I’m here at the Wooden Boat School, so tempted to build one. However, I’m content to do the bronze casting class.
Wooden
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A common exercise in machinist training used to be to make a cube (with fairly tight tolerances) by hand, using only files. And that's with steel! So you could definitely get quite a good flat, true surface on a bronze cast cleat, that way.
Build a dink! There's nothing like rowing the boat you gave life to around. I highly recommend it. Check out the offcenterharbor website. The kits make much less of an ordeal.
Yup. Doable with a file, a straight edge, and a gauge. Do they still do that project with new machinists ?
I am actually curious how the studs that go through the deck would work.
Based on the small photo, what is there appears to be hexagonal ?
I am guessing that that is simply the passage for the molten bronze.
Is that cut off, the bottom flatted, and holes drilled/tapped for studs ?
I had a machinist working for me who trained in the early 2000s who did that exercise, so they were still doing it at least that recently.
I think that's correct. They are the sprues. Hexagonal because that is what the wax or whatever pattern was. Beefy for good dense casting and to limit shrinking while cooling. It's likely they can be re-used in the next casting.
Now that I’ve done a casting, I can fully appreciate the man with the newspaper in my avatar.
Around 2000 i was inquiring about machinist/gunsmith schooling, I believe it was Browning that not only had you make a 1" cube, but layout and checker each side so that they all lined up. All was to be done by hand with files.
They still do it here in Canada.
When I was in high school in the early 80s they added electronics to the existing training for metal shops, wood shops, and automotive. Students would attend shop classes in another neighbouring school if their own didn't have what they wanted. (My school had electronics and automotive the neighbouring highschool had the metal and woodworking)
That said, at least locally, they now have specific high schools that focus on trades training of all sorts.
I believe it was an unintended consequence of the "No Child Left Behind" policies enacted in the early 2000's. High school accreditation and funding was tied to standardized test scores and outcomes that were all based on a pre-college curriculum. Resources were shifted to the pre-college curriculum and whenever money got tight, the last thing that would get a budget cut would be the pre-college courses. So little by little the trade curriculum eroded.
I don't think so. We never had that policy here in Canada, and yet the same thing happened. Also, it was mostly already done by 2000, here. I think it's part of a much broader phenomenon.
And yet if you want a decent job it is trades and IT that seem to be the thing. A bachelor's in business admin etc. is almost useless due to the number of graduates. Better to spend that tuition starting your own business IMO.
Must be provincial differences. Some provinces still do it. Here the trades are increasingly in specific highschools that focus on pre-trade training as opposed to every school trying to fund the costs
Books are cheap compared to equipping a machine shop classroom
Good point. I'm sure that factored into the decline in trades training in the public schools.
The second part (trades training increasing) undermines the first part, though. If they're increasing, then they must have first declined unless, in your province, they were always low. I expect it's increasing in the provinces I've lived in, too--at the moment. But, in the era of decline that I was talking about (70s, 80s, and 90s), I lived in six different provinces (Quebec, Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, and British Columbia) and I saw the decline in all of them.