This article analyses the introduction and, later on, reconstruction of compulsory school technology in Sweden 1975-1995. It focuses on two curricular reforms and different attempts to increase the legitimacy of technology as a school subject. The article builds upon theories from science studies and the term boundary-work is used to analyse the constant reconstruction of the subject and the changing answers to the question of "the nature of technology". In a first reform in the late 1970s technology was caught in a contest between the natural sciences and sloyd (handicraft). That struggle ended with the placement of technology within science, something that also sharpened the image of sloyd as "non-technology". In the beginning of the 1990s a distinct boundary was drawn to separate technology and science from each other, portraying the former as a subject in its own right that claimed to have a different epistemological character from science. (Contains 1 figure and 66 footnotes.)