boys, knives and turned boxes...

Making boxes for pencil, scissors and cards

I went for a walk last evening, and found two of my students on a front porch hunched over a grinder as sparks flew. One wore an over-sized pair of glasses to protect his eyes as he took his turn shaping a knife from solid bar stock.

I must take some responsibility for the situation, for they are my students, and I have played a role in shaping them as makers, just as they themselves were shaping the 1/4 in. thick bar stock to reflect what they had drawn from their own imaginations. Of course I can't take too much credit for the impulse to make and give shape the materials at hand is an important part of the human experience. We can ignore it. We can repress it. Or we can give it power and release and watch the child's growth as he or she takes charge of it.

Finished desk boxes.

Satellite ring box

Today, we continued the experience of crafting wood into useful objects.

On the tiny box book, I have been making very small satellite shaped ring boxes on the lathe, turned from maple.

On another interesting note, manufacturers are beginning to claim that we no longer own the things that we buy, and that therefore we are not entitled to fix them, particularly when it comes down to the software that makes them run. The idea seems to be a thing they have learned from the sale of software. By buying something you will have a license to its use but not the right to fix it should it go awry.

Make, fix and create...