After a few attempts to bend fine strips into curves, I gave up and resorted to the scroll saw.
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…
Decisions of Children A retailer wanted a morning’s activity with children.Making children happy isn’t difficult; they love doing cool stuff. When given a choice of projects they apply assumptions passed on by their parents. It is fun to present them with a boy’s cliché, a girl’s cliché and a gender non specific alternative. They were presented…
Junk is stuff you have no use for. Here is a blade that was destined for land fill, so was the timber. Junk can be reclassified! The teeth have been ground smooth and the weight of the blade gives the table a nice stability. In making this there was a nice exploration of cutting compound…
Good Ideas Don’t Need to be Complicated Serving Tray For an object to complete the journey from initial musings to touchable reality requires a certain fidelity, on my part, to the original idea. Discouragements take the form of excessively complex prototypes. It is difficult to let simplicity rule. The journey of the serving tray couldn’t be shorter….
Simple Machines Blogging takes time and my recent past has involved a sick wife and a new grandchild. Suburban life is rich with texture. It can make blogging take a back seat. Following is a report of a nice afternoon in my shed with my son! My disabled friends haven’t been ignored, the next blog…
Three Variations of the Same Theme There is a tradition in Melbourne secondary schools that has twelve year olds in their first woodwork lessons making a pencil case. Regardless of how ordinary the results may be, these things end up with magnificent decoration. During boring lessons they are canvas for expression of everything from undying…