After visiting this carpentry school in Switzerland we have a lot of catch @greensidedesignbuild3469

guys we're continuing our tour in Switzerland and we are at the pulsba schweiss school for carpentry we're going to give you guys a full tour of this school and everything that they got going on we learned about things like the fact that it's required by a lot of these trades especially the bigger companies for their apprentices to go to school and it's actually not even just a one-year program it's a four-year program and joining me is going to be Mike Connolly from greenside in Chicago fancy meeting you here Nick fancy well we toured together but I want to really talk about you know some of the intricacies that they're working on how in-depth they go about not just the the technical skill set but the theory for sure I was particularly impressed by how in-depth they get at such a young age training these youngsters to be Carpenters I think they start around like 15 16 years old or 16 yes so it's it's really impressive I'd love to see um just exactly how they set up the course of education and what they actually do yeah so let's go into Iowa walk you guys through it and we'll show you what they get they have going on so walking in directly off the street you have this full-scale mock-up of a home that they have going on let's come back to this you know one of the things you and I talk about a lot is the the lack of Education in U.S and one thing that we you know we were talking about when we get over to our uh that roof mock-up is the fact that they're not just teaching on how fast they you can do something but really the theory behind what they're doing and making that making that actually the primary focus of the education yeah like I started in construction and I was on the job site there was no real teaching Theory or you know the basics behind it is you kind of get thrown to the wolves and you learn as you go along and you learn by making mistakes I think when they start off here and learn the theory behind it it gives a much better sense of direction of where they want to go how they want to build and the general purpose of it all yeah and one of the first things I I saw when we came in as I Splinter a piece of the word office was this and you know right away I'm like looking at that joint and I had opened it up and I said oh that's not just a uh a small simple joint it's actually a pretty complex joint that one of the kids and students had done by hand and you know this really set I think the tour up for okay yeah we're we're gonna see some stuff we're not Carpenters despite what I'm getting a lot of flack on this tour for being a master Carpenter which it was on my my business card at one point and it is no longer on my business card but I've uh I've taken the brunt of the the abuse today so as I was explained to us when they start off in the program they go through all the different hand tools that they use so that they know what they're talking about what they do and it kind of progresses down from the basic hand tools all the way down to power tools and the modern day tools that they use today some of these you know I haven't seen in quite some time or at all to be honest with you like these wooden hand planes yeah we I know we have a similar one I think uh Leo Lee Nelson and I feel like I'm saying that wrong but um in our cabinet shop but this one I mean this one looks fancy Swiss made feels like it it probably operates pretty smooth but these these stay on display so one of the things that he said is as they're teaching and learning and they're going through curriculum or they're going through maybe like a textbook you know they the kids can come out here and pick this up and be like oh okay now I understand what that was you know in that photo or in that book and they stay here on display for those reasons similar to the the timber frame joints but as you work your way down um same thing you know you have the Hammers you and I both picked this up and said well what is that and we asked we asked the question in English but I got got a German response but it's for slate tile which makes sense once you yeah kind of know that there's a lot of slate Roofing in this country it's funny it looks like it broke yeah it's not broken it's not broke uh so working down this this was interesting I had not seen a tape measure like this um and I was actually very confused that what like why you would need a tape measure like that until we got to the stuff hanging up on the wall here um and they had basically set this this display up and he said it's not really part of the curriculum but the importance of understanding where the wood comes from correct and these are the tools that you would see a lumberjack as we call them in our country this is the tools that they use to cut the logs and obviously that's what's the the wood that they use comes from the logs and they wanted to give them an idea of how they how they're made how they're transported how they're cut and they're exactly you know that different type of tape measure that you might use to measure the log and as we worked our way through you'll actually see um some of the you know logs cut and and divvied up and show you know show the different way that a log can be cut you know quarter-sawn riffs on planes on um but it's it I've never really thought about that in the sense that we get rough material in our shop all the time and we just that's we take it for what it is it's rough material yeah but to think about where it came from and how it came you know how it was transported how it was cut down you know in the The Forest all of that stuff makes you know is important to the end result and the more respect you have for that I think the better you're able to kind of adapt to the Natural being of something like that it's a question we get quite often actually when we're selecting materials you know do you want regular cut or do you want riff cut and when you have a log and it shows the actual Dimension or profile the log which way it's cut it's kind of easy to explain what regular saw cut and Rift cut is it's also it also really helps you understand why it's more expensive because you're not able to get as much out of it when you cut it in a particular manner exactly so flipping around I love this display that they had um it's all in German but they basically took some of these rough song planks that they would have you know got at the Saw Mill and then added all of the information behind it um have my phone on me but Google translate was a huge help here you can actually hold it over and it gives you the rundown of what we have going on but again you're just furthering further furthering the education as you come through this hallway and then we get into some of the power tools in lamello you know biscuit joiner they have this one here which is you know a dual doweler which I have not seen before made by methyl um but again just going back to your point like they're walking you through kind of understanding all of these tools always have the opportunity to look at them and understand kind of even the progression of them where it's like hey this is a you know we have a custom track saw here in the truck you understand what the benefit of it but before you get to use that you're likely going to be using a regular skill saw and appreciate you know what it takes to keep that blade straight it's like a carpenter's dream come into this school you know you start off the beginning you learn about the wood you learn about and some of these descriptions tell you how it smells right when we were looking at that so that and to me that's just so in depth it's like you love wood right here so progressing down to the tools see the material that the tools work on telling you how it's going to react if it's a hardwood a soft wood smells it's just you know so many of us on this tour are carpenters or carpenter-based so it's pretty cool yeah in our and our level has changed uh especially being here I feel like I've not I've knocked down a few points which is fine I'll I'll take it uh and then these are awesome these are all you know he actually said very old but I feel like they're maybe the original or early versions of the methyl Timber tools you have a more a chain mortiser you have the the drill press you have a big planer here and then some Big Timber saws but they still make these these tools almost exactly the same just maybe a little bit more plastic yeah and but and probably more powerful and and you know at least more safe um we're okay to go in yes yes awesome so this is this is the room that uh we started really feeling as though we had it yeah this is the room that took us down a notch yeah so why don't we we start with this mock-up this right here this is not a very Square set up um very complex you have you know this is probably your most common rafter here but from this point everything else becomes more complex you have a beveled hip you have a beveled uh Valley you have you know a horizontal cut with you know a common tail then you have your your hip Rafters then you have this here which is angle grafters angled rafter um it's cool you know this is basically their assignment they're given this sheet in 2D and 3D and they basically have to build this from this using all the techniques that they were taught and then they're given a certain amount of hours to actually complete this yeah we had to ask I think it's four days to do this one correct which I mean sounds like a lot of time I don't know if I can do this in four days no especially it's all hand tools yes most of the cuts are from hand tools not power tools so I I missed that in our tour is this all they're giving given as all they're giving so they have to take that you know from I mean thankfully they they're basically they're just labeling the parts and you know there's not much information to go off so why don't we flip over to one of these tables here and do you mind if you mind if we stand here I think he's in the zone so everything that was on that paper he's transferred in multiple ways on on this drawing so this right here is basically a view straight down yes and this is drawn to full scale so they can take their actual Timber pieces and lay them over Trace them get all their points and then start cutting basically yeah and then it I think I saw yeah I mean you can see right there it's almost like an isometric view where I I've seen him drop that Timber and he's you know if you look closely on those there's a lot of reference lines and he's got all these reference lines again I mean even color coded you've got it looks like you know red green brown green red or orange um so again this all comes back to how detailed the training is here compared to what we have in the states it's night and day and I think if we had something like this in the States you know that position as a carpenter or Master Carpenter as you are Nick is uh more desirable and is a kind of a sexier appeal that'll bring more people into the industry yeah and and this we're going to harp on this a lot but it's really about understanding the theory and understanding how to get to that right where it's like you could be you know you you could do you could essentially figure this out without doing all the layout you'd have to probably cut multiple times you'd be pulling measurements and building templates and figuring it out but this gives you the the true appreciation of what these pieces look like in different views and really makes you understand like why why certain things are cut at the angle and then and also of course the math behind it um it's it's hard for me to talk so much about it because it's almost as though I don't understand because like that you know I understand that but in the view here and even understanding it from from the paperwork there's a lot that like very complex it's a year for assignment um is one of basically they'll get graded on the complexity event I think we saw maybe year two or something uh in the other room here a lot of that in in that room there is all being done by hand like Mike said you know they're cutting all of those angles by hand uh and like one of the students said you know even the drawing is done by hand but they eventually move into doing this on cat so we're stepping into one of the shot the one of the next shops and you can see they have the more technologically advanced tools that eventually they'll be able to start learning on that and and figuring out how to do those compound cuts and rafters on the power power there's pretty complex saws in here and going to the next it's a pretty impressive one in the Next Room I've never seen that ever uh before we before we go in that room this right here I believe correct me if I'm wrong they said that you know once you get through your four-year program here you can come back and get into like kind of uh accelerated courses where it's like you want to focus on stairs they can help you focus on stairs yeah more complex carpentry you can see at the stairs here all the standoffs the way the Treads are kind of suspended the spindles which are hanging off the rail and all the connections are hidden it's it's really a piece of art if you ask me yeah very impressive um do we know what this saw is called we called it a reverse table saw a reverse table saw so this monster here this uh crucy we'll call it what we have going on is they take a piece of wood and they have a fence here and then a fence there that moves in and out I'm not gonna play with it I've never touched it uh but there's a saw down there and it can cut up to seven inches but it lifts up and then it runs down the table so I think essentially the guard drops down yeah this comes out guards it's adjustable to the depth of your wood that you're cutting and once it drops down the blade pops up and essentially comes right across so you can cut approximately a 16 foot long piece of board at seven inches deep it's seven inches deep which is really Timber uh and it's all foot operated here so I believe when you hit that pedal that blade spins comes up and we'll run down the table till you lift your foot off of it and then this fence here Moves In and Out isn't indexed off of this digital readout here so you know how wide wide you're going to be cutting them cutting another cool feature they have in all their shops is the dust collection system so all this system which looks pretty conventional runs back to a compact system and they compress all of their dust and shavings and actually use 50 percent of their savings to heat the building so they're trying to reuse as much as possible and have less waste I think that's in one thing that they they were pretty open about is that it's an old building and they're looking to continually improve this building because it you know in the winter they they're only they're using 50 to heat it but they're using a lot of energy and they they can continue to make it more energy efficient we'll take a look at that dust collector so you can see what what that looks like but this is I believe our the year two right so this over here uh their grading system works one through six and then he is mentioned that this student got a 4.5 and we and I think you may have asked like what makes it a 4.5 so the passing grade is a four so four and Below you're no good you have to go back to the drawing board so to speak this particular project got a four and a half and let's show you the points where the greatest and and every single person here that framed or has framed said that they wouldn't have been able to do this for a shot and and it is you know it's a it is a framing detail or or a framing mock-up and there's a lot of it that you know I want to call attention to the fact that a lot of this is unnecessary when it comes to framing on a more traditional basis um but the point is is to understand again the theory as to why it's put together like this you guys mind if we squeeze in here that's okay so what we have here is uh an irregular Valley essentially is what we have and you know again we have the mo one of the more common hip Rafters uh I'm sorry Valley Rafters here um and then you have this one that's actually on an angle as well but you know stuff like the beveled Valley rafter you know you'll have the argument it's unnecessary it can very much be the case um but the point the point isn't hey this is the way you should be doing it on every job it's hey you need to understand why and how to do it because then you can make the educated decision in the field as to I should I should cut that on a bevel or not and Tim Mueller and I were talking about this is you know sometimes it's unnecessary but there's times where you know that that plywood comes together at a really odd angle or creates maybe a bump a a bump or or even a gap between the sheathing and if you're using something with like Zip and have a tape and you have a gap between your plywood and you're relying on that tape now that there's a potential uh you know failure because that tape is unsupported and if you think about it like when you caulk a window you or in your bridging caulking they always say tobacco rod and because that background needs three points of contact when you only Bridge it might work temporarily but over time it's not going to have that supportive background so when you talk about it being unnecessary area to me that's a pure American point of view unnecessary because it's going to create more time or more delay this I feel is something that's done to do it right they take their time and it's not about how fast I can get it done it's how correct can I get it done and to me that's kind of a differentiator between carpenters in our country and the Carpenters here and again it's really just about understanding how to get to that best result and yes there's always going to be scale back you know but you need to understand how to get to the best result well nobody's perfect like this is a 4.5 so you can see here they marked you know where their errors are now to me these errors are pretty insignificant you know the screws aren't driven all the way home you've got some gapping and some on they're not on plane here but really besides that it's it looks almost like a trim Carpenter did another not a framing Carpenter right and like this would be more than sufficient for like to support a roof but yeah it was this you know there's a slight you know height difference here less you know probably a 16th at the max things like that and even over here um you know the the cut is chipped out they got points taken out from that and the one of the craziest ones to me is that and that's a tool Mark and they they got that they were reflected poorly because of the tool mark on it and it really is it's challenging you to do your best work and this one I think is a four hour test yeah um so you know a little bit more uh simple I say that uh a little bit more simple than the one in the other the other room but it's designed to be a shorter time frame and you know less than challenging challenging challenging yeah um let's continue working our way through why don't we go this way Mike you you mentioned that dust collector I think it's interesting because when you walk by it you know you think of a dust collector as this giant machine with a bunch of tubes and bags that collect us and this does not do any of that it's actually a pretty high performance uh unit that spits out like you said these pucks let me see if I can reach one foreign so why don't you walk through that what you just said so yeah the system collects it and it actually compresses it into these little I guess we'll call them pellets yeah pellets oversized hamster pellets and uh you know they're pretty dense break them but uh they reuse these they burn them in the winter time to help heat the building it's an older building so it needs a little help you know as far as Heating and Cooling but pretty neat that's cool and this is the unit itself here again like you're not seeing all the bags and all the filters like it's contained I mean the simple thing of it's clean looking is you know a big horse that turns on here so let's keep walking this is where rough material comes in kind of where every everyone starts their their Journey per se a bunch of roughs on over there but you actually see some of the logs and that's actually a great example up there as to um what a log what and how a log can be cut exactly um but really this is where everything starts and you know flipping around here you know this is a full-size mock-up Mike I didn't even notice the staircase it's pretty impressive you take a look at the corner noodle there how tight the radius is let's let's sneak behind these guys over here so this is designed to have a ton of scenarios there's roof details there's cladding details a lot of European climbing details at that yeah um I mean the staircase you know being more complex all different Riser details you're probably talking about how you achieve that code compliant Riser detail in different ways yeah and it's basically taken a textbook and bring it into a 3D model so to speak where you can actually walk into it so let's say they have a project where they have to build a stair they can come here they can take a look at how it's done maybe grasp it better in their own mind and then perform the task on their own I I was explaining something and I was I'm glad you jumped in because I was at a loss for words because I hadn't even walked I have not walked through this yet and it's it's quite impressive uh in many ways this is a pretty common commercial detail uh you have this this thin fiber cement panel exposed Fasteners but I mean they're walking through everything you know you see the Sega Phantom tape you know how they're waterproofing I think this is a great detail too because as we've been here in the country I've noticed these on almost all the windows these flashing details the kick out flashing on top of the sill detail it's solid aluminum it's very similar actually to what we had done in our Rhode Island passive project um and I think we may have used a slightly thinner material and we end up powder coating them but it's you know obviously that pulling that European detailing into you know what we're trying to achieve from uh from an execution level another great detail I've noticed on almost all the buildings here and you probably do it a lot in New England not so much in the midwest where we are but it's the rain stream and the rain screens here are pretty significant there's a pretty large gap for drying you know if you're trying to build um on a higher level a higher level of building science it's very important and you know I had not noticed this before but they're also bringing this all the way to a finish and walking through some of the finished details so it looks like on the left here you have more of a cement baseboard probably in preparation for waterproofing and tile and then you have your blue board which is something we see a lot in Boston not not so much in the uh all over the U.S but the start of what that plaster looks like and you can see that it starts at the seams and then in this case it looks as though it has three steps from scratch coat to final finish Co big thanks to the school for allowing us to not only film but tour and Seeger for having us here in Switzerland what can we do whether it's us like I think the whole group is so interested in like really bringing what we learned here back to the States and actually trying to get something like this in place what are your thoughts on it well yeah this is a discussion that we've been going back and forth for quite some time you know Us in the I'll call it the Instagram community of Builders I think we really need to come together and maybe not one guy go off in his own or two guys go out if we all put our heads together and try and come up with a way to promote this type of education in our country make it so that going into the trades is cool not just uh you know something for the lunk heads basically you know that's that's kind of the the um so what I'm looking for the stigma around our profession but when you see something like this and how professionally it's done and how precise and the care that they take and honestly the pride you know the students are in class and there's no goofing around they're not joking around they're not listening to loud music they're totally focused on the project at hand and they're getting it done at a high level yeah and it's you know there's a lot of other interesting things about the school we learn about is it's a non-profit it's funded by you know some of the companies that are hiring these kids when you come to the school we mentioned it's a four-year school they're actually required to get a four-year contract with you know what we would say a builder a general contractor in efforts to then then invest in that student the student pays nothing out of pocket you know this is a commitment and some sort of contract that they're writing to to come here and actually go from zero to you know a master Carpenter or on their way to be a master Carpenter and you know you know there's so many people out there that are doing things in the US and we have to give credit where credit is due you know between all of the the the the YouTube content from a promotional and educational standpoint educational over promotional uh standpoint and then of course you know things like empty Copeland that is bringing e-learning into the space and you know structured e-learning I should say and then you know of course the North Bennett Street School of carpentry in Boston and which we've toured and we've shared on our on our page but the you know all of those things are so introductory to the trade where the interest might be there and we can introduce them and get them at a basic level but this this is beyond that this is four four years of dedicated work and like you said those kids aren't in there goofing around they're they're head down and those they've been here for three four years already so they know what they're they're committing to and they're trying to get to a very high level from a quality standpoint and they're dedicated and I think that you know like you said it's us coming together and realizing that yes there's great content being produced and e-learning and in these schools but we need to band together and figure out we need to bring you know more to the table so people are are being trained uh on quality over you know true and let's be honest a whole a big part of that is the funding right you have to find the funding and they were kind enough to share with us how this whole operation is funded some of it is funded through the government there's another percentage that's funded where they actually produce work or services for the local community well most of it is provided excuse me most of it is provided by the companies that they signed that contract with which you mentioned before to actually train the student and then they go to work for that company when they're during that training they actually work for their company so it's a benefit to both the student gets a free education and the company a sponsoring company gets a carpenter basically during those four years so it's another idea it's something maybe we can look towards to having some of our larger General Contracting companies maybe they can kick in a little bit because as we all know there's a huge labor shortage right now and it's only going to get worse yeah so guys comment below if you guys are interested in in seeing a school like this in the U.S and if you are what you would love to focus on uh and if you're completely new to the trade and want to get you know involved follow us on Instagram shoot me a message I'd love to talk to you one on one and really help start moving you know the us into education like this uh we're going to continue our Switzerland tour big thank you to siego for having us uh we'll get we'll see you guys in the next episode I just want to add a little bit too let's say a big thanks to Nick for having me on site visit I'm a huge fan as many people are on YouTube I think you're a big part of the reason why some of us are found a new love for this industry and why you're going to bring more young people into this industry so keep doing what you're doing appreciate it Mike thanks man

Channel: NS Builders

Views: 759,785

Keywords: nsbuilders, ns builders, nick schiffer nsbuilders, nick schiffer

Id: llJvFYBpTu4

Length: 29min 39sec (1779 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 25 2022