The 11th and 12 grade students at Clear Spring spent their wood shop time today carving and turning pens and practicing their cursive writing with ink in preparation for writing lines of Shakespeare. Tomorrow, Gary Junken, from Taunton Press will be here to work on the Rustic Furniture Basics DVD, so I am busy getting supplies together and continuing to clean and organize the wood shop. I may not have much time to contribute to the blog for the next few days.

I have been reading the latest issue of Wooden Boat Magazine and thinking about half models. I had written an article about half-models for Woodwork Magazine a couple years ago, and while I was in the Estonian Naval Museum, I found the display shown above: These half models are constructed in layers with wooden dowels holding them together for alignment. Lofting full scale designs from these models involves taking the model apart, tracing around each layer and then scaling measurements to determine full size and shape for various stations on the ship hull. The half model shown below is one I made in my shop to demonstrate the technique used in the Estonian models.