Northwoods Manufacturing holds open house

HURLEY, Wis. - The students of the Northwoods Manufacturing program at the Hurley K-12 School opened their doors on Thursday for the first public event at the wood and metal shop since the $1.3 million building expansion dedication in the fall of 2019.

The event was to showcase some of the projects the students have created after mastering the various industrial tools and equipment for wood and metal crafting. It was also a chance to sell items in a school store and silent auctions.  

"This is really amazing and wonderful for the area," said Sandy Gertz, who attended the open house with her husband, Don, as they weren't able to attend the October 2019 grand opening ceremony. "These boys and girls can learn all this right in their local high school and they make beautiful things, really high quality things."

The public is welcome to come tour the facility if they weren't able to attend the open house, said Jacob Hostettler, the technical education instructor in charge of the Northwoods Manufacturing metalworking program. Once people see what the students are capable of doing here they come back with ideas and ask for a quote to manufacture an item.

The students have used various tools including a computerized plasma cutter donated by the Hurley Education Foundation to create ornate signage, sauna stoves, bed frames, the gate for the community garden in Montreal, a brush hog for the school tractor, and a chicken tractor for a customer to move poultry around his property.

Some of the projects for the Thursday silent auction were started in 2020 but the open house wasn't possible with part of the school year pushed to virtual learning from the pandemic. Several of those 2019-2020 projects were finished up at the start of this school year and the wide-open floor plan of the expansion that was created for safer work spaces was also a plus for social distancing.

The auction on Thursday was a way to help clear out that inventory, he said.

"We're just going to put the money back in and buy more metal and build more stuff - that's the goal," Hostettler said. "I'm always looking to just keep projects flowing and if we can sell them for what we have put into them, then I'm more than happy to do that."

Monica Overman, a HHS senior, organized the open house as a mentor in the woodworking program. She pushed for the open house since January, until Roger Peterson, the technical education instructor in charge of the Northwoods Manufacturing woodworking program, allowed for it when the pandemic guidelines made it possible and the administration would approve.

"We haven't had an open house in about two years so this is my senior year and I really just wanted to get the community out here to be able to see what we've done with the place," Overman said. "Since our expansion of the woodshop and the metals side no one has really got to come in and see it and because of COVID we really couldn't do anything last year. So this is really just a chance to get the community out and be able to see everything."

Overman designed T-shirts for the students and faculty to wear for the open house. The order was sent out late but the Ashland company came through just in time, she said. 

The event was a great opportunity to direct people to the facebook.com/

northwoodsmfg page to view items the shop is selling, she said. But it's more about showing what the shop has accomplished in skills and training. 

"This place is such a great place with all of the opportunities you could possibly think of in terms of equipment but also the people to help you learn how to become proficient on that equipment," Overman said.

Being able to stay with in-school learning all year was a big relief to the woodshop students, she said. The students were deciding on personal projects early on when there was concern about the risk of investing the time and expense in projects that might not get completed if the school were to return to virtual learning for an extended time during the year. 

"If we got shut down then I would have never been able to finish it because it's my senior year and I wouldn't have been able to come back," Overman said.