O-level woodwork challenge

[AndyT]

Sounds like you are talking yourself into it Tony - I'm off to sharpen some chisels...

 

[Phil Pascoe]

After two or three years of lessons we were allowed to make anything we could draw properly - which always seemed to me to be fair. We (possibly being a bit better financed than some as being a Direct Grant school) had a good selection of tools, though as Tony said many were for tuition puposes rather than regular use. I do remember using a plough and a compass plane, though. We used to get sent to drawing exams with newly ground and honed one inch chisels for pencil sharpening - it probably wouldn't even be allowed now.
I remember taking an Ideal Homes exhibition booklet into the 'shop after O levels - the master leafed through it and said excellent - everything you should never do is in there.

 

[MikeG.]

I wished I'd done woodwork as a schoolkid. It sounds wonderful. I arrived in the UK in the term before O level exams, and so could only take the subjects I had been studying in Australia.

 

[doctor Bob]

I wanted to do woodwork A level, my mum told me not to be daft..............

 

[Trevanion]

I wanted to do woodwork A level, my mum told me not to be daft..............

I did woodwork (or rather 'Resistant Materials') GCSE and was told by the teacher when I left to go to college that I wouldn't get very far at it and would never make any money doing it :duno:

The students he took under his wing and spent a lot more attention on than the rest of the class ended up going to design universities, got into a load of student debt and came back to here to realise there weren't any jobs that were relevant to the qualifications they had acquired and now they work in hospitality on barely minimum wage, or at least they used to until they were all made redundant through zero-hours contracts on account of the Coronavirus.

Yeah...

 

[Phil Pascoe]

I wanted to leave school after O levels and go college to do engineering drawing. My father (a builder) wouldn't allow it as the technical college was "full of drug crazed hippies". He was right, actually.

 

[Ttrees]

I had chosen woodwork metalwork and art, instead of those posh classes with foreign languages which I had absolutely no interest in learning.
Unfortunately I ended up as the material to be worked on (hammer)
Good job those all those tools were blunt as a butter knife.
Learned nothing apart from how to grow eyes on the back of me head.

I see a few of them lads have got quite the taste for edge tools nowadays!
Thank goodness for the internet!

 

[MikeG.]

I wanted to do woodwork A level, my mum told me not to be daft..............

Kidding aside, was there ever such a thing?

 

[doctor Bob]

I wanted to do woodwork A level, my mum told me not to be daft..............

Kidding aside, was there ever such a thing?

There was definately something like it, kid a year above me did design and tech I think, sort of woodwork, metalwork, td, comination.

 

[AJB Temple]

I was allowed to do woodwork and metal work until the age of 14, and after that it was strictly academic subjects for the likes of me. We were allowed to do woodwork and metalwork in lunch hour and after school though as long as Mr Foster or Mr Grimes were present. I made my first guitar in my lunch hours that way, getting a good deal of help from both teachers in fretting the neck and making a tie rod from scratch.

My dad was an engineer and we had a home workshop (rather basic) as well, so I honestly think I would have breezed those joints at 16. I look back fondly on those times in the school workshops as they were much more fun than maths, pure and applied maths and further maths. 8) I was a very academic kid. And the school was an exam factory really. Heavily streamed. Always felt it was hugely divisive.

 

[Phil Pascoe]

I wanted to do woodwork A level, my mum told me not to be daft..............

Kidding aside, was there ever such a thing?

Yes. I took it.

 

[Distinterior]

Whilst at school, I took Metalwork/ Engineering, Woodwork, Technical Drawing & Art as well as my academic subjects and did an exam in all of them. All my "practical " lesson teachers were excellent and didnt tend to treat you like a child, as such.
Strictly speaking, I was in a CSE grade class but my Metalwork & Woodwork teachers said I was good enough to take the O Level exam, so I did...!

My Metalwork/Engineering teacher asked me and my mate, what we wanted to make as our O Level exam project.....We decided on a petrol powered Go Cart, based around an old Briggs & Stratton lawn mower engine we got from the school groundskeeper. We built the complete thing from scratch.
On our first practice drives around the Teachers car park, we were promptly dragged before the Headmaster to explain ourselves, but our teacher turned up to explain that it was part of our OLevel exam...Result!

I left school in 1978 and my Father got a new job and promptly moved us 300 miles away from where I went to school....I lost touch with all my old school friends, then 20 years later they tracked me down & I got invited to a school reunion. I went and the most surprising and enjoyable part of it was that some of my old teachers were there.

I remember searching out my Metalwork and Woodwork teachers and expressing to them how much of a positive influence they had had on me during the time I was in their classes and instilling into me the necessary attention to detail that i try and work by even today... Mr Quarmby and Mr Little.....Happy Days!!

 

[AndyT]

Ok, I've taken the test.

Preliminaries: here are the design and the pieces of wood, prepared by the workshop technician (me):

And here is the kit of tools I allowed myself. I've added a mortise gauge, plus a screwdriver to set it with, and a dovetail marker. I didn't use the plane in the end. Pete Maddex will recognise the saw. Start time was 10.45. There wouldn't have been time to take wip-style photos all the way through, but I tried to take one every twenty minutes.

This was at about 11.05. I'd sawn 4" off one end, marked out dovetails and cut the tails. I don't really know why, but I decided not to use a coping saw, so I chopped through the central space. This confirmed what I already knew - it would have been much easier if I had used a bit of proper well-behaved hardwood, like walnut or mahogany, not this very soft cedar. Never mind!

Twenty minutes later and I still hadn't finished the dovetails but I had remembered to include the clock in the photo. If I'd used proper wood and a coping saw I would have been further ahead than this.

By the end of the first hour I had got the dovetails looking as if they would fit so I turned my attention to the bridle joint. I marked it out, sawed the sides and set to paring the housings.

I sawed the sides of the slot in the leg and started chopping out the bottom - this would have been a bit quicker with a coping saw or a brace and bit, but only took a few minutes. I used a big handscrew to steady the work and prevent accidental splitting.

Then it was back to the rail for some more cross-grain paring.

And the first of many trial fits.

This was actually the first time I have ever cut a bridle joint. I can see that they are quite tricky - if it's tight, it's hard to see where to remove wood from, so it was a little while before I could risk pushing it all the way home. Fortunately, it didn't split. Here it is, with the dovetail, at the end of my first two hours.

I needed to crack on. I marked out the twin tenons with the marking gauge. I used a 3/8" chisel to cut the tiny little mortises. Quite fiddly, and again, a joint I am not used to making.

I got the mortises to what looked like the right size and then cut the tenons. Much like cutting dovetails - and again, I would have been quicker with a coping saw. Time was running out!

There was just time to mark out the chamfers. I chose to chisel them, rather than plane them, which is quite a nice thing to do if you have a sharp chisel, and even nicer if you are not in a rush.

And then, after a bit of persuasion from the vice and the mallet, my four pieces came together, just inside the allotted time. Phew!

Overall, I really enjoyed the exercise. It made me realise how rarely I concentrate so much for so long - no music, no radio, one coffee drunk on the go, no interruptions or checking the forum on my phone. So for a bit of trendy mindfulness, it was fun.

As for the quality of the work, well, judge for yourself, especially if you took similar exams or taught woodwork. All comments welcome, particularly from anyone who knows how these things would have been assessed. I hope there were points for finishing!

There are obvious faults. I thought I was allowing enough length on the dovetails and tenons for some after-assembly clean up, but they all look a bit short, and I didn't have time to do any. The dovetails and M&T are a bit gappy, outside and inside. Although the bridle joint went together, I suspect the face of the leg is not perfectly co-planar with the rail. The piece with the tenons on should have been cut shorter, but I only realised afterwards, looking at these pictures on screen.

So I know it's not an A-grade, but did I at least pass? And can you do better?

 

[MikeG.]

=D> =D> =D>

Well done Andy. You didn't help yourself with that choice of wood. Walnut would probably have saved you an hour!

 

[Phlebas]

Well, that was interesting, and well done, I'll grant you, AndyT.

However, if I had 'One piece of hardwood 16" x 2 1/4" x 5/8" and one 5" x 1 3/8" x 1 3/8"', I would regard myself as being blessed by the gods of wood supply, and make something different.

And I would estimate three days for me. And that excludes pondering time. Maybe the Zen Woodworking A-level would have suited me more. 'Let the wood find its own form'...

 

[Sheffield Tony]

Well done Andy. It is great for the stress levels to have a whole 1" of spare material to play with ! Replacement bits of wood were not allowed.

Tempting to give it a go for old times sake, but having done my "O" level woodwork once and got an "A", I wouldn't want to find I've got worse over the intervening 37 years

 

[Phil Pascoe]

I invigilated GCSE, A level and professional exams. For one A level, one particular experienced tutor took it every year - he never got an A.

 

[El Barto]

Excellent thread Andy thanks for sharing.

 

[Just4Fun]

Good report Andy. My guess is you would get a decent grade for that, but who knows what? It would be interesting to know the marking scheme for that exercise. My guess is that very few 16 year olds could do better, especially under exam conditions.

I'm sure you could have used a coping saw. I remember using one at school in the 70's.

Did your dovetails go together straight off the saw or did you have to fettle with a chisel? That could make a big difference to the time taken.

I prepared some wood (birch) this evening. I will have a go at the exercise tomorrow. I'm sure I was more nervous than this the evening before I took the exam for real, many moons ago.

 

[AndyT]

I'm glad you are going to have a go. I hope you enjoyed it like I did.
The dovetails took less fiddling than the other joints - I'm more experienced doing them than the others. Birch sounds a much better choice than cedar!