Watch the video above, then read below for an explanation of the context in which it was filmed.
During last month’s Open MAKE we tried an activity for the first time: a free-form woodworking workshop. The idea was to not limit the visitors’ choice of what to make, but rather take their ideas and figure out, together, a way of accomplishing it. This turned out to be rather challenging, and so to try and figure out how to “plus” this activity, we gave it another go last week.
We set up a small workshop inside the niche, with a large workbench, vises, several kinds of saws, power drills, screws, and clamps.
Soon a group of girls was curious enough to ask if they could participate: we decided to keep an equal ratio of facilitators and participants, so the space was quickly filled to capacity, and we had to let everybody else know that they would have to wait, and possibly not get a chance to work with us. This is always a problem with highly facilitated activities like this one, but in this case the activity took a very long time: the first batch of girls stayed over two hours!
I started working with Mina, a delightful 7-year-old girl from Australia. She quickly learned the basics of sawing, and tried both a traditional push saw, and a Japanese pull saw, which became her favorite.
She also learned how to drill a starter hole so that she could screw two pieces of wood together, although she needed some help lifting the very heavy tool.
After grasping the basics, Mina decided that she would make a table for her collection of toys (she has over 100 teddy bears, she proudly informed me) — both in this workshop, and in last month’s Open MAKE one, we found that the majority of projects that kids settle on seem to be directly inspired by the angular shapes of the raw pieces of wood provided: tables, beds, and other objects that mostly have straight angles. I think one way to alleviate this would be to provide pre-cut round or otherwise interesting shapes.
It took Mina a long time and a lot of sawing — which didn’t come easily to her — to accomplish her goal of making a table. But to my surprise, even though she kept saying things like “This is hard!” while trying to saw through a piece of wood, she persisted until she was done, and then immediately suggested that now we should make a plate with a chicken to go on top!
Eventually we settled for making small plates, by cutting sections from a large dowel. Again, each plate took quite a large amount of arduous work, but she decided to make five of them, and then ended up making six!
Perhaps the strongest indication of how important the work had been to her is the fact that her last request, before she absolutely had to go, was to make a little sign that said “By Mina” to go with her piece. I think we couldn’t ask for more obvious evidence of ownership!
Trying this out on the floor confirmed for me that this activity is very rich, and challenging at the same time. There is a tension, I feel, between providing kids with the ability to properly use tools and to work with wood competently, and on the other hand getting them to start and hopefully finish a project.
I would really like participants to walk out of this activity feeling like they have learned how to properly saw, hammer, drill, join pieces of wood together, etcetera; in other words, I would like for people to approach woodworking with a healthy dose of respect for the craftmanship involved in it. But I’ve become convinced, after facilitating the activity, that if we focused solely on tool proficiency without a solid project to accomplish with that knowledge, it will become a stale exercise. Resolving that tension will be the key to making this activity really successful.
So, what are our next steps? Well, first of all, we’re going to start tinkering with the activity ourselves: we pulled out of our library 5 or 6 boks on woodworking projects, and will each choose one, and just try making it. I am certain that working together as a group will be very informative on which steps we might take next to make the activity better. And then we’ll take it out on the floor again, and very simply see what happens. Working with Mina confirmed for me that, even in its current embryonic stage, there is some very good content here!
Have you made a woodworking project that was particularly inspiring? If so, let us know in the comments below!
It wasn’t particularly spectacular, but waaay back (80s) in wood shop in high school, I made a little shelf. A half-round top and a nicely curvy (French curve, more or less) vertical support – the top is maybe 5-6″ across and the support 6-7″ long and 3-4″ across the top where it fastens to the top of the shelf. The pieces were screwed together, then wood putty in the screw made it smooth, and finally I stained it. I made it all by myself! My idea, my sawing (and the curvy support was a _pain_, even with a (jigsaw/bandsaw, can’t remember which)), my sanding, my drilling, etc. The really nice thing is that I gave it to my parents and they actually use it – through 3 houses (and a while in storage) now. They have a little statue that fits it perfectly.
When I worked at the Acton Science Discovery Museum, we had a woodworking station for kids, complete with saw, hand drill, hammer, nails… nothing electric, but enough to mess around. But it was unfacilitated, and kids rarely stayed for more than 10 minutes. I think the fact that you had two hours to spend with Mina probably made a big difference in her staying power, even if you were not heavily facilitating her experience.
Wow! What a great opportunity for those kids! I’ll have to try letting my little ones use a Pullsaw, that little girl seemed to really enjoy that.
It’s amazing how a simple project like that table can get someone going with woodworking. You folks ought to consider this event a great success.
My favorite wood project so far is the baby doll cribs I made for my nieces. I used a woodburner to burn the first letter of their name into the headboard for some personalization. They went nuts over them!