Rings a bell
I reckon it's a type. The tech teachers at my school had a way of making you feel completely incompetent (in my case not unjustified) upon stepping into the workshop / classroom and one or two of them did display particular enthusiasm for helping the girls with anything that required bending over something while holding a tool (fnarr, etc.)

I'd be interested in the contents of the GCSE marking scheme because my final project plumbed previously unexplored depths of appalling rubbish and yet I walked away with a B overall.

I decided to construct a carrying case for model rocketry equipment, the brief for such requiring it to be large and light. I thought either plastic or plywood would be a suitable material - the tech teacher insisted on mahogany... Consequently, it weighed about four and a half tonnes and had all the portability of the Eiffel Tower. In the end I submitted four planks of expensive wood, complete with crooked and misaligned dovetail joints, that represented about a term's worth of effort.

I'd like to think that I aced the written exam to claw my final grade back up to the dizzying heights of a B, but it's also possible that our head of department (also an examiner) did some sort of deal with the examiners when they saw my pile of off-cuts in order to keep the department's average up.
(Dr. Scambolic, Thu 13 Aug 2009, 16:43, Reply)