The table router is one of the more dangerous tools in the shop, and one of the most often misused. Many people find it very intimidating, and many others are frustrated with the results they’ve gotten using it. But it is also the most useful and flexible manual tool in the woodshop. Becoming comfortable with it opens up many possibilities for creative woodworking.
Thus I put together an introductory table router class for Asmbly. This was intended to be both a skills class and a project class. The latter means you leave the class with some useful item completed (or nearly so); it’s much more satisfying to see your new skill manifest concretely. This type of class thus has much greater appeal to people who aren’t Asmbly members, which aligns with our outreach goals.
I taught the class twice in August, to a total of six people, to mixed success. Everyone seemed to like the class in general, but there was simply no chance of finishing the project within the allotted time of three hours. And that’s really about as long a class session as you would want to have on a weekday evening.
Another issue was that the design of the carrying tray we were making was tailored towards teaching. Most of the class much preferred the aesthetics of some simpler trays I had made earlier while developing the class. One person had been thinking beforehand of giving the tray as a gift, but afterward he didn’t think it was good enough for that. While minor mis-steps as he was learning did contribute to that, the choice of wood and the particulars of the design were larger factors. In the class description, I called the end result “utilitarian” for a reason.
As I see it, the options for making the class work are:
Option 1) Emphasize the project over the depth of skills. This means building a generally simpler design that most people find more aesthetically pleasing. But it also means not covering groove cutting, which is a pretty fundamental table router skill. But it is also a complex enough skill to eat up a lot of class time.
There are two variations on this: A) Use the relatively cheap pine boards the class was originally designed for. B) Use a higher quality wood. Option A can still produce a nice end product, but it requires a lot more post-class effort in sanding and greater knowledge of proper staining technique to achieve that. Option B should produce a higher quality end product with less post-class time.
Option 2) Emphasize the depth of skills, sidelining the project. Cheaper or even scrap wood could be used for the work in class, and the class would likely be a bit shorter. At the end, the students would receive a detailed design (with a few variations) for the carrying tray and would now have the skills to construct it, but they would have to do so later on their own time with their own lumber.
Option 3) Do both as originally intended, but make the class two nights, for a total of 5-6 hours. Doing that invariably complicates many aspects of managing the class. It might even be possible to arrange the class to cover the skills the first night and do most of the project construction the second night. Someone could then take just the first night or both nights. But that adds even more complications. This option also comes in the A) current wood and B) nicer wood variants.
Currently the class costs $99. Option 1A would cost about the same. Option 1B would be a bit more expensive, perhaps $125. Option 2 would probably be a bit cheaper, depending on how the class length worked out. Option 3 would obviously be much more expensive; I would guess $200 for 3A and $225 for 3B.
A very different option would be to come up with another project altogether, which covered the same basic skills (straight bits, rabbeting bits, pattern bits, roundover bits) but was otherwise much simpler to complete. But I haven’t thought of an alternative that wasn’t of similar complexity.
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I am somewhat leaning towards 1B, the simpler but nicer end product, using nicer wood, taught on a single night, with less content. I’ve taken most of the classes Asmbly has to offer, and I see other teachers tending towards keeping their classes simpler. That said, most of those were certification classes, oriented around the basics of just running the machine at all, with almost no skill development. So they are a somewhat different animal than this class.
I don’t have the “captive audience” aspect of the certification classes, which generates a steady stream of students who just want to be able to use the machine. In the end, I have to create a class that many of you, the members of Asmbly, will want to pay money to take when you have no requirement to do so. Looking through the history of classes here, Asmbly has struggled to keep such classes going.
So I am asking for feedback. Which of these class options would you actually pay money to take? Or is there some other variation/option I haven’t seen?
