It’s
Berea College’s newest technology and industrial arts laboratory,
but those attending the lab’s open house Tuesday, Sept. 28 may
feel they’ve stepped back in time.
The Monty Saulmon Early Technology Lab is not
only filled with authentic – and
operational – hand-powered tools and machinery, but the classroom
itself has been transformed to resemble a 19th century woodworking
shop. In the lab are more than 100 tools and pieces of hand or foot-powered
equipment, from augers and clamps to large band saws. The largest item
is also one of the oldest in the collection - a Great Wheel Lathe made
before 1800 that requires two people to power and operate it.
Even the open house, scheduled from 1-5 p.m.
in the Danforth Industrial Arts Building, will be out of the ordinary.
A 2:30 p.m. “ribbon
cutting” will involve placing a 6”x6” beam across
the doorway with a rough-hewn wooden ribbon attached then sawing it
off using a 2-person saw – with students on one end and various
officials, including Berea College President Larry Shinn, on the other.
The 24’ x 28’ laboratory was built and set up in only
four weeks this summer with an Undergraduate Research and Creative
Projects grant from Berea College, by assistant professor Brad Christensen
and TIA majors Carrie Causey, Ben Ingram and Ethan Minney, who had
a hand in every aspect of its creation. The beams, posts and 2200 board
feet of lumber used to panel the floor, walls and ceiling and to construct
cabinets and shelves, came from 16 pine trees cut from the Berea College
Forest. After cutting, the students sawed the trees into lumber and
them dried it in the Technology Department’s solar kiln. The
lab’s computer is camouflaged in what looks like an old slant-top
desk, and electrified lanterns hung from the wooden posts also add
to the lab’s vintage look. Labels with each piece of equipment
provide information about origin and use.
Plans for the early technology lab began
several years ago when Saulmon, a 1964 Berea College alumnus and
industrial arts major, donated the
collection to Berea. A former industrial arts teacher in the Washington
D.C.-Maryland area, Saulmon offered the collection with the understanding
that the tools, some of which are more than 200 years old, were to
be used by students, not just displayed. Since then, students and faculty
have been researching and repairing them, helped by several boxes of
old catalogs and books donated with the tools and Saulmon’s own
personal notes.
Only about 10 per cent of the approximately 1000 tools in the Saulmon
Collection are currently in the lab. Over time, as tools are researched
and repaired, they will be rotated in and out of use. A computer database
of the collection that includes all information known about the origin,
manufacture and use of each tool has been started also, and will eventually
be accessible online.
Technology department faculty aren’t
aware of another college or university campus in the country with
a similar laboratory or of
one that has a comparable collection of early hand tools and machinery
of comparable age, quality, variety and quantity, that is available
for students to use.
Some of the tools were used in a Short Term
course taught in Jan. 2003 called “Woodworking Unplugged, “ but
beginning this fall, the laboratory will finally make experiences
with early technology
available to a wide variety of classes year-round. The facility will
also be open to visitors.
For more information, contact Dr. Brad Christensen at (859) 985-3557
or Gary Mahoney, TIA department chair, at (859) 985-3063.
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