Throughout this unit you will cover topics of: to understand safety in a shop workspace & develop basic skills to operate woodworking machines to construct a project, a clear understanding of safety in the workplace, assess their knowledge over safety through a safety test, demonstration how to operate hand and power tools, decipher a blueprint to build a wooden candy dispenser and to construct their candy dispensers.

Furniture making is in many ways like bridge building, connections holding posts apart with spans to support a deck. Many architects have tried their hand at furniture design, Wright, Mies Van Der Rohe, Aalto, Saarinen, Le Corbusier, and Gerhy.
We will review the history of furniture making in America with a visit to the Decorative Arts Collection at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and have Cambridge artist/craftsman Mitch Ryerson show us his work and talk about design process. Students will learn traditional woodworking techniques beginning with the use of hand tools, power tools and finally woodworking machines.
Students will build a single piece of furniture of an original design that must support someone weighing 185 lbs. sitting on it 12 inches off the ground made primarily of wood. Students should expect to spend approximately 80 hours in the shop outside of class time.
Preregistered architecture students will get first priority but first meeting attendance is mandatory. Twelve student maximum, no exceptions.

Gauge your students’ skills and teach them new ones in this fun, introductory woodworking project using found pallet lumber.  Valuable for assessing what skills students have, do not have, and how hard students work (tearing apart pallets), while providing planters that can be sold as a fundraiser.  Written by Boyd Bowder.

In this Public Service Design Seminar (PSDS), we will design and build products with developmentally disabled students at the Protestant Guild Learning Center in Waltham, MA. The class will work closely with community clients to make sure that what is developed is helpful and functional. These products will be built using the Hobby Shop equipment, the water jet machine in particular. Over the course of the seminar, this class will teach students how to use the OMAX® Jet Machining Center commonly called the water jet and associated OMAX® software. The product development process will also be detailed in depth: determining customer needs, concept development, prototyping, design, and manufacturing.

This lesson is to help students learn to use a wood chisel safely. Students should have the ability to mortise a hinge, safely, after this lesson.

Intermediate level woodworking project. Uses approximetly 1 1/2 board feet of material. This project use a pneumatic nail gun and has movable handles which require measuring and aligning screw for them to open properly. Approximate dimensions: 16" X 11 1/2" X 2".