Crescent Valley High School · Corvallis, Oregon
Come in with no experience.
Leave with something you built.
Metals and Small Engines. Seven sections across three periods, and one rule that comes before all the others: nobody touches a machine until they have passed the safety test for it.
Two programs. Five levels.
Students can take one term or stay three years. The work gets harder on purpose.
Metals and Fabrication
Cut, weld and shape real steel and aluminum on the same equipment a production shop runs. You start by learning to hold a dimension. You finish by drawing a part yourself and cutting it on the CNC plasma table.
- Metals 1MIG and stick welding, layout and measurement. The pyramid, the scroll bracket, the book end, the desk organizer, your first plasma cut sign.
- Metals 2Aluminum, tighter tolerances, harder joints. The hitch receiver, the infinity cube, the dice, the aluminum frame.
- Metals 3Shop track. Real repair tickets that come in the door, plus a build proposal you write, price and defend before you cut anything.
Small Engines
Take a Predator 212 down to bare metal, work out why it stopped running, and put it back together running. Every step gets photographed and written down. No evidence, no credit.
- Small Engines 1Full teardown and rebuild. Tool identification, torque, clearances, and the habit of checking your work before you close it up.
- Small Engines 2Diagnosis on engines that arrive broken, plus fabrication work on the frames and mounts those engines end up in.
Nobody runs a machine in this shop until they have passed the safety test for that machine.
Every machine sits in a tier. Some stay red tagged and instructor only all year.What we did today.
The agenda goes up every teaching day, newest on top. If you want to know what your student did in class, it is written down here.
Metals
The objective for the day, what happened on the floor, and anything assigned with its due date.
Open the metals agendaSmall Engines
Same format. What the objective was, what the class actually got done, and what is due next.
Open the engines agendaCanvas
Assignments, submissions and grades live in Canvas. Students work there every day. Parents can request observer access through the office.
Go to CanvasThe same agenda is posted to Canvas and to this page in one step, so the two never disagree.
What comes out of the shop.
Work made by students in this program. Plasma cut art, welded assemblies, machined parts, rebuilt engines.
For parents.
The questions that come up most, answered before you have to ask.
Is it safe?
Safety certification comes before operation, on every machine, with no exceptions. Students test on general shop rules first, then on each machine individually. Eye protection is worn by everyone in the shop, including visitors. Some equipment stays red tagged and instructor only for the whole year.
How is it graded?
Straight points, not weighted categories. What an assignment is worth is printed on the assignment. Grades and submissions live in Canvas, and the daily agenda on this site tells you what was worked on and what was assigned.
Does this count for anything?
Students leave with work they can show, which matters more than it sounds. Metals students can also prepare for the Certified SolidWorks Associate exam, an industry credential they keep whether or not they go into the trades.
My student has never done this.
Good. Most have not. Metals 1 and Small Engines 1 assume you have never picked up a welder or a torque wrench, and the first weeks are built around that. Nobody gets handed a machine before they are ready for it.
About Mr. McAteer
I teach Metals and Small Engines at Crescent Valley, and I live over in Philomath with my wife and our two boys.
We came to Oregon in 2020, when my wife took a faculty position at OSU's College of Veterinary Medicine. Before that I built CTE programs in Colorado, first at a middle school in Denver and then for six years in Fort Collins, and after the move I built more of them in Lebanon. Parametric modeling, CNC milling, robotics, modern manufacturing. Middle schoolers sitting the SolidWorks Associate exam and passing it.
The idea I keep coming back to is David Kelley's: fail faster, succeed sooner. Nothing in this shop gets learned by watching. You cut the part crooked, you work out why, you cut another one. That is the whole method, and it is why the room is loud.
When I am not here I am usually in my own shop with a 3D printer and a CAD file open, chasing my boys around Philomath, running Dan's Trail up in McDonald Forest, or playing indoor soccer at the sports park.
I plan on staying.
Questions about the program?
Students, parents, counselors. If you want to know what we build here, or whether one of these classes is a fit, send me an email.
Email Mr. McAteer