I do remember one "project" in Shop Class, but the instructor threw me out for a month because of it! I have always had a thing for Bowie knives. I had a blade (1095C I think) with a 14" cutting edge and another 8" for the handle. I was using a surface grinder (instructions WERE posted, but what teenage boy READS THEM?) and ran out of patience with the required "only a few thou at a time boys!". I think I dialed in around 100 thou the next pass, and that big magnetic holder never had a prayer! The blade took off across the room (fortunately everyone else was seated or gone) about neck high. It hit the opposite wall and cut the cleanest hole you ever saw! I was told later, by a friend (not being allowed even NEAR the school for a while!) that it had passed through the next room right over everyone's head, and made almost as neat a hole as the first one. Then... ah, yes... thenit entered the LAB! The LAB Teacher was showing how to use a microtome . You know, that HIGHLY precision thingy that slices tissue to wafer thin for slides? the EXTREMELY EXPENSIVE thingy? Well it was made of good stuff. The base was cast iron, and the blade finally stopped when it hit it RIGHT BELOW THE Teachers fingers. That was good steel too. It buried about 1/2" into the cast iron, like it was a hot knife in a butter dish. (the Teacher actually had it left in there, and ground off 'til a little bit stuck out, and and showed it when he lectured EVERYONE who would listen for the next few YEARS about my "accident" (was NOT what he called it!) I am still amazed (as was my Mother, who had never before RUN OUT of thorny rose bush limbs! (I think there are still a few thorns in "there" from 59 years ago!) that I hadn't been the first school serial "stabber ???"
And THEN............ I got to earn the money to pay for the LAB thingy. HAD to take LAB, every day THERE sure was fun after that!
And ya know what? I ain't larned nothin frum it, neither! (ask my wife, who was in the next room)