turning leaves

Today at the Clear Spring School, I assisted with the Kindergarten woodworking class. I helped to set up the project and guided our new teacher, Thomas, in preparing stock. I also delivered two books that I think will be helpful (in addition to Making Classic Toys that Teach, and the Guide to Woodworking with Kids). The books are From Truths to Tools by Jim Tolpin and George Walker, and Framing Square Math by my friend Joe Youcha. Both are important in developing a hand-centric means of teaching math. Framing Square Math could be used as a step by step classroom curriculum. And I hope it will be.

Teachers tend to teach the ways we were taught, and if we observe the numbers of kids who are turned off by math, we might arrive at the  understanding that the ways we teach math are wrong, a thing made obvious by the fact that only a few develop an excitement for it. 

The problem is that those who catch the math bug and love it, are often ill-equipped to teach it, for teaching (to be most effective) requires a different, hands-on approach. Framing Square Math offers an alternative. And the wood shop is the perfect place for starting out in math, even at the Kindergarten level, which we did today by introducing the square for marking wood. Do the Kindergarten kids need to know they're doing math? Perhaps not yet.

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Making small lift tabs and drawer pulls

A simple jig allows making symmetrical shapes using the bandsaw. Some sanding is required. I’m making these for use as drawer pulls on a large jewelry box and for lift tabs for boxes in my new book Designing Boxes that will come out in the spring 2024, published by Taunton Press. Much of the fun of designing boxes starts with designing the jigs that make them possible. Following the bandsaw, the same jig can be used with a disc sander.

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Boxes on sale

 

I've placed some boxes on sale on my Etsy site, offering 40% off for a limited time. https://www.etsy.com/listing/1535254964/aluminum-top-hardwood-box

These are offered in white oak, cherry or walnut. The sides are mitered with the grain matching at the corners and strengthened with contrasting keys. The top panels are aluminum bonded to mdf, and the inside of the lid is veneered in a contrasting color. The bottom of the box is lined,

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A new sharpening system that works.

Yesterday Mike Taylor from Taylor Tool Company demonstrated their new sharpening system for Megan and I at ESSA. The system works and is far simpler than other systems. It breaks through the assumptions that keeping hand tools sharp is difficult. It does require a special kind of 3M Cubitron™sanding disks, a drill press and a shop made jig. I made three jigs in advance of Mike's arrival, as I wanted one for use at ESSA, one for use in the Clear Spring School workshop and one for my own shop.

Making the jig might be the hard part for many woodworkers, but clear plans are included.You can watch the system at work here: https://youtu.be/w3Y1AANySkY

The system may seem too simple and inexpensive to be true, but it really does work. https://taytools.com/collections/supplies-sharpening-supplies/products/drill-press-sharpening-system

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two squares

I received these gifts today, made by Mike Taylor of Taylor Tool Company, http://taytools.com. Are they too lovely to use? Or are they too lovely to not use.

While visiting Mike demonstrated their new sharpening system using an interesting shop made jig, a drill press and unique sanding disks. I'll publish more about that later. While many woodworkers are nervous to sharpening their tools, Taylor Tools new method should put them at ease.

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this morning

This morning I deliver a box to the Walton Art Center in Fayetteville for an art show that will feature works by Northwest Arkansas Artist. 

The box they selected for the show is made of maple with a lid made of spalted maple. The keys at the corners are walnut. The lid opens without hinges.

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color and line

This small lift lid box is intended to illustrate how color can be used to create a sense of unity within a box. The black lines of spalted sycamore invited the use of a black shaker knob on top and black stained dowels to interlock the mitered corners. These three things were purposely related to each other in my process of design.

Note also how the darker grain of the ash box mirrors similar tones to be found in the lid. Note also how the chamfer on the top edge of the box captures and reflects more light, framing the lid in light.

A sense of unity in a box is created by an interplay of design elements. Color and line are powerful forces in design. An interesting thing about the chamfer used along the top edge of this box. A roundover bit in the router creates a rounded edge, and a rounded edge disperses light in all directions, whereas a chamfer, forming a wider plane is more directional and distinct. That is why I use so many routed flat planes in my box making.

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Montana

Heather Cox Richardson in her daily newsletter, Letters from an American noted a significant court finding in Montana, concerning the violation of the state's constitution by the state's continued and continuing support for the fossil fuel industries. In 1972 the state of Montana adopted an amendment stating,"  “[t]he state and each person shall maintain and improve a clean and healthful environment in Montana for present and future generations," and thus commanding the state legislature to make rules protecting the environment. 

In a rare court case on behalf of the children of Montana, a federal judge, as described by Richardson, agreed with the children that "the state’s support for coal, oil, and gas violated their constitutional rights because it created the pollution fueling climate change, thus depriving them of their right to a healthy environment. They pointed to a Montana law forbidding the state and its agents from taking the impact of greenhouse gas emissions or climate change into consideration in their environmental reviews, as well as the state’s fossil fuel–based state energy policy." 

This, is a sign of hope. We've been lied to about the reality of man's role in climate change, and have been denied the opportunity to address the degradation of our natural environment by those in government who adhere to power through obfuscation and denial.  Perhaps their time is coming to an end. 

We each have a responsibility to the earth and the protection of all things in the natural world, for the sake of those who walk behind us.

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my Arrowmont box

This is a box that I made while teaching at Arrowmont in 2002. I wanted to suggest to my students the incorporation of found objects, so we took a brief walk across campus to see what we could find. The piece of weathered wood on top is one that I found and decided to incorporate unaltered in my own box. 

The body of the box and the lid, are made with sycamore displaying its typical lacewood pattern found when it is quarter sawn. I used the hidden spline joint in the corners, and brass pins to elevate the piece of found wood on top.

This box is  out in the world someplace unknown, as are most of the boxes I've made.

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 It is difficult to know if my articles about Soyd in Woodwork Magazine and my blog Wisdomofhands.blogspot.com have had any effect on developments like this: https://www.sloydexperience.org

In any case, it is true that woodworking can have profound effects on child development. And it is truly time for all schools to recognize it. Sloyd, until a few years ago when I began writing about it, was a forgotten movement in American education. My writing about it, has, I think, had some effect. If you want to know more, please go to the Wikipedia Educational Sloyd article that I wrote or use Educational Sloyd as your search term in the box at upper left.

Several of my articles can be found here: http://wisdomofhands.blogspot.com/2010/05/links-to-published-works.html

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tiny shaker knobs

Years ago I'd purchased some tiny shaker knobs from a major supplier. I found them again on Ebay. To accentuate the black lines formed in the spalted sycamore, I stained them black with a magic marker. Just a bit of design fun.

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it's not a good thing

 It's not a good thing when your lawyers claim that they need to delay the case in order to review the tremendous amount of evidence they have against you.

child's rocker

This is a walnut rocking chair I made about 30+ years ago for my daughter Lucy, who is expecting our first grandchild in early October. I retrieved it from the attic and gave it a fresh coat of Danish oil. Good as new and ready for another 30+ years. On the news today they were telling that some of the local landfills are overflowing. When something is made of wood...  is useful and lovely,  it won't become part of that problem. 

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there's a squirrel up there someplace

 

Bento boxes

Bento boxes are traditional Japanese bentwood lunch boxes. The rise of plastics has shrunk the market for beautiful wooden boxes, but worse is the aging out of the artisans making them. There are too few young men and women ready to carry on the work.  This link tells the story of a maker in Japan. https://www.goenne.com/post/encore-wooden-bento-box

And this link shows how they are made. https://www.goenne.com/makingofbentoboxes

Bento boxes, Shaker boxes, and Norwegian tiner are all boxes made through the bending of wood. 

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1 billion dollars

There are lots of folks these days who have been identified as billionaires and at least one knew what to do with their money, donating one of his or her billions to McPherson College. It will be used to expand their model for learning, that model having been established by their one of a kind auto restoration program. More about the endowment can be found here: https://www.hemmings.com/stories/mcpherson-college-2662372034/

When we launched the Wisdom of the Hands program at the Clear Spring School, the idea was not that kids needed to know woodworking, but that the way we learn woodworking might serve as a model for all else that requires learning. We start with the interests of the child, progress from the known to the unknown, from the easy to the more difficult, from the simple to the complex, and always from the concrete to the abstract.

The money for McPherson will not be spent all on their classic car restoration program but on assuring similar style learning across the board. For instance, in health care, those interested in entering the field will be engaged in providing healthcare to others, sooner rather than later in their educations... The concrete to the abstract, doing real things, a thing that guarantees the engagement of the hands as well as the heart and mind.

Amanda Gutierrez, director of the auto restoration program, "pointed to the college's health care initiative as a prime example of using auto restoration as a model, noting that the college looked to the auto restoration program's curriculum designed around experiential learning in the field with industry professionals as the basis for putting health care students in regional health care facilities for shadowing, internships, and even as full-time employees prior to graduation." She said, "We've seen that our students have an idea what their chosen career is, but they don't understand the scope or responsibilities in concrete ways until they have those hands-on experiences."  

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McPherson College

A tiny college in Kansas received a 1 Billion dollar endowment this month, and one might wonder why a school with only 800 students would qualify for such generosity. This article explains it:

 https://robbreport.com/lifestyle/news/mcpherson-college-anonymous-donation-1234871348/

They have an automotive restoration program, and are the only college in the US offering a degree in the subject.

The small college has an impressive collection of restored cars, each having received the attention of students from years past. But as stated so clearly by Otto Salomon, the value of the students' labors is not in what the students have made, but in the students. And what does one do with a degree in auto restoration? Anything one wants. The value of having been engaged in doing real things is not to be underestimated.

Thanks, Bob, for alerting me to this story.

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box and rock

The following is the abstract of an article for the Columbia Human Rights Law Review by Professor and legal scholar Ali Khan: 

"The denigration of manual labor is a long, sad, captivating story of human civilization. No community can survive, let alone prosper, without the manual labor of farmers, industrial employees, construction workers, miners, and innumerable other men and women who toil to make everyone's day-to-day life possible. Yet a deeply entrenched prejudice against manual labor persists. Cultures and communities across the globe and throughout history have interwoven complex social, religious, and legal webs to create, maintain, and perpetuate a manual class that performs menial, difficult, and hazardous work. Weavers of these webs, including intellectual, political, and legal elites, personally benefit from the fruits of labor. These elites, however, also undervalue manual labor, nurturing a prejudice often made manifest in visible social realities. It is no mere coincidence that the manual class, providing socially indispensable physical labor, frequently ends up deprived of income, status, social respect, and even human dignity."

The full text of the article from 2001, The  Dignity of Manual Labor, can be found here: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=936890 

If colleges and universities want to become more diverse, I suggest they create greater opportunities for their students to become more deeply engaged in doing real things with their hands. Some would demonstrate  skills that others may not have bothered to have. All would gain a deeper respect for the dignity of labor.

In my shop I have a box to show. It illustrates a more formal approach to design with all parts being made of the same wood. The other photo (to put things in perspective) shows a large piece of chert unearthed by my box blade while at work on our road. The fracturing on the surface resembles tree bark. It is from the Ordovician Period that started 484 million years ago, before there were trees on the planet. The first trees came in the Middle Devonian period, only 75 million years later. So what looks like bark is not.

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strategic thinking and problem solving.

The current issue of American Woodturner features amazing work (as always) including a feature article on Matt Monaco who teaches regularly at our Eureka Springs School of the Arts. Our director, Kelly McDonough was interviewed for the article.

One of the interesting things about woodturning is the amount of strategic thinking that's involved. I'm convinced that an educational program could be built on woodturning that would be of tremendous benefit to schools and scholars. 

Just imagine the strategic thinking and problem solving  that is represented by this one vessel featured in this month's American Woodturner Magazine. If you think for one minute that the mind and hand are disconnected in the process of thought or that either is well represented without the other, forget about it.

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The "core."

When my daughter was a freshman at Columbia University I attempted to contact university president Lee Bollinger to suggest a change to their Core Curriculum. The "Core" is a long standing effort to instill some of the classic literature of western civilization as a common foundation to be faced by every graduate of the institution. Silly me, at the time, I thought some ideas of my own might provide an even better core.

Of course the president of a major university gets lots of letters. And one from a woodworker in Arkansas need not be taken seriously. But the strategic implementation of the hands in learning is actually a serious matter for concern. 

My simple idea was this: Across the street from Columbia University is the great unfinished Cathedral, St. John the Divine. A great university with so much money could finish that cathedral and engage student hands at the same time. And that might not be all. Every student enrolled in the university should be offered some means to develop the wisdom of their hands through service to the community. Carving stone might be but one. A real core uniting the wisdom of the hands to that of the mind would be a far better one than rehashing Plato and Socrates, and far more engaging to the students. And my idea would not force the abandonment of philosophy, but would provide a foundation from which it might be more thoroughly understood... Hands-on.

Universities are now faced with a big challenge, that of insuring diversity. Making a very simple decision, that of bringing all students into a greater appreciation of what the hands do, and an understanding of the intellect required would have a great effect.

Even those who are to be propelled into careers where they need not lift a finger, must at some point develop respect, admiration a willingness to serve and protect those that do if our civilization is to survive. 

It is unlikely that the Core Curriculum will ever be changed to allow students to do real work. In the case that it remains a thing where students only read, write and discuss, I have a book to suggest to their professors. I wrote it. It's called "The Wisdom of Our Hands: Crafting, A Life" and it explains how the hands shape everything.

The tiny chapel shaped box is one from the St. Louis Art Museum.

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