desk to keep them from chewing on my ankles. It is partially effective…