Is There a Dominatrix in the House?

It’s time to reveal a dirty little secret of teaching woodworking classes.

Are you ready? I don’t care. Here we go.

You have to whip the students mercilessly in the beginning days or the class will go down the toilet. If they don’t get over the big hump in the project, they will never get it done. Why is this true? Because people get tired.

When a class begins everyone has a lot of energy and enthusiasm. They are on vacation. They are doing something they love. The problem is that the thing that they love (working with tools) is also something that can be exhausting in large doses. So after a few days of working on a project around the clock, you get a little tired.

And that is where I pull out my bullwhip.

If you can get the students over the major construction challenge in the first two or three days, you can coast to victory. And that’s what I’ve been doing here at the Dictum workshop in Bavaria during a tool chest class. We are two days into the class and most of the students have glued up the dovetailed carcase, or are about to.

That means we are in good shape. Check out the video for the evidence.

To see a video from the first day of class, click here.

— Christopher Schwarz