Woodworking at Collegiate School in Richmond, VA

Program Overview

As of February 2012, woodworking is offered at Collegiate School within the Middle School Activities program. The program in its current form has existed continuously at Collegiate for over a decade. It is open to both boys and girls. The focus of the class is on familiarizing students with traditional handtools - no large power tools are handled by students. While most of the students' time is spent doing what they love best - cutting, chisling, sawing, and shaping -- there is a concurrent effort made to develop student life skills of planning, patience, spatial awareness, design, and care. Our class mantra - the "wisdom of the hands."

Today we took the clamps off the chair we re-glued yesterday. How did we test our success ? We sat in the chair!

Next we moved on with our main project -- designing and building a set of legs for the WW II ship's hatch cover that is being shared with us by its owner, a Collegiate alumnus. Students looked at pictures of coffee tables with 4 legs, some with 2 legs, and even discussed single post pedestal bases. The class walked out to Mr. Hart's truck to look at the actual hatch cover - it was very heavy. Our leg set will have to be sturdy. Lastly, we walked to Keith Evans' office and studied a coffee table built by last year's class. This cherry table was more formal, and it had four, square-sectioned legs. After a class vote, a decision was made to develop a trestle base for our hatch cover. We'll post some pictures of this style of leg design soon.

Here is a picture of the hatch cover:

Course Description

Woodworking
Begins September 26 for the fall class (5th, 6th, 7th, and 8th graders) and November 28 for the winter class (5th and 6th graders).

Have you ever been to a maritime museum and seen diving helmets, harpoons, ship figureheads, and other marine artifacts? This year’s woodworking classes will get to work first-hand on one of these nautical antiques. We will be refinishing a wooden hatch cover from a World War II naval ship. The owner of the hatch cover is a ’66 Collegiate alumnus, and he is eager for our students to help design and build a set of legs to allow the hatch cover to serve as a table ! The hatch is made of longleaf yellow pine (heart pine), a valuable but commercially-extinct cousin of our modern southern pine. With some luck, we will locate some of this rare wood for the new parts of our project. Generally, the only way to obtain true heart pine these days is to go through a firm which renovates century-old warehouses and removes/recycles the original heart pine support beams. We are fortunate to have such a firm right here in Richmond -- E.T. Moore Manufacturing, Inc. on Hopkins Road. David Jackson helped us pick some ideal heart pine for this project. Come learn how to use traditional hand tools: bronze planes, bench chisels, Japanese saws, rasps, squares and marking gauges. Each session is limited to 8 students and will include a field trip to a fully equipped woodworking shop. Steve Hart, Collegiate Director of Planned Giving, and Dick Erickson, past parent, are the instructors. Woodworking meets Mondays and Tuesdays during Activity Period. There is a $30 fee for this class.

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Program Overview