A project for kids?

A friend home schools his kids. He's asked if I could teach the 13ish year old twin boys something about machining. One is mildly autistic and is sharp as a tack. Both have grown up turning wrenches on their fathers on and off-road trucks, he has an off road vehicle recovery business, so they are mechanically capable. The twins are also learning CAD. They also talk alot! haha

Ideally the project would be something they layout in CAD then build to their specs. We are thinking one, maybe two, days a week for two hours in the shop. I'm thinking it would be good to limit the first project to the drill press and lathe. Something like a hammer that'll take only a few 'shop' classes to complete and they might keep in their toolbox for the next 40 years

I am semi-retired and pretty stoked about the idea.

What does the crew here think? What projects would you suggest? For reference I have two lathes (9x30 & 14x40), a large knee mill, an old 3 in 1 stored in the shed, small HT oven, and all the other typical fab shop tools in my 'home shop'

Plumb bob. Have a look at the southbend projects book https://ia803009.us.archive.org/29/...p_Projects_by_South_Bend_Lathe_Works_text.pdf

Also have a copy or two of 'How to run a Lathe' (CE3450) based on Southbend lathe on hand.. Simplest machine for them to wrap their head around. Maybe a nut and bolt threading project later on. If they warm up to the Southbend they'll be hooked for life. Better be on your A-game tho; these kids are a lot faster than we were; better be over prepared or they'll bore out on you FAST!!
My first Shop day with the 12 yr old grandson, we built a bird house, raised panel cabinet door, cut a 16 tooth brass spur gear, and planted 15 Tomato plants! Simple was not in the equation for this youngster!! Ha
Good luck and enjoy every minute!
Johnny

i think everybody starting machning should make an "air spring": a blind hole and a rod with a tight tolerance. if the contraption is still springy overnight (oil allowed) mission accomplished. its nice they learn cad. but it might be the wrong end of the cat.

The plumb bob and other easier projects like that are great for students planning on entering “the field”, where such items have potential to get used.

Preteens, quite rightfully, have not a clue as to what they want to be when they grow up and that plumb bob may garner some resentment in the future. Especially if the wrong teacher makes the tech seem obsolete.

I find this statement to be particularly true the younger the subject is:

People need to have some degree of ownership to really care about ANY job.

The older we get, the pragmatism required to keep families fed tends to be ownership enough.

My suggestion would be to see if there’s something the kids want to make. A lathe, mill and some tooling support like an indexing head can make lots of parts and gives a decent cross section of practices.

Even if the part is just a trinket that lives it’s life on their desk. A cup to hold pens. A fidget-spinner type of thing.

I would make an early lathe problem to make a screw and nut by single-point threading. Easy enough job that really demonstrates the ability of the tool.



Be safe



Jeremy

I think a good lathe project for today's kids might be a ring..easy to make and something one can show off.

Perhaps starting off with a 5/8 SS jam nut.

and a 5/8 bolt in a 3 jaw as the arbor for the OD.

The standard first manual lathe project is a ten inch long piece of CRS, one inch in diamter.

Goal is to turn about ten different diameters, each 1 inch long, on the part, ranging from the full one inch down
to 1/8 inch. Diameter tolerance +/- 0.003 and length tolerance +/- 1/32 inch.

My son was making wood pens and pencils at that age with the help of a kit from The home for great Turning supplies, Custom Pen blanks and Kits. – Turners Warehouse
Not very expensive and a useful keepsake. He used lathe, drill press, arbor press.

A small Brass candle stick for Mom? Easy to turn, will polish up nice.

Hammer and punch sets, brass and steel.

This center punch was one of the very first things I made 20+ years ago. Some turning, some knurling (can plunge little grooves if you don't have a knurl), an angle, and even a little hardening if you have a small furnace or torch. It was kind of fun where the "big test" as the end was to USE IT and see if the tip held up or got smooshed.

Oh, by the way, good for you! I swear to God it is different/better/more satisfying to actually create something with your own two hands than just playing video games. Good luck!

In middle school shop, I made a brass handled screw driver. Lots of things came together with it. Heating and hammering the tip, heat treating in oil, turning (with the taper attachment) and drilling the handle, knurling, then pressing the handle on.

Gave it to my old man who proclaimed that there was no way I (dumber 'n shit in his view) could have made it.

That said, I did notice that he still had it years later....

Antarctica said:

In middle school shop, I made a brass handled screw driver. Lots of things came together with it. Heating and hammering the tip, heat treating in oil, turning (with the taper attachment) and drilling the handle, knurling, then pressing the handle on.

Gave it to my old man who proclaimed that there was no way I (dumber 'n shit in his view) could have made it.

That said, I did notice that he still had it years later....

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its funny how dads are like that sometimes and of course we fall in to the i will show you . then there's the dad that tells his kid

you will never amount to any thing and not wanting to disappoint dad dose just that nothing ! that's right up there with the i had

to pay $50 and pick up the garbage and they all move away from me on the group W bench ! but for real help them make something they

can use or show off you know be proud of if they still let kids have pride and i ain't talking about the kind at the bath house at

the ymca

Dan from Oakland said:

A small Brass candle stick for Mom? Easy to turn, will polish up nice.

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While it’s “gone to the ages now” my very first time ever seeing a lathe was at the Henry Ford museum in Dearborn, Michigan. When I visited as a kid there was a coin-operated machine there that accepted a handful of quarters in exchange for a couple minutes of machine-crank turning and a small brass candlestick holder.

I cannot remember all the details, but I do vividly remember feeling like I had really done something. Something FAR more impressive than merely turning a crank and smushing a penny.



While it seems almost too simple, the suggestion of “merely” turning a succession of diameters allows numerous principles explained with the same project. Also could make for a good, friendly competition between two kids. I definitely plan when/if the day comes with my little boy.

I definitely hope you’ll share your experience with the rest of us who are looking forward to doing the same.





Be safe



Jeremy

jermfab said:

My suggestion would be to see if there’s something the kids want to make.

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I have nothing more to add.

Well, yeah I do.

This isn't trade school. This is a Learning is FUN thing.. Not a "lets
do something shitty so you can make a living later in life" thing.

Not for kids but for industrial art/shop student a tap wrench with a hollow stem/shank that goes on a post set in a drill press chuck, mill held chuck, or a lathe tailstock chuck... with it having about 1 1/2" travel..

Machining a bushing for a pulley is a fairly simple project that could introduce them to a number of different processes without testing attention spans. E.g. bushing a 3/4" or 5/8" pulley you have lying around to fit a 1/2" motor shaft.

Finding center in a milling machine and accurately drilling a hole for the pulley set screw, turning, drilling and reaming/boring on the lathe to tight tolerances, use of cut-off tooling... and it demonstrates the sort of freedom that machining skills and equipment grant you to solve problems on your own.

Simple enough to be doable for beginners, complicated enough to be interesting and brief enough to provide prompt gratification so machining doesn't seem like an endlessly tedious chore right out of the box.

Mind you if a keyway is involved then things will get more complicated...

My kids are 15, 11 and 4. I find if I try to force them to participate in anything shop related I get lots of pushback, but if I pull them in when they're interested in something and we do it they will talk about it non stop for days.

My 15 yo boy has zero interest in the shop. Not a mechanical person at all. I have a feeling when he gets a car he's suddenly going to be interested in learning more from dad.

My 11 yo daughter is very artistic. She taught herself how to play piano and she draws amazing art. She is also incredibly stubborn and not into anything that isn't her idea. I've learned to set bait for her to come up with an idea for stuff we can make together. We're working on painting an 8' tall mural on the shop office wall together. We're using a $69 digital projector she found on Amazon to shine an outline of the image on the wall. She's also very money motivated. She will do a good job cleaning chips out of machines and sweeping the floor for $20 when she wants money for something. I always take those opportunities to involve her in something I'm working on. I push her to do the math in her head of how many passes at such a depth we need to take off a lathe part or get her to MDI moves and setup tools in the VMC's. She does really good under pressure, but minimal interest in casually participating in the shop.

My 4 year old is very mechanical. He loves the shop, but he's very high energy and doesn't always listen well. I can trust him to run the forklift or excavator controls, but I can't trust him to not hit a button or pull a lever on a machine if I don't tell him not to. He's just not ready yet. However, one thing I've found he loves to do is to brush oil on drills and cutters. A few weeks ago I had a ton of 1.5" holes to drill in a 6" sch 80 pipe. I set it up on the HBM and used an annular cutter to make the holes. He wanted to climb right up on the HBM to see what was going on so I made him a spot on the table and he brushed oil on the cutter every 30 seconds or so. He had a blast doing it and I had to stop the spindle so he could look in each hole we drilled.

More than anything else, my kids and I have made wooden swords in the shop. I can't figure it out, but they love the damn things.

First time out on a lathe a hammer can be a pretty ambitious project. Of course... it can be a real simple hammer. Here is one one of my students made (I made the same one in high schol but not as nice.) :


Here are some machinist jacks I made recently:


I didn't have the correct form tools made up so there are some inconsistencies in the some of the shaping. I case hardened them later. They have at least feature I have not seen on any of the commercial or hobby variants. The jacks have differential threads so you can adjust them quite fine. I used hexagonal stock.
Both of these projects are from the book technocrat linked to above.