Woodworking

Welcome to the Wood Workshop of the Division of Craft Arts (part of the School of Fine Arts) at Wikiversity. The workshop is just starting up, and we welcome all contributions. We need to work on ideas for a syllabus, textbook (over at wikibooks), and ancillary materials such as worksheets and exams. Also, standard layouts etc. for technical drawings for the Workshop.

Projects
Discrete, well-documented projects that the student can undertake on his or her own. The time that each of these takes varies. All instructions and commentary specific to the project are given; general woodworking skills are omitted because they will be found in the textbook.


 * Workshop notebook: Start recording your woodwork practice in a workshop notebook or visual diary, to see where you've come from and keep your ideas safe for future use.


 * Cutting board: The simplest of all woodworking projects: a single piece of wood on which to cut bread, etc. However, this project aims to teach flattening, truing, and basic finishing techniques.

Lesson Plans
Generally variations on projects (above), with specific guidelines on breaking the work up into hour- or day-long components. Aimed at classroom situations.


 * Yet to be written.: If you have any ideas, please add them here!

Exams
The idea of a woodwork exam may seem peculiar, but in many high schools and technical colleges they were a integral part of the manual arts syllabus. The idea with including exams in Wikiversity is to give the students something by which they can measure their skill -- can they cut a mortice and tennon (by hand) in a table's leg and stretcher in the given hour? A key aspect of these exams is the time limitation; although one can be a marvellously competent woodworker and do one's work very slowly, often the mark of experience and skill is to complete a task to a high quality in a short period of time.


 * Yet to be written.: If you have any ideas, please add them here!

Research Projects
There are so very many ways of working with wood, and woodworkers of every sort are continually finding new ones. This is the place to document these: to research any aspect of woodworking, either new or just new to yourself, and share with others what you find. Read the Introduction to research, familiarise yourself with Wikiversity's research guidelines and process, and explore the other Wikiversity research resources. Then jump right on in: think of some branch of woodworking about which you wish to know more, and start a new research project!

One fundamental part of any research is the literature review, and here in the Wood Workshop this takes the form of a page, common to all of our research projects, which lists lists any relevant literature (books, papers, magazines, videos, etc.). From this page is linked subpages, each of which summarises the literature from a particular viewpoint or topic (for example, the page on workbenches looks at the different ideas espoused about this primary piece of woodworking furniture).
 * Literature Review:

Producing materials for the Wood Workshop
If you interested in helping to produce learning materials for this, the Wood Workshop of the Division of Craft Arts, then the following will be of use.