Meldgaard bought a plot of land and erected the first two buildings with his own resources.

Handicrafts and sloyd were both taught in the summer, and in the winter the school functioned as a boys efterskole.

While studying at Nääs in Sweden in the 1880s, Meldgaard had learned a system for handicraft education called Nääs-sloyd from the craftsman Otto Salomon.

The school in Askov borrowed from this system's method of "exercise sequences", where a student produced models in increasing difficulty and were not allowed to move on until they had perfected the technique.

[3][4] During the first few decades, the school held many courses for young people who did not complete their sloyd exams (sløjdlærereksamen).