{
  "source": "Cooked Index — occupational AI risk register",
  "page": "https://cookedindex.com/jobs/model-makers-wood/",
  "methodology": "https://cookedindex.com/methodology",
  "notice": "Verdicts are re-examined as evidence accumulates. Re-fetch before relying on this; the page above always carries the current score.",
  "scored_at": "2026-08-11",
  "model": "claude-opus-5",
  "occupation": {
    "title": "Model Makers, Wood",
    "soc_code": "51-7031",
    "category": "Production",
    "us_employment": 280,
    "median_annual_wage": 56550
  },
  "verdict": "EXPOSED",
  "risk_resistance": 48,
  "contested": false,
  "near_boundary": false,
  "dimensions": {
    "task_resistance": 14,
    "embodiment": 16,
    "liability_shield": 1,
    "trust_premium": 8,
    "judgment_accountability": 9
  },
  "reasoning": {
    "task_resistance": "Reading a designer's drawing and then hand-fitting a curved hull mockup or furniture prototype — planing to a fair line, scarfing joints, sanding to a feel rather than a dimension — is work no model can do, but the 14 rather than 18 reflects that CNC routing and 3D printing already take the roughing, nesting, and layout arithmetic that used to fill the first days of a job.",
    "embodiment": "You spend the shift standing at a bandsaw, lathe, and bench, wrestling stock that moves with humidity, chasing grain direction and tearout, working around clamps and dust — a 16 rather than 19 only because it's your own shop with fixed machines, not a bridge deck or a crawlspace.",
    "liability_shield": "There is no state license, no journeyman card, no stamp required to make a wooden pattern or mockup; a buyer can hand the same drawing to any shop with a router and no statute stops them, which is what puts this at 1.",
    "trust_premium": "Repeat clients — a foundry, a boatbuilder, an industrial design studio — come back to a maker who has learned their tolerances and drawing conventions, but the deliverable is a physical part that either checks out on the surface plate or doesn't, so the relationship earns you the callback, not the price.",
    "judgment_accountability": "You decide shrink allowance, draft angles, parting lines, and where to build up versus carve away when the drawing is ambiguous, and a bad call scraps expensive stock or a casting downstream — but the designer owns the design intent and signs off, keeping this in the discretion band rather than the high-stakes one."
  },
  "rationale": "The core of this job — laying out, cutting, shaping, and hand-fitting wood patterns, mockups, and prototypes from drawings — is manual craft that language models cannot touch, and shop work with bandsaws, lathes, chisels, and glue-ups resists robotics. The real pressure is not chat AI but the upstream shift: CAD/CAM, CNC routing, and 3D printing already absorb the drawing interpretation, layout math, and roughing that used to be billable skilled hours, and this occupation is already down to roughly 280 workers nationally. No license protects the trade, and clients buy an accurate physical object rather than a relationship with its maker.",
  "outlook": "The trade persists in foundry, architectural, and prototype niches, but employment stays tiny and keeps eroding as CNC and additive manufacturing swallow the roughing work — the survivors are the ones who run the machines and still finish by hand.",
  "what_would_raise_it": {
    "levers": [
      {
        "dimension": "task_resistance",
        "change": "Task-mix shift as CNC/3D printing absorbs roughing and layout: the residual job becomes final hand-fitting, grain matching, finish work, and reverse-engineering objects that exist with no drawings (historic architectural millwork patterns, museum/conservation replicas, foundry patterns for legacy castings where no model file exists). Watchable marker: shops advertising 'digitize + hand-finish' rather than build-from-drawing.",
        "plausibility": "already happening",
        "would_add": 3
      },
      {
        "dimension": "embodiment",
        "change": "Concentration of remaining work into one-off, non-repeating pieces in cluttered general-purpose shops — species-specific hand judgment on movement, grain runout, and glue-up clamping that fixtured robotics cannot amortize over a single unit.",
        "plausibility": "plausible",
        "would_add": 2
      },
      {
        "dimension": "trust_premium",
        "change": "Provenance-based demand: Secretary of the Interior Standards / NPS Preservation Brief compliance work on historic restoration, and museum conservation contracts that specify hand-worked reproduction rather than additive-manufactured substitutes. Also luxury/marine and instrument prototyping where 'hand-built pattern' is a marketed attribute. Watchable marker: RFPs specifying hand-carved or traditional-method reproduction.",
        "plausibility": "plausible",
        "would_add": 4
      },
      {
        "dimension": "judgment_accountability",
        "change": "Pattern-of-record responsibility in foundry and tooling work: if the maker is the one who sets draft, shrinkage allowance, and parting lines for a casting that goes into a certified assembly (AS9100 / ASME first-article), the call and its cost of failure sit with them. Watchable marker: first-article inspection documentation naming the patternmaker.",
        "plausibility": "plausible",
        "would_add": 3
      }
    ],
    "ceiling_note": "With 280 workers nationally and no licensure body, there is no realistic route to a liability shield — no state board is going to license wood patternmaking. Trust premium gains are real but apply to a niche (preservation, museum, luxury prototyping) too small to lift the trade as a whole; the dominant risk here is the occupation shrinking further rather than being scored differently."
  },
  "adjudication": null,
  "employment_history": {
    "points": [
      {
        "y": 2017,
        "emp": 850,
        "wage": 50150
      },
      {
        "y": 2018,
        "emp": 740,
        "wage": 53100
      },
      {
        "y": 2019,
        "emp": 810,
        "wage": 59260
      },
      {
        "y": 2020,
        "emp": 800,
        "wage": 64050
      },
      {
        "y": 2021,
        "emp": 340,
        "wage": 60780
      },
      {
        "y": 2022,
        "emp": 720,
        "wage": 46940
      },
      {
        "y": 2023,
        "emp": 590,
        "wage": 45040
      },
      {
        "y": 2024,
        "emp": 360,
        "wage": 51850
      },
      {
        "y": 2025,
        "emp": 280,
        "wage": 56550
      }
    ],
    "from": 2017,
    "to": 2025,
    "change_pct": -67.1,
    "comparable_from": 2019,
    "spans_soc_revision": true
  },
  "pivots": [
    {
      "slug": "brickmasons-and-blockmasons",
      "title": "Brickmasons and Blockmasons",
      "verdict": "SAFE",
      "risk_resistance": 68,
      "median_wage": 62120,
      "overlap": 81,
      "skills_to_close": [
        "Equipment Selection",
        "Management of Financial Resources",
        "Mathematics",
        "Negotiation"
      ]
    },
    {
      "slug": "welders-cutters-solderers-and-brazers",
      "title": "Welders, Cutters, Solderers, and Brazers",
      "verdict": "EXPOSED",
      "risk_resistance": 62,
      "median_wage": 53750,
      "overlap": 81,
      "skills_to_close": []
    },
    {
      "slug": "glaziers",
      "title": "Glaziers",
      "verdict": "EXPOSED",
      "risk_resistance": 65,
      "median_wage": 57080,
      "overlap": 78,
      "skills_to_close": [
        "Installation",
        "Management of Financial Resources"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "license": "https://cookedindex.com/terms"
}