Farm Shop

In farm shop, relative to woodworking we sharpened various tools, such as blades of planes. bits, scrapers, saws. Since then I have sharpened saws on occasion, but nowadays I have a saw-filer do the work.

Other shop instruction was in the tying of various kinds of knots (most of which except for the square and the bowline I’ve completely forgotten) and in the splicing of ropes; in harness repair (here I was amazed to find that the proper repair involved sewing — uncle Carl’s harness repair was typically to use a couple of rivets); and in the repair of small gas engines. Some members of the class even pulled an old car along the outside of the shop and worked on it but I didn’t participate in this. I seem to recall that there was some elementary instruction in drafting but I’m not at all sure as to this.

In connection with the farm shop there was a competition between teams from the smaller high schools sponsored by Iowa State college down at Ames (the school is now Iowa State University). Various subjects were covered in this competition. The year I took farm shop Vernon Telleen, Dale Coffin and I represented our class. The only think I recall about the competition was the part on making concrete. This had not been part of our class instruction but Mr. Millard, our teacher, had given the three of us some oral instructions in case we had to do this in the test.

As it turned out we were asked to make a home plate for a softball diamond, prepared the form and mix and “pour” the concrete. Part of the assessment was making just the right amount of concrete with a minimum of excess. I don’t know if our excess was too much, but overall in the entire competition we were rated “superior” so I don’t suppose we did too badly.

The last time I ever received a “C” grade was in farm shop. I seems that during one six-week period I idled away too much time.