After teaching one year of woodwork at the Sandpoint Waldorf School and nearly half way through my second year of the classes, I have learned a lot about how to set my students up for success in learning a new craft and following through with completing their assigned projects. I work with the 5th through 8th grade and this year have begun a short, weekly class with the kindergarten Elderberries. To give a brief list of the projects, the Elderberries are making toy swords, the 5th grade spatulas and Dala horses, the 6th grade spoons, bows and arrows, the 7th grade three legged stools and the 8th grade carved bowls and shrink containers.
As a teacher, I continue to learn from my classes each week. Sometimes what I learn is a small thing, like a better method of clamping a piece of wood that allows the student to more easily carve it into a bowl. Other times I learn hard lessons like, when making bows for a class of ten kids, it’s better to spend a little more money on good hickory wood. I also may learn something interesting about all of my students in general, like the fact that everyone wants to jump ahead in the process to sand paper, not because there is any reward for being the first one finished, but I think, because we as humans really like the sensation of a piece of wood becoming polished and smooth under our fingertips. I have seen kids light up with joy at the smoothness of a piece of wood after it went through all the sanding grits from 60 to 600.
In preparation for each project, I always try to make at least one prototype ahead of time to experience the particulars of the project for myself and address any road blocks I come up against. This preparation time helps me consider best tools for certain tasks, what lessons to discuss with the class and how to develop a step-by-step method that I can teach for the craft. Another benefit of spending the time on these prototype projects, is that I end up with a variety of examples that I can show my class, helping them to understand what the end goal is with the block of wood they are starting with.
Sourcing wood for my classes has sometimes been challenging. I have found some seasoned birch, alder, poplar, oak and hickory wood that I need at a local lumber yard, but sometimes I would prefer better options. I bought a chainsaw mill last year and began milling some birch and poplar. These boards however need to season for about 2-3 years before they are stable and ready to work with.
I have been working at home with green wood carving lately. This is a carving method in which the wood being carved is freshly cut, green wood with a high moisture content. The advantage to working with green wood when carving with a knife, gouge or chisel, is that the wood carves easier, often with a smooth buttery feel, depending on the type of wood. Another advantage is that it is much easier and cheaper to obtain green, unseasoned wood from fallen trees and fruit tree prunings. A woodworker using these methods for carving things like spoons, bowls, spatulas and containers, does not need a barn to store a wood supply that must sit for a few years to season.
Now the disadvantage to working with green wood is that the wood’s moisture content has not stabilized, thus causing a carving project that has not been thinned enough, to develop checks or large cracks when drying. In making furniture and larger building projects, unseasoned green wood is not ideal, but for many of the small utensils and objects that I make with the students in my classes, green wood carving could offer many advantages and opportunities to work with unique woods that are not commonly found at a lumber yard.
This year I have begun to introduce green wood carving to the 8th grade by making a traditional style of Scandinavian container sometimes called a “shrink pot” or shrink box”. The container is made by way of boring out a piece of 4” - 6” diameter green, birch branch with an antique auger drill. The cylinder that is created from this is then carved out further with a gouge and mallet and a carving knife. Because it is made of green wood, we need to store the piece in a plastic bag between classes to keep it from drying out.
I then help the students to carve in a groove around the circumference of the bottom interior of the cylinder. The students then make a base plug from seasoned dry pine wood that they must meticulously shape to fit into the interior of the cylinder. When the pine plug is made to fit, not too tight and not too loose, the branch container is allowed to dry slowly at room temperature. As the birch wood shrinks it tightens around the pine plug and if the plug was fitted just right, the birch cylinder will seal tightly around it, making a water tight cup that one could drink from.
By next year, I hope to introduce more green wood carving projects to the 5th - 8th grades. Within this method of carving there are lessons to be learned regarding the properties of wood, how it carves, how it shrinks and loses water weight. I think an ideal class scenario would be to have the students help in harvesting logs from a newly fallen tree with a 2 person cross-cut saw. They would then proceed to split out blocks of this green wood with wedges and mallets, and then take the wood back to the class room and carve it into a bowl or utensil. This would give a full experience from tree to finished product.
My background in woodworking is not as a carpenter or fine furniture maker but rather as a sculptor and wilderness survival instructor. I tend to be intrigued more with traditional utilitarian crafts one can make in the forest using only a knife, axe and saw. My intention is to instill a fluency in the use of such primary woodworking tools so that my students can apply this knowledge to a project as small as carving a spoon with a knife, to as big as, maybe some day, building a home with modern power tools.
Submitted by Shaun Deller