You mentioning mortices reminded me of a machine we had in our woodshop class in high school - we had a morticing (?) machine!

It basically looked and worked like a drill press - but for "drilling" square holes! How you might ask? Well, pretty simple, actually: The "bit" was a drill bit fitted inside a piece of square tubing large enough to allow the bit to fit. At the working end of the tubing (or maybe along the length actually) were slots/holes to allow waste material to eject. The ends of the tubing were beveled (and likely hardened) to act as "chisels" to remove the remainder of the waste for a square hole. I never had a need to use the machine, so I don't know if these "bits" were removable and could be changed out for larger ones, etc - but I now suspect that to be the case; the bit I saw was around 1/2" wide - the machine was very large, and could probably handle up to 1.5" wide bits easily.

Most all of the machine tooling in that large shop dated from years back. My high school was originally built to be the community college of the town, back in the late 1890s (IIRC). It was this way until around the 1940s, when it became the main high school of the town (lots of WPA structures on the campus as well). The city streets used to run thru the campus, but when I got there, they had blocked off the streets, but the campus was still "open" (my senior year was the last year of an "open campus" - afterward, they put fencing around the entire campus, and kids can no longer go off campus to eat during lunch).

The industrial arts shop area was it's own self-contained unit, in a building right in front of the railroad tracks (the high school abutted the Santa Fe switch yard of the town); trains would go slowly by, rumbling the entire building.

The woodshop was huge, easily a 2-3000 sqft space, two stories tall; the upper level was a storage space around a couple sides, but the rest of the floor was open to the ceiling. Built-in vacuum system with ports on the floor (sweep your wood shavings toward them to be sucked up and deposited outside). Lathes, joiners, drill presses, sanders, table saws, band saws, planers, a spray booth - you name it, this shop had it all. Most of the equipment dated from the 1940s and 50s, all in great working shape. Plenty of hand tools, etc.

There was a metal shop too; from what I understand (I never got to see it) it allowed for a complete set of operations - casting, forging, bending, cutting, etc - and was as large as the woodshop and fully stocked as well.

Also in the same building was the drafting class - whether you wanted to learn architectural or mechanical drafting, you could do it. This was before cheap computer-aided drafting was easily available, so everything was done on paper, and we got to make real blueprints as well!

There was also shops for small-engine repair and automotive shop.

So - in theory - that entire building had almost everything needed to manufacture something - from design to actual part. I wish I hadn't been such a geek back then; I really wish I had taken more of an interest in the metal arts, automotive, etc. All I ever took was the drafting and the woodshop class.

And for what its worth, the woodshop class I did as a night class to earn extra credits I didn't need (I just wanted to use the shop). At the end of the class, our "final assignment" was to clean out that upper storage area. We all went up there to find a uniform layer of sawdust about 3 inches thick! Amazing the place never burned down!

Anyhow, up there were also a ton of old student projects from years gone by - just left there, whether by accident, or because the person had no way to get them home, or maybe the rule at one time was you had to pay for the materials, and they had no way to pay?

We found fine examples of student work, some of it dating from the 1950s onward; most had the name of the student and a date penciled on it somewhere (I went to high school from 88-91). Desks, a pew, tables, chairs, a grandfather clock. We even found a "US Civil Defense" pamphlet (with the Turtle guy in a GI helmet, telling you what to do in the event a nuclear bombing! That was another thing about this school - most of the buildings were designated fallout shelters in the basements - and some had "sub-basement" fallout shelters that were locked). We cleaned it all up, and left the woodwork in place. It was like a time capsule that we opened, cleaned up, then closed up again.

I don't know if any of it still exists, if kids there are taught that stuff any more - or if any of them care to learn it. I know I missed out (I was always taking computer-oriented electives) - so today I've had to learn from others or self-teach myself stuff (fortunately I had some great people to learn from, and the internet today).