Will Sampson talks about his own early woodworking education and how learning about woodworking can open doors. His guest is Patrick Molzahn, woodworking educator and author of the Sixth Edition of Modern Cabinetmaking, a groundbreaking new multi-media textbook for woodworking.
This episode of the Woodworking Network podcast was sponsored by Wood Pro Expo. It’s really easy for woodworkers to stay stuck inside, focused on their shops and production. But over the last couple of years, the pandemic has forced them be even more isolated than usual. Now it’s time to get out of the shop and resume life in the outside world, especially when it’s a chance to network with your woodworking business peers. That opportunity is coming April 27-29 in sunny San Diego as the Wood Pro Expo joins with the Closets Conference and Expo to offer an unparalleled opportunity to boost your business with intelligence on techniques, tools, and technology. Let’s get face to face again. Learn more at woodworkingnetwork.com/events/wood-pro-expo. See you there.
Woodworking Network is a home for professional woodworkers, presenting technology, supplies, education, inspiration, and community, from small business entrepreneurs to corporate managers at large automated plants.
You can find all of our podcasts at WoodworkingNetwork.com/podcasts and in popular podcast channels. Be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss an episode. Thanks again to today’s sponsor, Wood Pro Expo. If you have a comment or topic you’d like us to explore, contact me at will.sampson@woodworkingnetwork.com. And we would really appreciate it if you fill out the survey at woodworking network.com/podcast-survey. Thanks for listening.
Intro music courtesy of Anthony Monson.
Here’s what’s coming today on the Woodworking Network Podcast: (17:35) “The more and more I worked on it, it became reflection on the experiences I had in the industry, so in the beginning it was almost story telling, anecdotes of why this is important.”
Intro:
Welcome to this episode of the Woodworking Network Podcast. Join us as we explore the business of woodworking big and small and what it takes to succeed. I’m Will Sampson.
Today’s episode is sponsored by Wood Pro Expo California. We’ll be talking with renowned woodworking educator Patrick Molzahn about a new ground-breaking textbook for woodworking education he recently finished . But first I want to talk about:
Education to open doors
My formal woodworking education began when I was in the first grade in a Los Angeles elementary school in the early 1960s.
At the time, somebody had decided that we should introduce woodworking as part of the curriculum at the earliest grades. All the classrooms were equipped with metal lockers that held a variety of woodworking hand tools such as crosscut saws, coping saws, hammers, squares, rulers and the like.
It was all quite primitive and taught by the regular classroom teacher as a fully integrated part of the curriculum. We were doing a unit on transportation. You took a pine board and nailed it crosswise on another board to make a wing for an airplane. You took a board and cut two 45-degree cuts at one end to make the prow of a boat. Maybe a rounded cut at the opposite end with a coping saw for the stern. If it was to be an ocean liner, you stacked up and nailed on steadily decreasing size boards for the superstructure and cut dowels for the smokestacks. For trucks and cars, you nailed on hobby store wooden wheels.
Always biting off more than I could chew, I wanted a helicopter. So, I used a coping saw to cut a shape out of a board, made some propellers with popsicle sticks and had a very rough facsimile of a Chinook twin-prop chopper. I painted it with blue tempera paint.
Many years later, I ran into a longtime woodshop teacher in the Los Angeles area and asked him about the program. He remembered it and said it was widespread in the system for a number of years but had been dropped at some point. Probably a budget cut or some kid was spectacularly injured. I don’t know.
All I do know is it awakened in me the concept that I didn’t have to buy everything or beg my parents for it. I could make it myself. And wood was a marvelous medium to do that. It also taught me practical measuring skills and how to make one part fit into an assembly of other parts. These days, too many kids go all the way through a dozen years of schooling without learning those basics. (Don’t ask me about all the stories I’ve done over the years about high school graduates who couldn’t read a tape measure!)
Learning of all types tends to open the door to more learning. OK, I know what to do with a hammer, nails, and a saw; what about other tools? If I can make simple wooden toys, can I make something else, like furniture, or a cabinet? What happens if I can use power tools?
It also opens the door to understanding. If you take woodworking classes and go to buy a woodworking product, no matter how bad or good you were in the class, no matter how basic or advanced the class, you won’t be able to buy that product without exploring how it was made.
And in some cases, such an early acquaintance with woodworking skills might open your mind to the opportunity that eventually becomes your career. But that can’t happen if you don’t know the opportunity exists. All these years of more and more schools closing their woodworking programs have made the demise of woodworking as a career a self-fulfilling prophesy that we have to work hard to reverse.
Before we get to our interview with Patrick Molzahn, let’s pause for a word from our sponsor.
It’s really easy for woodworkers to stay stuck inside, focused on their shops and production. But over the last couple of years, the pandemic has forced them be even more isolated than usual. Now it’s time to get out of the shop and resume life in the outside world, especially when it’s a chance to network with your woodworking business peers. That opportunity is coming April 27-29 in sunny San Diego as the Wood Pro Expo joins with the Closets Conference and Expo to offer an unparalleled opportunity to boost your business with intelligence on techniques, tools, and technology. Let’s get face to face again. Learn more at WoodProExpoCalifornia.com. See you there.
Now, let’s learn about this great new woodworking textbook from Patrick Molzahn.