On Sun, 13 Apr 2008 23:32:51 -0700 (PDT), "
wrote:

On Apr 13, 9:08 pm, "dublin_o" wrote:
I am going to gather up the tools and the list and show my grandson how to
build the box, my grandfather did this for me and I still have the box, but
now it has misc parts in it for my router.
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Good for you!

As a project, it's pretty easy. The secret is that you only have to
lay-out three rows of holes. Once drilled, the three parts are then
used as drill-guides for all of the other holes except for the
handles, hinges & fittings.

Once the builder understands the principle, the work goes very
quickly.

veedubber that is the key part.
the kids these days dont seem to have been taught the way we were.
we got taught the core principles and how they were applied.

the kids now seem to be taught an endless passage of superficial
details with little structure and none of the core issues explained.

when we were kids the old man built a duck boat with us. it is a free
plan somewhere on a web site these days. it is a slab sided ply thing
that looks 1950's but is actually a magic little boat to use. it is a
really good design. I conjured up a single seat 80% size version of it
out of one sheet of plywood, calculated the bouyancy as workable, and
built it. the kids saw it almost complete and the nipper (about to
become an airforce pilot) admitted that he had no idea how you would
go about designing the little boat.

the thing that you do masterfully veedubber is write in a manner that
is entertaining and interesting. you need to keep doing this.

what the rest of us need to do is enthrall the kids with what we do,
get them involved hands on, gradually reveal to them how things work
and how people go about designing them. above all we need to instill
in the kids that everything complex is made up of little individual
components that are build one after the other and then assembled into
the more complex thing.

we old farts who understand these things have an important legacy to
pass on to the kids. we have to do this because they arent going to
get the skills any other way.

Stealth Pilot

(for the life of me I couldnt remember the boat's name. google is my
saviour! the design is called Pintail and is available free from
http://www.svensons.com/boat/?p=RowBoats/Pintail
for anyone wanting to build woodworking skills with a view to aircraft
building it would be a good safe start. It's where I started.)