
Wood Shop Enters the Age of High-Tech - pavornyoh
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/07/education/edlife/forward-tinkering-colleges-make-room-for-maker-spaces.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=photo-spot-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0
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ne8il
I know this article is more about "maker spaces" than "wood shops", but there
is also somewhat of a renaissance in traditional hand-tool woodworking going
on. A new community shop opened in Toronto which is based entirely on hand
tools:
[http://www.theunpluggedwoodshop.com/](http://www.theunpluggedwoodshop.com/).
I'd like to see more people realize they don't need $1000s of high tech
machines to build the same types of furniture we've done by hand for
centuries.

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knieveltech
Here in North Carolina we have the Folk School for this sort of thing. I'd
love to see them open a satellite campus in the Triangle.

[https://www.folkschool.org/](https://www.folkschool.org/)

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knieveltech
I once saw a guy in the local maker space spend a couple hours programming a
CNC milling machine & arranging a complicate series of clamps and shims to
hold a work piece he intended to drill. 15 seconds into his run the drill bit
bound up in the work piece. Since the mill was set to pulse drill on the up
stroke it snatched the work piece out of the jig that was holding it. On the
next downstroke it totally obliterated his jig and then hurled the work piece
across the machine shop. 15 feet away there was a set of collets that would
have worked way better than the printed ABS widget he was using to hold his
workpiece. There was also a bog standard drill press standing next to the
table the collets were on. If this dude had simply chucked his piece in a
collet and walked over to the drill press his parts run would have taken 15
minutes, likely with no ballistic interludes. The really shocking part was
that he was in the machine shop at all. Normally it, the welding stations, and
the wood shop were deserted and there was always a line (sometimes hours long)
to access the laser cutter, 3d printer, and CNC router table. The three tools
in the shop that could be controlled with a laptop and that required no direct
tool use on the part of the operator. That always bothered me for reasons I
can't fully articulate.

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WalterBright
When I was in high school metal shop, back in the stone (iron?) age, a fellow
student forgot to take the key out of the chuck before turning on the lathe.
That key shot across the room and punched a neat hole through the wall. It
could have easily killed someone.

Making dangerous mistakes is hardly confined to CNC machines.

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m-i-l
At my school, one of the teachers had fixed a spring to each chuck key, to
make it impossible to leave in by mistake - you had to press the key in to
open/close the chuck, and as soon as you stopped pressing it in the spring
would make the key pop out. I'd have thought such a simple way of improving
safety would be pretty standard by now, but I've not seen it since, at least
on any of the home tools I've used.

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kedean
Really? I think every drill press I've operated has had that kind of chuck
key. It's fantastic.

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m-i-l
I've only used a small number of low budget tools on a very infrequent basis
since. A quick search on the internet suggests that safety mechanisms are
common nowadays, with keyless chucks and chuck guards seemingly the most
common. I guess I was just impressed with both the improvisational nature and
retrofitting of the spring solution.

~~~
kedean
I'll agree with that, I haven't seen someone retrofit their own before.

