A woodwork project with children led me to revisit Sam’s basket as an Easter project.
Here it is with a bit of upholstery and a few eggs in side.
Making this with dexterous children allowed a few modifications to the original method.
The skewers that we laboriously drilled for and hammered in could be simple nails. But the skewers still had a purpose as pins to secure the handle.
My friends wouldn’t stop playing with this toy. For me, that is enough evidence to call the project a success. Most of the workers in my group do not interact easily with other people, so their play didn’t consist of shooting each other. They found enormous satisfaction in the challenge of loading a ball and launching it…
There is a quiet room where the more stressed of my friends find gentleness. Fixed to the wall is a plywood panel that enables us to stick stuff where ever we feel. The stuff is really a collection of toys that have something sensory about them. It may be a movement or a gentle noise….
How can a woodworker be involved in cake decorating? My wife is a traditional cake decorator. She does the fancy thing with icing and makes sugary lace and that kind of stuff. An event called for an art deco cake. It could have been made from icing, but in that era much of the furniture…
Another rescued lathe stand. This steel construction makes a rigid scaffold on which to mount a work top. The surface is an oregon timber beam removed from a house during renovation. There are splits and twists, but to remove them would have lost 20mm in thickness and 70mm in width. After judicious machining, the bench…
Footstools It is a permanent source of inspiration to me that problems posed to woodworkers have no single correct response. If asked to make a footstool, what would a valid response look like? If a footstool is a small flat platform supported 100 to 300mm above the floor, how many ways could I make it?…
Candle Sticks These candle sticks are my response to a gig at a conference for intellectually disabled people, Having a Say.Our activity was to involve ten attendees and their helpers. There were no requests for my work to follow any themes. Attendees could be dexterous, or not. Helpers may be anything from ex-tradesmen to multi-thumbed…