Sticks and Stones Workshop – Just a dad teaching his 3 kids about woodworking, computer aided design, and how to run a business.

I am just a dad teaching his 3 kids some new skills.

Like many others, we found ourselves with a clear calendar in 2020 thanks to the COVID pandemic. Working from home reduced my commute and with the kids doing e-learning, they had less homework. Also, all after school activities were cancelled.

We chose to spend this new found “free time” on learning a new skill. We purchased a CNC Laser Engraver and learned how it worked. We spent many hours testing it to understand it’s capabilities and limitations. From their, we made gifts for family members and friends and began posting them on our social media accounts. At this point, we started getting requests from people to purchase things from us. I saw this as an opportunity for the kids to learn how businesses work. We track the material costs, overhead (electricity, machine depreciation, etc.), and labor. We try to keep our prices as low as possible. The intent is not to have a side business to make extra money; instead, it is to learn and provide people with products at a fair price.

This has continued to grow as we learn new skills. We now have 2 laser engravers and a CNC wood/metal router. Here are the skills we have learned (and are still learning):

How a CNC works (x axis, y axis, and z axis).
Proper safety for both the laser and router spindle.
How to test and hone quality of the products we make.
The importance of documenting our process for repeatability.
Naming conventions on digital files we create.
How to think in a 3D space.
Computer Aided Design (CAD), specifically Lightburn and Vectric Vcarve Pro software.
The importance of customer communication.
How to price a product fairly.
What a manufacturer does (buys raw material, adds value to it, sells it as a different product).

This is of course not an exhaustive list as we are constantly trying new things and learning the best way to do them.