Sam’s Basket

Sharing with Good People

Sam is a wonderful helper in my disability woodwork lessons. This basket is her idea. She rattled her head until the idea came then generously passed it on to me.

Woodwork is fascinating and sharing it is rewarding. BUT the reward is doubled when people in the workshop are enthusiastic.  When the enthusiasm is for each other as well as the work, then a lesson becomes a comfortable place to be. Self esteem abounds!

Bang Bang Thump

As usual, construction exploits techniques that have become habits. Dowels, 6.4mm, hammered into holes, 6.0mm. Our low powered stapler pins things in place while the glue dries. Cooks’ skewers, 4.0mm, are hammered into holes, 3.5mm.

Remarkable Basket

My friends enjoy the act of making and often don’t care or even recognise what they are creating. The basket, as a hold all, has something universal about it.  It has a recognisable function. Thanks Sam.

Here is my prototype. The basket we made used wooden pins to hold the vertical piece to the basket body.

Pre-cut pieces have become the expectation. We can’t use machinery and the dexterity to make careful accurate cuts with handsaws does not exist. I made enough pieces to construct eighteen baskets. An afternoon’s work in my shed translates into three or four weeks’ work for my friends.

Using pieces of bamboo skewer creates little dark dots of end grain. It is a technique worth exploring in woodwork in general.