This blog is dedicated to sharing the concept that our hands are essential to learning- that we engage the world and its wonders, sensing and creating primarily through the agency of our hands. We abandon our children to education in boredom and intellectual escapism by failing to engage their hands in learning and making.
Friday, May 23, 2008
The photos above and at left are the spoons I finished yesterday and today. The one at left was sanded... an easier operation requiring less concentration on the materials. The one at right was simply cut with the sloyd knife. I could make even finer cuts, but each cut, even the smallest, requires awareness of grain direction and a strategy of blade angle, force and motion specific to the location of the cut to prevent damage to the shape. Fortunately as your hand and eye get trained to be sensitive and intelligent in this work, less brain power is required. The hand develops a concentration of its own. Most people looking at the two spoons would choose the one at left, smooth to the eye and hand as the better design, and yet someone who had learned something of carving techniques and the skill required to make precise cuts might have greater respect for today's spoon. The bowls of both spoons were cut with the crooked knife shown and then sanded smooth.
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