Your High School shop from the 70's….

[Jim Neeley]

Yellow and black diagonal-striped tape marking safety zones and about a dozen Stanley #5s hanging vertically on the wall, each with a hole drilled through the toe and hanging over a nail. A caged-in "tool locker" where we checked out most other tools.

Metal lathe and arc + oxy welders on the side.

70-71-72, jr. high., ..it brings back memories. :-)

[Rod Sheridan]

The school shop I attended had one wall of windows, the other walls were covered in chalk boards and tool cribs.

There was a large semi-circular washup sink that would allow half the class to clean up at once.

The usual assortment of North American style machines, a wood storage area and a large cyclone outside for dust collection.

The work benches had two metal vises, on diagonal corners so two people could get in each others way while working.

The hand planes and chisels were dull, it was revelation when I used the sharp hand plane my father had at home..........Rod.

[John McClanahan]

1970-71, my jr. high shop teacher told us "a clean shop is an unused shop". I live by those words to this day.

John

[Michael Yadfar]

I didn't graduate in the 70s, but my shop was similar to what it was in the 70s. I don't remeber the way the actual shop looked, but I remember all the tools. Big pieces of iron, typically USA made. Brands like Delta-Rockwell especially, along with some porter cable, cassadei, Oliver, etc. All the big brands at the time. Also, something you can add to your shop, are the big rock maple work tables (about 5'x5') with project lockers underneith.

We had a big shop, and a lumber rack upstairs. Windows took up a lot of the wall space, and we had a lot of cabinets, all locked, and the teacher had about 30 keys on his chain. We also had a big semi circle sink. Two lathes (delta and Oliver), big delta Rockwell bandsaw, huge cassadei planer, delta jointer, custom router table, delta Rockwell belt/disk sander, D/R shaper, D/R table saw, two radial arm saws (one with dado blade), miter saw with huge 15' extended fence, welders, paint hoods, and every hand tool known to man

[Ryan Mooney]

Oh yeah I forgot about the big honking radial arm saw. I remember we used it for ripping long pieces of lumber, pretty sure no one would allow that in a school shop nowadays. There was also the paint room but I can't remember what was in it....

I know there was some sort of router table because I made a bunch of trivets on it but have no remembrance of what it was like.. The shaper didn't show up until we moved in the late 80's..

[Michael Yadfar]

Oh yeah I forgot about the big honking radial arm saw. I remember we used it for ripping long pieces of lumber, pretty sure no one would allow that in a school shop nowadays.

Theyre being replaced by the sliding compound miter saw, but I'm pretty sure shops that had them in the past still have them. I graduated not so long ago and we had the sliding compound miter saw plus two radial arm saws. We had one with a dado blade, which everyone had kickbacks on. The other one had the ability to turn around and be used to rip, but we never used it that way because we were told many people get injured using that function. Very intimating saw though, I still fear using one

[Nicolas Silva]

1979: All I remember is the guy that cut his finger off and the other guy that caught himself on fire.
They don't off shop anymore.

[Mike Cutler]

Well, ya' gotta have a big old slate blackboard with a chunk missing out of it about waist high.

The teacher was demonstrating kick back too us and fed a piece of wood through the TS backward, don,t worry we were all standing on the back side of the saw. He must have done too good of a job because that piece of wood shot about 30' and broke a section of the blackboard out. I moved my seat to behind the bandsaw that day.

[julian abram]

1971, I remember one of our class mates pushing a board through a 6" joiner with one of his fingers trailing along on the end of the board. As the shop teacher took him to the hospital, the rest of us were down on our knees looking through the joiner shavings picking out pieces of Ernie's finger. Needless to say we couldn't find any pieces big enough to take to the hospital to be sewn back on. On a happier note, I am typing on my laptop which is sitting on the oak end table I built in shop in 1970. A matching coffee table and another end table from that year are up in the attic storage. I had a 16 gauge pump shotgun that was a quail killer. The pump forearm/sleeve broke loose from the ejection linkage, my shop teacher told me to bring it to class and he would braze it back together for me. I bought and he brazed it. Those were the days!

[Stephen Smith Sr]

76-79 trade school. Can't forget the creaking wood floors. Huge room with probably six benches and industrial sized equipment. Big tool crib, and attached to the outer wall of it had a sheet of plywood with 20 or more examples of wood joints made with hand tools only (we had to choose and make maybe 10 of them by hand before we were allowed to touch a power tool). Also had a dual gas burner for the hide glue pots. Separate finishing room. But the best part was the smell of sawdust. Doesn't get better than that!

[Richard Moran]

I had Metal Shop, Wood Shop and Craft Shop throughout Jr. High in the 60's. All of our shops sound a lot like what you described as far as green paint, equipment, tool room, benches, lockers and so forth. Good memories of my favorite classes.

I remember our projects included making a small box for pencils, carving a 1" thick mahogany 3 compartment relish serving dish (olives, carrots, celery or whatever) shaped like 3 leaves. I remember a few more of metal where we made a hammer, chisel (forged and oil heat treated), cast an aluminum Mickey Mouse head, and a copper planter box (rolled, galv. soldered back, wire brush finish with lacquer. In Crafts we made some plex type things like a laminated, muti-colored key fob, necklace pendant, a heat formed candy dish and a leather belt.

I ended up buying and restoring a H.S. lathe from that era, my Oliver 2159. 14" X 60", 800 pound cast iron 1 hp (upgraded to 2 hp) variable speed drive (Reeves).

Be sure to post a bunch of pics of your shop when you get it finished.

[Don Buck]

One item I can add to 1967 Thomas Eaton Jr. High School shop (Hampton, VA - Mr. Gibson was the wood shop teacher) was the tool room had pegboard "walls" with the silhouette of each hand tool painted in black so we knew where a specific tool needed to be replaced after use. Mr. Gibson could also tell if a tool was missing before dismissing the class.

A side note of the times - if we ran in the class or dropped a tool the penalty was grab your ankles and receive a good swat with a fraternity style paddle. Needless to say, we walked in the shop and seldom dropped a tool. If someone dropped a tool, it was seldom kept quiet by the fellow classmates who were anxious to see wood work (on their classmate). Last year we held a surprise dinner/roasting for Mr. Gibson who was also the Jr. High football coach and my driver's education teacher when I was in high school. About 75 former students from the '60s attended the event and we shared stories about shop, football & shop discipline. I made a large mock up of the shop paddle which was signed by many of the attendees and presented to Mr. Gibson with much love and laughter. Great memories and a great teacher.

shop paddle.jpg

[Jack Wilson50]

I took shop in junior high school in the sixties. I don't actually remember much about the shop; the thing that has always stuck in my head is that we had no safety gear. When you used the table saw, which had no guard, you were told to squint so the saw dust would not get in you eyes. Can you imagine that today.

[Bruce Seidner]

My first thought was the discipline shop paddle but I see it has already been included. Those aerodynamic holes would leave quite a pattern on your behind. It was most in use for lapses in the return of tools to their proper place on the full wall of peg board, I think painted whitish, but with each tool painted in place. Hammers, saws, chisels, planes, screwdrivers, hand drills, squares, everything had been carefully outlined and then painted black. You could see in an instant if something had not been returned. We too had multiple 5' square maple butcher block top work benches on green metal bases with a vice on each corner, 4 guys to a bench. Not much by way of power tools, at least that we were allowed to access. All projects were plywood or dimensional lumber. Joinery using saws and chisels. Ah, but I remember big brown glass glue jars that had the brush attached to the screw top lid and generations of glue drippings dried on the jars. Bird houses, spice racks, napkin holders, all gems, stained and varnished pine.

Good times.

[Richard Wagner]

I don't remember a while lot about the shop except that it was always clean when we left. It was clean because we couldn't leave until it was. I had four years of "shop" and it was always my favorite class but I remember very little about the shop itself. I do remember the hide glue tank. It was always on and hot. In my senior year, I was the cut man for the juniors. I have never been certain whether that was punishment or reward.

I still have and use a desk that I made my senior year and each of my daughters have book cases that I made.

Shop safety - a 5 minute safety talk each and every shop shop period. Shop safety was drummed into us and I believe some of it stuck.

Shop - both metal and wood - would have been a lot easier if I had applied the math skills that I had back then. That would have been a real opportunity for the teachers then. Actually, the math classes would have been easier and more effective if the math teacher had used shop needs as examples.

Yes! The best classes that I had. The only other classes that I really enjoyed were US Government and American History.

BTW - I graduated in 1957.