Questions For Those Who Have Taught (or anyone else with thoughts)

I have been thinking about offering a short building course through our local Junior College extension program or privately. The JC has a decent wood shop and they provide liability insurance on and sometimes off site.

My questions are

If you have done this kind of thing in your shop how did you deal with liability if someone tears all the tendons out of their hand with a router or other mishap? I have had friends hurt themselves in my shop and because it wasn't business related my homeowners paid their medical but they wouldn't for teaching a class.

If you have the space how many folks could you reasonably bring through the process at a time. I have the help of another builder.

How long is reasonable without rushing to bring that number of folks to a completed project minus finish. I realize much would depend on how many of the parts are pre made. I would want folks to thickness sides, bend sides, slot fingerboard etc.

I worked/taught at Gilet guitars in Sydney Australia full time for about 5 years, and part time for a few years before that.

From what i can gather, someone can sue you for negligence, no matter what you have them sign before hand.

We had one accident in the 10 years at Gilet- it was a woodworker of 46 years- he got to cocky and band sawed into his hand between his fingers....

You cant teach concentration easily, nor common sense- the dumb stuff you see people do is astounding (myself included when i'm tired)

Best case scenario (ie, safest) is to keep all students away from routers, band saws, rubber bands etcetcetc

Time frame depends on if you want a luthiery class or a uke making/assembly class. I've seen anything from 1 day, 3 days to our program at Gilet guitars which was about 20-25 days but we taught everything from the raw lumber to setup, which takes time. Different students will want different, more indepth knowledge which is hard to teach if you want to keep the class moving at the same job in the build.

1- Time savers for first build students would be kits with Pre bent sides, rosettes installed, fingerboards pre slotted etc with a simple french polish or stewmac aerosol can nitro finish.
2- Second build students could do their own bending, shaping etc and be given more in depth teaching on all accounts.

Also, I presume at a college they would all start at the same time- that means you will need more then 1 set of a few things- each student will need their own bench space, chisels, and nut files etcetcetc (the list goes on)- nothing worse then a bottle neck in a building class because of not enough tools with everyone hitting the same job at the same time. Try teaching neck setting and getting a good/neat neck to body fit too more then a few students at a time...
At Gilet, students started anytime so rarely did we face this. We also had a large humidified glue up room for bracing etc and many work dishes. Good luck keeping a room humidified at a college where other facility members (probably) don't understand the significance of humidity.

I didn't like being in charge of more then 4 students at a time, but like i said we did things in depth and from the ground up.

Look at/call Allen, HanaLima, Roberto Venn and Robbie Obrien all who have it down very well.

I teach regularly both intense 4-5 day courses and scratch builds.

The intense course has parts somewhat ready to assemble, but it's still 7-8 hour days to complete the instrument with a shellac finish and the students learning and doing the setup. I have a partner with me doing these courses, and we will take 10 students. Have done as many as 14 but that was too many. You will always get one student that is just "hard work" and need to spend far too much time with them and having to neglect the others. Limiting the numbers to no more than 5 per instructor seems to be the sweet spot for us.

They get to use a drill press, disk and bobbin sander, plus a bandsaw under strict supervision. We ask them if they would like to do the machining, and most do, but occasionally we get some people that are just too uncertain or afraid and ask us to do the procedure.

Scratch builds are exactly that. I have done them with as many as 6 students at once, but that is far too difficult to manage. I much prefer 2 in order just to make the process easier on me. Again, you can get one person that is hard work, and the rest are left floundering and waiting for the other to catch up.

Here they get to use all the machinery that I would. I demo the procedure and they get to do the same with their parts. But again it's always under strict supervision.

Look in your inbox....

I have a Traveler's policy through Heritage Insurance (Ellis Herschman) with include sliability in my shop, though there are limitations at some level. I do have a "MasterClass" program, which is a one on one class that lasts as long as 3 weeks.

Thank You Guys for sharing your knowledge, it is very helpful!

I limit my classroom to 5 students at a time, which is almost too many. 100 percent of my energy is spent trying to ensure safety, and little by little I have been shying away from power tools in the teaching environment. Anything can be done either safely by hand or safely by me beforehand. That being said, my students work at their own pace and take weeks to months to finish a uke. I have had motivated and experienced students finish in three or four days, 'lumber to strum.'