Woodworking students hammer out furniture
The class helps the kids build leadership and team skills.
JAY – Mike DeSanctis and Matt Roundy joined forces to build themselves bureaus in their advanced woodworking class. Kevin Wright had his own idea; he decided to build a television stand with adjustable shelves.
Jay High School technology education teacher Dan Lemieux has guided his students through each stage.
Lemieux said he set up his advanced woodworking technology program to cover the state’s Learning Results.
Students have to demonstrate leadership and membership skills necessary to succeed as a member of a team.
The class’s previous project was building Adirondack chairs. That took eight weeks from start to finish, which included sketches, materials and brainstorming ideas to make adjustments for the chairs they wanted.
Once that one was done, it was time to build a more complex project.
DeSanctis had seen a picture of a bureau he liked in a magazine. Roundy liked what DeSanctis had chosen and decided to build one, too.
The pair modified it, made sketches, material lists and chose oak wood for the four-drawer bureaus.
The two, each wearing safety glasses, worked together recently as they held a top of a bureau and ran the end of it on a shaper machine.
From there, the two moved over to where Roundy’s bureau stood on a worktable to take some measurements.
“It’s a lot of work, everything has to be just right,” Roundy said.
Roundy has always liked woodworking. He learned from his father, he said, and took a woodworking class last year.
“I’m used to doing this,” he said.
DeSanctis got interested in woodworking last year when he took his first class.
“In the beginning, it was kind of different,” DeSanctis said. “Then after a while I got used to it and and caught on.”
Roundy said he likes the one-on-one attention he gets from Lemieux.
On the other side of the room, Wright worked with Lemieux as the two cut a piece of underlayment for his oak stand.
Wright agreed with his classmates on the program.
He liked it.
“We get to build some stuff we want to,” he said.
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