Will the next generation follow our path?

Re: I was gonna stay out of this...

Glenn Madsen near San Francisco

>but now, maybe not so much.

My kids are tech geeks, for the most part, not at all unlike I am. As each got to the point of kids and furnishing a home, they came looking for the skills that I got from my dad, and from my woodworking addiction/hobby, in order to supplement the Ikea junk that lasted a few years, then crumbled.

Sturdy. Useful. Good looking. Available. A better investment with kids in the picture. That's what most of us were looking for in the beginning. It was likely fairly rare that we started out trying to reproduce Goddard Townsend.

At least for me. And for my sons & daughters-in-law. YMMV.

Re: build something

Pam Niedermayer - Austin, TX

>I agree, but given that you only have 20 minutes, why not go for a simple shelf. This way you could illustrate sawing and planing. You could then tell them about finishing and why. It would be great if the teacher needs one on the wall, but if not, you could simulate a wall with another board. This would show them screwdriving.

Pam

I spent my teen years

Bill Houghton, Sebastopol, CA

>holding onto one end of the board while my father nailed up the other, or steadying it while he cut it (including cutting rabbets with a skilsaw); and, unrelated to woodworking, holding the flashlight while he worked on the cars. I HATED it. Dull, nothing that got my attention at all (I thought). I didn't get back to tool use until I had my first motorcycle, and then only because, back then, owning a motorcycle required that you learn how to fix them. And, in that era, my woodworking was limited to bolting two sheets of plywood in the archway between living room and dining room of the house we were renting, because I had drawn the short straw and that was my bedroom*. Oh, and I bolted two 2x2 uprights to a low chest of drawers and nailed a closet rod atop them for a closet.

I got pulled into the mysteries of gears and grease fairly quickly (I've been getting over it in recent years, though I still do my own car fixing when the modern car's design permits), but I was in my late 20s before I began woodworking with any seriousness; it's been a long slow decline of sanity ever since. One of the things that pleased me in breaking up my parents' house as we cleared it for sale was getting Dad's Skilsaw, though I may never use it (it's not like it's the only one I own...); it reminds me of watching him use it, and later cutting rabbets myownself with a skilsaw. Standing there did have an effect after all.

So, parents of kids not yet grown up, don't give up: the interest may just be gestating more slowly than you'd like. They DO have to rebel, you know, before they come to their true interests as adults.

*Off topic: part of the duty of having the only first-floor bedroom in that house was answering the doorbell when, say, missionaries came to visit. This more than balanced the advantage of having the kitchen right there.

What do you figure the crossover point is?

Michael Recchione

>When building becomes economical? Certainly buying Ikea quality furniture is cheaper than making it (especially where I live, in the NYC Metro Area). Making Goddard Townsend reproductions may be cheaper than buying them if you don't consider the learning curve and cost of getting set up to do it - maybe even then. Somewhere you cross over from "cheaper to buy" to "cheaper to make". I wonder where that point is, or if you ever really reach it if you live within sight of the Empire State Building.

For me, it was never about the product - it's always been the process. Learning about the tools, learning the techniques, developing the skill, feeling the wood. Spending that reflective time in the shop. The product has always been the cherry on top. I've tried to convey that attitude to my kids. Maybe that was the mistake - trying to give them the idea that doing this stuff is just plain FUN.

Denis - I grew up in the city, yet I was always fascinated by how things were done, particularly by how things could have been done before you could just pour a bunch of materials into a hopper, press a button and voila! out pops a widget of some kind. My kids couldn't care less about that - as long as the thing appears, even if by magic, and does what they want it to do, they're happy. They don't want to be bothered with details about how it got there.

Re: I was gonna stay out of this...

Pam Niedermayer - Austin, TX

>Yeah, me, too; but you've provided me something on which to hang an idea. To wit: need drives us all for these types of hobby/activity. When I was 11 I needed a bookshelf for my nascent book collection. My Dad was a lousy carpenter, so I decided to build it. I took a couple of boards (panelling left over from something), sawed them even with a crummy hand saw, glued them together, finished them with something used on the panelling itself, mounted it with a couple of metal brackets bought at the hardware store. It worked and was still in use when my parents sold the house 10 or 12 years later.

From that need, which would have gone unsatisfied if I hadn't done it, I fell in love with woodworking, learned to whittle little boats, refinished whatever I could find including my crummy black Sears guitar, etc. The crime in all this was the school's refusal to let girls take workshop and society's universal discouraging for girls to participate in woodworking for a living.

So, when your children buy their houses and need something they can't afford to buy, they'll take up tools.

Pam

Re: something else going on..

Norman (Ottawa, Ont.)

>This is a topic near and dear to my heart.

There has been a ton of outsourcing going on in manufacturing to low cost countries. It seems like we in N. America want to completely rid ourselves of any smokestack type industries and any manual labour related jobs. At least this is the perception.

The effect of this has not even been realized yet. This philosophy that this work is simply replaced with techy type work is flawed.

It sounds great, but we're losing a lot in the process, the urge to tinker with things, to make things, etc. Why bother, it's so cheap to buy, so available, so much disposable money available, and on and on. The mindset we're creating is simply to dispose of something when it's either broken or obsolete. Why make anything, why repair anything, etc.,, let's leave this to the offshore manufacturers.

Because of this, we're raising and going to be raising a generation of white collar people, people that never even get the opportunity to monkey around with a wrench or hammer. If the parents are white collar, chances are the mindset for manual labour is not there. I see this everywhere today, the rapid decline in hand skills, not just woodworking, but anything mechanical, repairs. The current young generation has just not been exposed to any of this and this is a growing trend.

The factories disappear, the effect trickles down to everyone. I've had summer jobs in factories, one in particular was using a drill press for drilling precision holes , another running a pneumatic packaging machine, running other machines, etc. Without factories ( small or large) there is no exposure to machinery. Service type work, flipping burgers, etc. just doesn't provide the skill set conducive to woodworking.

In my own family, I have brought at least 4 nephews through my shop to show them the other side of life, the fact that some people actually work with their hands and make stuff. They look stunned and wide-eyed, almost like they've never even seen tools before. BTW, these are 13-17 year olds. Granted, one of them did ask questions, and I thought there was some hope the parents would let him stay for a while to learn the trade.. No such thing, kid leaves, never hear about it again. The parents are extremely un-handy, so you can see where this going ..

I look back at that same age when I was young and I was completely immersed in tools and tearing stuff apart and putting them back together. Built my first small radio, worked with my father in his small shop, had a lot of fun in the process, and asked questions, sometimes too many questions :) I remember taking the buses to the municipal library when I was 12 and withdrew books on Nicola Tesla, Einstein, Marconi to read cover to cover. I found some of these books in my closet many years later, I was so young I didn't even know I was supposed to return them :)

Granted, we're not all the same, but unless we expose the youth of today to this how can we even determine if they enjoy it, how can they discover their creative side.

I'm focusing on woodworking and working with the hands in my response here.

What I'm saying might come across as negative, but unless we foster discussion about this, how can we make changes. Personally, I do my best to introduce woodworking to any one remotely interested, especially the youth of today.

Norman

Re: something else going on..

Michael Recchione

>Norman, I think you've put your finger on a big part of it. I'm pretty white-collar (if sitting at a computer in jeans and a t-shirt qualifies as high collar), and work in a very high-tech enviromnent. But that fascination with how things are made and with self-sufficiency was always there.

My kids have no desire to build radios or furniture or musical instruments or anything - they just want to use these things. The idea is that the things themselves are only a means to an end, and that producing the means is uninteresting and not a cost-effective way to spend their time.

We used to get into arguments on this board and on Badger Pond (and maybe there are still discussions about this now), about whether it made sense to buy old tools for next to nothing and fix them up, or buy a new LN or whatever that would work right out of the box. One of the arguments that was always made by the latter camp was "I'd rather spend my time woodworking than tool-fixing..."

My kids' attitude is the extension of that same thinking - they'd rather play an instrument than learn to make it, they'd rather play games on their computer than learn to program games on it ... and so on. And there's nothing wrong with that thinking, as long as those means to ends keep appearing.

If the trend continues, hand skills will fade away. Maybe they'll come up with something just as cool and that gives them just as much satisfaction. They seem pretty happy right now...

I guess for me, the sad part is that I had visions of my grandfather's heritage continuing on through the future. But that was MY vision, not my kids' vision. And their lives are their own.

Re: something else going on..

Pam Niedermayer - Austin, TX

>It's not "we in America" who want to get rid of manufacturing, it's the "we in charge of America who want piles and piles of cheap labor, we want 99% of you to be eager to work for us for peanuts whenever we may happen to ask you to do whatever we want."

Pam

Re: What do you figure the crossover point is?

Glenn Madsen near San Francisco

>I see it when they are tired of replacing something every six months to three years, because it wore out or failed. The investment of time in throwing out the old, and finding and paying for the new, means that, if they can figure out how to build something to last, they stop buying crap at Walmart or where ever.

Seeing me take a pile of plywood, and making a kitchen had an effect, too.

To some degree, it's a part of growing up. And their parents are still doing a little of that, in spite of the grey hair...

Re: something else going on..

Norman (Metcalfe, Ont.)

>This is what I meant to say Pam, but the off-shoring of manufacturing and so-called "dirty" industry does dovetail in with the ever-growing environmental movement. Fact is, this stuff needs to be produced somewhere, so we're also off-shoring the "dirty" part.

I can see the environmentalists rubbing their hands with glee at what is occuring with industry here. I'm very much into the environment but what what is occuring here with manufacturing industries is rather than investing in cleaner methods of producing goods, we simply offshore the whole enchilada. It's so much cheaper to have other people do our disrty work. This can be directly attributed to consumers wanting cheaper and cheaper disposable goods and manufacturers complying.

The cheaper and disposable goods does nothing for any service industry here also, who bothers fixing a tv or radio or anything electronic for that matter. Even if we do return it, it's probably chucked... much cheaper to replace it. And round and round we go.

Hmmm, it is beginning to appear like a vicious circle.

We're getting off-topic and into the off-shoring of manufacturing here.. but I truly believe this particular problem will rectify itself in time. We'll chase the cheapest locale to manufactire until there is none left, and then the global marketplace begins to balance itself out. After all, we're just kidding ourselves if we think production of good will always remain as cheap as it is today , regardless of which country is doing it, even taking into consideration the economy of scale and volume production.

Norman

Re: I NEED HELP!

Adam Cherubini, NJ

>I disagree with the "build something" advice. Those guys won't give a hoot, won't be impressed. As for practical "news they can use" they can barely go to the bathroom unsupervised. I don't think you can teach modern first graders woodworking.

They need to know where wood comes from. I think you should get a log, break it open and show them what's inside. Pass stuff around, then collect it so it doesn't become a sword. Talk about grain. Bring some different species and some leaves and get them to associate them.

Then discusss different things that are made of wood- Cars? no. Little sisters? No. Show pictures and/or bring stuff. Wooden spoon? Toy box? Is wood flexible? Sometimes. Can I bend it? Maybe.

Lastly, how do you make stuff with wood? Smooth it. Nail it. Here are some different ways of attaching boards together- m&T, dovetail, Festool domino! Hurray!

My guys would go for something like that. Keep it basic and remember- these folks are transfixed by hand puppets. In case of emergency, take off your shoes and put a sock on your hand and make it a puppet.

Adam

P.S. One of Roy Underhill's least discussed books is "Kruschev's shoe; and other ways to captivate an audience from one to one thousand". (Don't read it if you'd like to keep thinking Roy is a bumbling country boy. In fact, stop reading here.) Roy describes his technique of demonstrrating. Its worth a read. One trick he likes to use is he presents the audience with a problem, engages their brains by asking questions, then sets about to "discover" the answer. Don't overlook the chapter "The morning after".

YES, But different

Gary B

>I think there will always be a need for hand tools, but from a 28 year olds professional view point, I think think if any younger adult wants to learn this as a trade, he'd better be technically savy as well. CNC machines are here to stay in the small professional shop. We need them to put out parts accurately and quickly, so we can be competitive in order to provide a stable platform of this trade in the US and Canada. We as a trade certainly have our share of problems, from undervalued work, to foreign competition. If we succomb to our forefathers ways, we will surely go to the wayside. However, at the same time, we could learn a thing or two from them. I think We'll need to constantly be on the lookout for better, newer techniques, and be tinkering. Afterall, the backsaw had to be created before it could be used. Simply put, not everything is practical on a CNC, but many are. Many other things are faster if done by hand or with other powertools. It'll be up to my generation how we handle it. The craft of woodworking won't ever die, just change.

Re: something else going on..

Pam Niedermayer - Austin, TX

>The problem with offshoring the manufacturing is that we lose method, too. Management issues the paliative that we can sit back and design for those offshored workers; but the fact is that in very short order we won't be able to do so since we'll no longer have all the design knowledge gained in manufacturing. Part of our infrastructure is that knowledge. Without that, we'll be in the position of having to skip generations of technology, very difficult to do.

Pam

It's not only that...

Michael Recchione

>We're really wandering here, but isn't it the most incredible arrogance to assume that the people we offshore the manufacturing to can't do the design as well? We've already been proven wrong on that - the people that we tried to look at as trained monkeys are now undercutting us on design, development, system engineering and even marketing. The only way that the design has real value is if you do the dirty work, too.

But that's really a digression. I'm still hoping that my kids will one day become interested in how the things they use get made.

Re: It's not only that...

Pam Niedermayer - Austin, TX

>Sure it is. As I said, these are paliatives, not true statements.

I'd say the only safe bets for your children are law, sales/marketing, entertainment, and military.

Pam

Re: Big Time

ThomD

>I don't doubt the current crop of kids will be highly creative. As a friend of mine points out, they are more highly evolved, which I think is true.

I would definetly question that we are in a golden age. Consumerism and easily available tools is not the same thing as a renaisance of tools and skills. The old days are gone and what remains is largely in the third world, not the first. That is being pushed out as better opportunities, such as possibly answering phones for western tool companies, become available.

I have done seminars and the fact is that a lot of them never lead to anything they are just like going to a movie. All part of the modern day virtual experience. Now looking back on it the Hippies were hard workers...

I do think that people's fundamental relationship to the objects and the work is changing. I just see many ways in which hand made, artish chraftsman, or whatever, just aren't what they once were.

- I think having a whole generation grow up with single use items from razors to cell phones to bottled water, changes things. How many design shows these days show someone ripping out every object in a house and updating to a new "look". You can't make great furniture in order for it to be junked every time people go through a mood change.

- There seem to be a lot of people these days who are scared of nature from bird flu to camping. The whole back to nature natural materials thing is not what it once was. Though it remains strong for foods. I notice that handspun items rarely survive an encounter with "What not to Wear".

- I think many people again regard machine made as better with the influence of CNC.

- The offshoring of labour/manufacturing is gradually sending raw material offshore, and while that affects wood, it will never stop me from getting the wood I want. However, other raw materials are getting harder to find, and I see some other crafts I am involved with having difficulties. In fact some are having difficulties because of war on terrorism export controls. How will this affect the long term survival of various craft environments.

- Offshoring also means the cost of everything has fallen so far that, again, the value of objects is under assault. On a cycling forum I attend there was a thread today about the best 50 dollar tent...

- I also see new media accelerating the learning and burning curve in activities like this. I have payed my real dues in woodworking, really over my whole life. And while it isn't as possible to do a self-motivated apprenticeship as I once thought, I have done a lot of whatever else I might have, from log harvest to bowl, cabinet or boat. I have, however, had the odd experience recently of the "virtual craft". You start watching something on TV, go online, learn all the book knowledge, buy the tools etc... complete almost a full circle of interest without actually doing anything. Now in my case, I may be slow, but I do get there, check back in 10 years. But I could very much see others without the same base, going through this while process and... Well let me put it this way, there are probably armies of welders roaming the sewers of US big cities...

All this doesn't bother me a bit. Reminds me of the kind of thing when people complain that inner city kids (etc...) are not getting an opportunity to golf or fly fish. Well who said those things (both dear to me) should be on anyone's list? A world without woodworkers is only a problem if people actually need them.

None of this is good or bad, but certainly the rules that drove the changes I saw when I got into Woodworking back in the late 70s are gone. That whole hippie home made candle and hand bag thing is gone for ever. What will be interesting is to see what circumstance next pushes this forward. It isn't impossible there will be another *REASON* that will define this craft for another generation. Maybe now or in a few centuries.

Re: I NEED HELP!

ThomD

>Obviously, hand planes!

And good luck ensuring that by the end of the presentation they actually get that the purpose of the plane is what it does to the workpiece, and not the shavings it produces. Indeed, taking a plane where the shaving proiduced, like a splile plane, would be a cool contrast.

Make sure there is a storyline. Like how the changes in wood changed tools, or saomething off that sort.

I would also make sure you are allowed to have razor sharp edges at the school...

Re: It's not only that...

ThomD

>"We're really wandering here, but isn't it the most incredible arrogance to assume that the people we offshore the manufacturing to can't do the design as well?"

It's not that they can't do as good a job, it's whether we get cut out of the loop entirely. I don't however want to get stuff from that far away. I want it to be developed closer to me, and my needs, which to a points brings it back to my making it in the first place. I can make it better for me that anyone else, in some cases.

In this equasion we are currently the consumer. We are unique in having a fantastic diversity of needs. That has taken a long time to develop, and is relatively hard to transfer across cultural lines.

I got interested in this stuff partly from my upbringing, but also just from my own interests, and I don't really feel a need to pass it on to a new generation. Seems like a waste of precious remaining time. I'm open to helping anyone out, but I don't prosthelatize.

Denis has it right

Philip F Duffy

>These days it is difficult for the young families to eek out any time for hobbies. They both work, take the kids to countless appointments/soccer practices, and have a hard time developing the time they need to be alone, with or without the kids. Perhaps they will mature, like our generation, but most of them can not even find a 3/8 box wrench never mind use one. I think we who enjoy woodworking in its many forms need to just continue to revel in the fact that we have the best of the golden years of tools and woodworking. - - my 2cents. Phil

Social growing pains...

Barb Siddiqui

>So many good points in this discussion. For the past couple of years I've worked full time in the transportation industry, in the Pacific NW (tour bus co.) Hence, my scarcity on the message boards. It often strikes me just how much money is floating around in this country right now, and how much leisure time people have to fill. My son is raising children in San Jose and recently complained his children would never know 'unstructured time.' He grew up taking off on his bike and being told to be home by dark. His kids are driven to classes and allowed no real 'free time,' and won't be until they are much older. In San Jose, what do you think that 'free time' will consist of? All four kids are raising kids in cities. When I take them the simplest things, they exclaim in amazement, "you Made This??" Novel idea to them.

Also, I recently returned from a vacation to Germany, and for two weeks did tours through Bavaria and and the southwestern corner of the country near Kaiserslautern. Every bus tour went through tiny villages consisting of a cluster of red-roofed houses, plus a church or two. Six miles further on, another tiny village. My fellow tourists and I commented many times, "what do these people Do out here?" There were few cows, little industry. As other tour buses whizzed past us in droves, the tour guide answered our question: "there used to be industry here, but now it is all turned over into tourism." WE were their industry, their income. So it's not just in America changes are happening.

My conclusion is, we are living in a time of serious 'growing pains' of the world adapting to a truly global economy. As the throw-away society spreads to less affluent countries, and it will, the value of quality hand made items will increase, and the common human need to make something for oneself will increase. The younger ones will go looking for instruction and experience. Some of it will be driven by economic need at first, as has been stated, and some of it driven by aesthetics, but it will be there. Right now, the more we can amaze the young with "you Made This?" the more we can present the idea, "and you can too."

Excellent post

Michael Recchione

>Lots of interesting insights.

Re: It's not only that...

Michael Recchione

>In my industry (communications equipment), we are seeing the beginnings of getting cut out of the loop altogether. The progression was: (1) get rid of the manufacturing - monkeys can do that, the real value is in design and software, (2) get rid of software development, monkeys can do that, the real value is in systems engineering, architecture, design, (3) get rid of design, monkeys can do that... and so on.

Well, the "monkeys" learned to do the whole thing pretty well, more cheaply than we could, and are now eating our lunch. The one area where I see that we still have a real advantage is in sales and marketing - Americans still like to talk to Americans when they buy stuff. But even that's changing.

There is Hope

wayne

>my sons are 25 and 35 and daughters are 37 and 27 at least that is close to there ages. Well none of them were ever interested in what I did construction all the time they were growing up. My oldest son has remodeled his entire house and builds furniture. The only thing that I can remember about his liking construction was him nailing a stack of sheetrock together for me with 16d nails when he was 3. My youngest son has done the house thing but not into the cabinet stuff yet. My oldest daughter is a fine painter and doesn't mind trying to do anything. My youngest daughter doesn't do any woodworking but her husband has started doing some woodworking. So I figure that we really don't know just what our children have picked up that won't show up for many years. So there is hope!!!! I know I never thought when I was young that I would like working with hand tools or making them.

Re: Youth

Michael Recchione

>I agree. Our kids are not less creative than we were. If mine are any indication, the only thing that's really changed is where on the "value chain" they want to sit. They're more interested in playing instruments than making them, more interested in using software that allows them to be creative (videos, story-writing, etc) than writing software, etc. And they couldn't care less about things like furniture - they're much more into their internal reality and their virtual reality than they are into their physical surroundings. If milk crates were comfortable, they'd be perfectly happy to sit on milk crates while they lived alternate lives on Runescape or one of the other MMIRPGs, conducted multiple IM sessions with friends ...

They're certainly no worse than I was. Maybe better in some ways. But certainly different.

Re: Will the next generation follow our path?

Norman (Ottawa, Ont.)

>Received this Email today at my website.

Comments:

"Lots of great information and very clear pictures. Thank you so much. I volunteered to teach a class to seventh graders on using hand tools, and I've hardly ever used a hand tool in my life, so you've really helped me tremendously. I can't wait to make a shooting board."

GR

These people we need to encourage and I'm glad to see there is a movement to teach traditional hand tool usage..

Thought I would share,

Norman