getting interested in Sloyd?

Bodies of boxes being glued and clamped

A reader wrote that he's become interested in educational Sloyd and noticed that there seem to be no current texts offering modern context or commentary. I guess that's one of the things I need to put on my list for later. If, in the meantime, you would like to become better acquainted with the system of woodworking education that began in Scandinavia in the mid to late 19th century, there is no better place to start than B.B. Hoffman's book The Sloyd System of Woodworking which can be downloaded from Google Books. The reason I like Hoffman's book is that it offers a brief history of manual arts training as to how Sloyd was developed and the rationale behind it, in addition to sets of models which describe the gradual development in the child that was to take place.

One of the things that might surprise readers is that Sloyd is not necessarily an easy thing to get one's hands around. It was much more an educational movement than a fixed point in time, and that movement has continued in Scandinavia, even to this day.

Today in the wood shop, I've mitering corners for boxes. So far I have cut corners for about 80 boxes and now have less than 4 times as many more to go. As you can see, I've also begun assembly, using large rubber bands as clamps. Over my years of making boxes I've made thousands of boxes, but never so many in a single month before.

Make, fix and create...