Today I have been finishing a coffee table with rocks as shown in the photo above, and getting ready for tomorrow's classes. The first and second grade students will be making wooden kangaroos for their study of Australia, and the 3rd and 4th grade students will be finishing pinwheels to give to students in our pre-school. I have a lot of work to do in the morning, as I still don't know how to make a kangaroo. Wish me luck."The mark of the modern industrial state as it now exists is precisely that its workmen do not possess capital. I call it capitalism when property is so unequal that the small man cannot live on his own property, but must hire himself out as a servant to work another man's property... I call it capitalism when the small farmer is forced to become a farm-labourer to the big farmer..The real problem of the present civilisation, which is not property but the disproportion of property, and, for most people, the absence of property... It is not the Conservatives who have defended property; they have hardly succeeded in discovering property..."We are able to own homes if we are very lucky, and whether we own or rent, our lives may be filled with meaningless consumer goods, but how many in America now possess the means through which to produce real goods? I am one of the very lucky ones. I have tools. I also got an order this afternoon via email... so I even have a small market for the things I produce. Is it luck, or related to application of energy to a specific cause over a distinct period of time?
G. K. Chesterton
Illustrated London News
We have more local fund raisers in the next few days in Eureka Springs, and I believe that the economic times will make people more aware of the needs in our own communities. 
One of the things that you learn as a craftsman is that you are not in it alone. And you will also learn that those who are most supportive of your work will quite likely be those who have some sense of the creative capacities of their own hands. You remove crafts education from schools, and you also remove an understanding of the patronage that is required to sustain the great works of human culture, period. My very best customers have been people who are creatively engaged in their own work. I can name names, and I am completely surprised that we don't have a clear and widely held understanding that when you commission work, you also commission growth, and the objects that serve as the foundation of human culture don't arise on their own from the blue, but arrive through the encouragement of others. 
This is Saturday, so once again, I am competing with the Chinese. They make things, but generally speaking, Americans do not. We have been hungry consumers passing things through our lives from storefront to landfill, caring little for the quality or cultural connections of the objects that smother our sensibilities.
The photos show progress on the chess sets and boat. We've made pawns, and are adding ribs to the boat, using the ribs already in place to guide the making of more. this afternoon I will have the 11th and 12th grade economics class visiting my home workshop as part of their hands-on investigation of economics.
"The young workman is engaged on a problem in wood, just as, a few hours earlier, he was engaged on a problem in algebra. He has before him a drawing made to a scale. The problem is this: He must gain a clear conception of the object represented by the drawing; he must imagine it; he must select or cut a block of wood of the proper dimensions and of the right quality. It must not be too large, for he must guard against waste of material and waste of time. It must be large enough, for there must be no incompleteness about the finished product of his labor. Observe him as the work grows under his hand; observe the selecting of the proper tools for the different parts of the process; observe the careful measuring, the watchful eye upon the position of the chisel, the speed of the lathe, the gradual approach of the once rectangular block to the model which exists in his brain--and you must admit that this work demands and develops, not manual dexterity alone, but attention, observation, imagination, judgment, reasoning..."Or more?
"My own opinion is that an hour in the shop of a well-conducted manual training school develops as much mental strength as an hour devoted to Virgil or Legendre..."
The English nobility have deliberately adopted hunting as their favorite pastime. They follow as a matter of physical exercise, in order to keep up their physical strength, a pursuit which the savage man followed from necessity. The introduction of athletics in colleges is a move in the same direction. But it is not sufficient to maintain our physical strength, our brute strength, the strength of limb and muscle. We must also preserve that spiritualized strength which we call skill--the tool-using faculty, the power of impressing on matter the stamp of mind. And the more machinery takes the place of human labor, the more necessary will it be to resort to manual training as a means of keeping up skill, precisely as we have resorted to athletics as a means of keeping up strength.If you think about our current crisis, the greed amongst highly educated individuals who brought it on through arrogance and irresponsibility, you can begin to understand what happened. We have created educational systems in which students are kept completely out of touch.
There is one word more I have to say in closing. Twenty-five years ago, as the recent memories of Gettysburg recall to us, we fought to keep this people a united nation. Then was State arrayed against State. Today class is beginning to be arrayed against class. The danger is not yet imminent, but it is sufficiently great to give us thought. The chief source of the danger, I think, lies in this, that the two classes of society have become so widely separated by difference of interest and pursuits that they no longer fully understand one another, and misunderstanding is the fruitful source of hatred and dissension. This must not continue. The manual laborer must have time and opportunity for intellectual improvement. The intellectual classes, on the other hand, must learn manual labor; and this they can best do in early youth in the school, before the differentiation of pursuits has begun... Let manual training, therefore, be introduced into the common schools; let the son of the rich man learn, side by side with the son of the poor man, to labor with his hands; let him thus practically learn to respect labor; let him learn to understand what the dignity of manual labor really means, and the two classes of society, united at the root, will never thereafter entirely grow asunder.
I walked out to my lumber storage barn and picked up the first board I saw, with the intention of making a table or two. It was a bit harder to dig for the walnut to make the legs. The sense of discovery that one "discovers" in working with wood is gratifying. The maple boards shown are "spalted," meaning that they are softened and colored by the process of decay, which makes them even more beautiful. You can see the delicate patterns of curl formed in the grain, called "fiddle back". The meandering line cut through the middle of the board has practical as well as decorative purposes. It allows the wide board to pass through my planer and will allow some room for expansion and contraction when the table is fully assembled. This technique was described in my table design article for Fine Woodworking, "A Fresh Take on Table Tops," issue number 187.
And of course walnut. Today I applied the first coat of Danish Oil to the walnut bench, and I am beginning some simple tables combining walnut with natural edged spalted maple. I brought the wood in from the barn and look forward to making the first cuts. There are certain advantages that come with experience. At one time I might have agonized over design before starting. Now I plunge in. And the results are more creative and spontaneous. Stay tuned for the results.
We love the spoken and written word, and yet the objects crafted by the human hand tell stories too, often with even greater sincerity and meaning. One does need to understand the language, and that requires some attention.I am reminded of an old Freudian child psychiatrist I worked with many years ago. He had his child clients do what he called the "house, tree and person test" which involved three drawings since children were rarely able to verbalize their relationships, particularly for an old Jewish man with a German accent. The house told about their personal state. A disproportionately large attic space described an over-sized imagination and the size of windows and doors revealed their relative openness or guardedness toward the outside. The tree described their growth and history. I particularly recall him pointing out knot holes drawn in trees. The knot hole symbolized trauma in childhood, even as the loss of a major limb was a trauma in the life of the tree. Certainly, as a woodworker, I am not in the business of story telling on my own. It is a collaboration in which I find a great deal of pleasure. Today, I was passing my hands along the well sanded walnut bench and feeling pleasure in its touch. I do not believe there will be many people who when confronted by the finished bench will not feel the same.
Each piece of wood tells the story of the tree from which it came. Where there’s a knot, there had been a branch. Where the grain is wide and straight, the tree had grown quickly, straight and tall. Where the grain is crooked or dense, the tree had grown in defiance of harsh circumstances.
I have come to view my own work as framing and illuminating the story told by wood. A craftsman might choose to wrestle it to submission, making it do things to satisfy his or her sense of mastery and accomplishment. I am curious about more gentle relationships, in which the full range of textures, colors and narrative qualities of the woods might emerge and find greater voice.
Much of what I do is inspired by my concerns for the environment and I adhere to these thoughts:
Woodworkers have a unique opportunity to reveal the beauty and value of our native woods in a way that encourages understanding and preservation of our trees and forests,
and when an object is carefully and lovingly crafted, it is empowered to express the concerns and character of its maker in a voice that can resonate for generations.
Today I made small walnut plugs to cover the lag bolts used to assemble portions of the bench, and have begun the process of inlaying the stones on the top.
After reading Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers, I set for my self the goal of carving 400 spoons. I figure that by that time I'll have something meaningful to say with my spoon carving. Currently I'm just starting number 26.His comment reminds me of my college days. I had a professor who urged me to go to graduate school in creative writing. I decided that writing would be much more meaningful if I had something I wanted to say. What I realized later was that all the great books, great poems, and great works have a single thing at the heart, regardless of length and regardless of the experience on which they are based.
There are always a number of things going on in my wood shop, allowing me to shift from one thing to another. In addition to my work at school on the walnut bench, I have been making a small walnut table to surround a pre-made chessboard top. While waiting for the oil to dry, there is spoon carving to do with my Sloyd knife. There is so much pleasure in learning new things, feelings one's powers of attention grow, and then seeing the physical results of one's labor and skill. The spoon is almost ready for sanding. My level of skill has not quite reached the point at which it can be done beautifully by knife work alone, and the curves designed in the handle make dealing with grain particularly difficult. But practice is what leads to greater skill.
As you can see from the photos I am finishing the assembly of the walnut bench. I used 5/16 in. lag bolts to attach the under structure to the top and ends. In the photo below you can see the relationship between the model and the full sized bench. And you can also see what comes next. Inlaying rocks.
"If there was a simple formula for success that The Metropolitan Regional Career and Technical Center could share with other high schools, it would be the practice of taking a holistic approach to the physical, mental and intellectual welfare of each student.The Full text of the article can be read here. The Big Picture Schools are now global with some having started in Australia.
That is no easy task for an inner-city school, with campuses in South Providence and Newport, whose student population in general is strained by poverty and other potentially crippling societal ills.
But then again, The Met is no ordinary high school."
Research from Goldin-Meadow's team also suggests that gesturing may encourage children to think more creatively by bringing out new ideas and improving clarity. By manipulating how much children gestured, researchers gauged the influence of gesturing. Older children told to gesture while solving math problems on a chalkboard got the answer right more frequently than children who were told not to gesture. “These gestures are not mere hand waving. Kids are extracting meaning from gestures,” says Goldin-Meadow. “The educational relevance could be fabulous."Thanks Joe Barry for alerting me to the article.
Today I assembled the dovetails for the bench. You can see the results. Next the surfaces will be sanded level and smooth. We finished the chemistry project, making a display for the periodic table of elements, and I will get a photo of it tomorrow.
Today the 5th and 6th grade worked on their chess boards, adding cherry borders of thin solid stock and using chisels to miter the corners. Then we began the process of vacuum laminating the assembled veneers onto a birch plywood backing material. You can see the results below. This one is my own demonstration piece and the kid's work is not quite so neat. But in the end, they will have made some useful and beautiful chess boards. After spring break we will begin making the chess men to go with their chess boards.
