Work with my disabled friends depends heavily on efficient batch production. For reasons not worth recounting my workshop is out of action for about a year. So, work with my friends has stalled, horribly! To maintain our hands together relationship I need to invent stuff that requires very little wood machining. Here are two pieces…
Pallet wood has challenges.If patina tells a story, this is a saga of neglect.The milling process was rushed, the drying stage left twists and warps, and nails fixed the stigma of an abusive past with rusty stains.With such baggage, construction needed to compensate by accepting skewed realities. All timber in this table was rescued from dumping…
All we did was sand it and paint it. Then added a few stickers. This single block of wood gave my mates two whole sessions of relaxed fun. Pictures tell enough of the story here. Simplicity can sometimes be a good option. Every project is different. Every project has discoveries. The discovery here is that…
I Broke a Promise… …but I also made a discovery. When I began doing wood projects among my disabled friends I made some promises to myself. The promises were a personal, but unwritten, statement of policy. I promise to: do work that is engaging because the thing we make is interesting, never to do all…
Our shopping basket seemed to take foreverrrrrr to finish, but that was only because a few of my disabled friends renewed their love for sanding and painting. It was a good thing, for the results were so good we decided to give the baskets to our mothers for Mothers’ Day. But it wasn’t quite Mothers’…
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….