Entering the Bronze Age

[dhmeissner]

So I thought I would share a nice experience I had this weekend. I participated in a Bronze casting class: Bronze Casting — The Center for Wooden Boats .

At their Cama Beach facility:
Cama Beach — The Center for Wooden Boats

They taught how to construct a furnace, design and cast Bronze. I had a great time, learned how to pound sand :lol: and cast using the sand cast method. It was a full two days 9-5.

I made this among a few other casting during the two days:

This is before finishing and polishing of course. Many of the participants made hardware for the boats they were building.

So I was told they will be having this class again in mid April, if you're interested give CWB a call and sign up. Cabins at Cama can go quickly.

 

[HopCar]

Very Cool! Are you going to take any of the other classes?

Sam Devlin teaches the stitch and glue building course, that would be worth me flying to the west coast!

How about posting a picture of the medallion when you get it cleaned up?

I remember making sand castings in high school metal shop. It was a lot of fun. Do high schools even have shop classes these days?

 

[N4712]

Do high schools even have shop classes these days?

NO!

 

[Brooksie]

I'm sure you are right about no HS shop classes. But here in coastal New England our vocational HS's most all have Marine Tech classes.
Two weeks ago I had the privilege of watching a marine electrical troubleshooting contest at the Maine Boatbuilders Show. These HS aged kids really knew their stuff and will be very employable in the future. We all need to honor out technical and trades people when they do a good job for us so as to encourage others to enter trades and end the perception that only "paper shufflers" make the big bucks.

 

[HopCar]

Is that young Oliver expressing distress at the lack of shop classes? I feel your pain. Once past the three R's in grade school, I think the most useful stuff I learned came from shop classes, drafting class and geometry.

 

[Nomad Willy]

Sports seem to be ahead of everything and of least value. Only in America.

I lived in a logging community that had all kinds of sports programs and no shop.

 

[N4712]

Sports seem to be ahead of everything and of least value. Only in America. I lived in a logging community that had all kinds of sports programs and no shop.

That's the problem, some kids don't like sports. Shop wold be a lot more useful. When you grow up and enter ownership of home/condo or whatever having carpentry skills will be a lot more useful then baseball or football.

 

[markpierce]

When I was in intermediate school, the boys had wood and metal shop classes (girls had homemaking). The bulk of the shop classes consisted of mechanical drawing.

 

[psneeld]

Sports have their place like music, arts, home ec, shop...etc...etc...even academia...

Unfortunately take the ideals out of sports like sportsmanship and they certainly lose their value...as did shop classes that didn't have the teachers and budgets to take many past the bird house project stage.

A rather complete breakdown has/is starting to take place in education...but that's best left as a discussion for that other section.

Learning to do anything is good....especially learning to learn...no matter which direction you ultimately head.

 

[boatpoker]

I have a foundry not too far from me. I made patterns and had a silicone bronze dual anchor roller and six hawse pipes cast ... I was charged $6.00 per pound for the bronze.

It took me a few days of grinding and polishing but found it an incredibly cheap way to get custom cast parts.