Wednesday, December 21, 2016

as you can see...

As you can see, I am making progress on the trestle table, and have turned bun feet to lift the leg units slightly for ease of cleaning, and for decorative effect. I turned the four matching feet from walnut, using the new Jet 1640 lathe at the Clear Spring School.

My hope is to have the table compete before the Christmas holiday break from Clear Spring School is over on January 4. I also applied the first coats of Danish oil to the walnut box for a hinge review at Fine Woodworking Magazine. The box will not be so shiny when the finish has been rubbed out. This will be ready to ship for photography on Thursday or Friday of this week.

The following is from an article my friend Hans Thorbjörnsson wrote for Unesco about the life of Otto Salomon.
Salomon looked upon the contemporary elementary school as being too theoretical—and even that in a most insubstantial way since factual knowledge was learned by heart and repeated. This rote learning of pure facts led to the children adopting negative attitudes towards the school and towards each another: vanity, arrogance and bullying behaviour were commonplace. The children also suffered from being seated for long periods without any physical activity.

A child has a desire for both knowledge and activity. These needs are met when manual work is introduced into the conventional school curriculum.
Vanity, arrogance, and bullying behavior! Are those not the best known characteristics of the new "president elect?" Where was manual training when we needed it most?

Make, fix, create, and increase thereby the likelihood that others will be inspired to learn likewise.

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