Post by Okwes on Jul 7, 2007 11:30:16 GMT -5
Building a dug-out canoe
By Patricia M. Roth - Sonoma West Staff Writer
www.sonomawest.com/articles/2007/03/07/sonomawest/news/news1.txt
<http://www.sonomawest.com/articles/2007/03/07/sonomawest/news/news1.txt\
>
SPRING LAKE LAUNCH - Eighth grade students prepare to launch a dug-out
canoe they made using only hand-tools in their Green Woodworking Class,
taught by Julian Shaw. Students are enrolled in teacher Marianne
Kennedy's eighth grade class at the Sebastopol Independent Charter
School in downtown Sebastopol. The redwood log used for the canoe came
from a local landowner in Freestone. - Photo by Susan Olson
SEBASTOPOL - In the corner of the play yard at the Sebastopol
Independent Charter School, students gather in a woodshop. A mosaic of
wood curls and chips cover the ground, and the air in this little corner
of downtown Sebastopol smells like a deep forest.
This is where students in grades six through eight take a Green
Woodworking class. And it's where eighth grade students chipped away at
two enormous redwood logs for four months. During this period, they
marked their progress in inches for nearly two hours every week as they
transformed logs from a fallen Coastal Redwood tree into two dug-out
canoes.
Though students said their instructor Julian Shaw had reminded them that
it was "the process" not "the product" that mattered,
they cheered when they first sailed their boats at Spring Lake.
Under misty skies and with a capful of Jamaican rum, students christened
the boats "Wednesday" and "Friday," named after the days
that they meet for their Green Woodworking class.
The handcrafted canoe was their final class project - and a big
undertaking.
Students used handtools called adzes and clubs to split and hew the wood
of a redwood log, which weighed 6,000 pounds and measured four-feet wide
and 13-feet long before being split in half.
Instructor Julian Shaw teaches Green Woodworking, a type of woodworking
that goes back thousands of years to before the ancient Egyptians. Shaw
introduces students to primitive handtools and slowly moves them into
the 20th Century.
"It is an interesting challenge to find exciting projects that are
within the students' skill level, and yet fire the imagination,"
said Shaw, who made many of the tools for class, including clubs of
various sizes and weights, foot-powered lathes and shavehorses.
The tools support the practice of green woodworking, which Shaw said is
"a method of working wood with hand-tools only and using the minimal
of man power." He explained how wood is largely worked where it is
felled: cut, split, shaved and worked up on a foot-powered lathe to
product before being transported out of the woods.
However, for this project, the wood was brought to them. "We were
lucky enough to find a local landowner who had a number of windfall
trees which were of the size big enough for making a dug-out," said
Shaw. The forester transported the halved redwood tree to the school and
left it on the edge of the parking lot.
"We had to use physics to work with the canoes," said eighth
grade student Jordan Boone, pointing to the far end of the yard.
"When they were over there and still half stumps, Mr. Shaw had us
figure out how to get them over here using big round posts. We used
eight posts and a long rope."
"We came up with the design for the canoe so we could learn how to
use the adzes," said student Wyat Jamieson. He explained that the
canoe was modelled after those made by Yurok Indians, a tribe of Native
Americans who live along the Klamath River. Their tradition included
burning out the center of the logs but Jamieson said they "carved
them out by hand instead.
"It took months to do. Each week we kept a record of the average
amount of depth we took out. We found out we needed to take out two
inches every day of class to be completed by our date of intention,"
said Jamieson, adding, "We went two weeks over."
They launched the boats on Jan. 26 at 9:30 a.m.
"I was a little bit concerned when we went on the lake that the
boats would tip over, but they were very stable. The students did very
well, said Shaw.
Shaw is a former research physicist from London who, 15 years ago,
specialized in making magnetic detection devices for scanning baggage
for narcotics and explosives in airports. After growing restless with
the corporate world, he took to working with his hands, starting out as
a wood bowl turner and selling his wares at arts and crafts shows on the
West Coast. He started teaching wood turning, using a lathe, five years
ago and became more interested in the historical side of crafts.
Two years ago he approached the Sebastopol Independent Charter School to
see if they were interested in a green woodworking program. Executive
Director Susan Olson said they felt "blessed" that someone like
Shaw had decided to join the teaching world. "I love it when people
with amazing skills and completely different professional backgrounds
join the educational realm," she said.
During the launch, "many passers-by stopped and watched. Most were
older, retired folk who didn't think there were still schools around
doing anything other than reading textbooks," said Olson.
"The onlookers' interest also gave the students pause. As Waldorf
students, they sort of grow up doing things like knitting their own
socks and making bread at school, and perhaps think all students sit
around at school, doing such things. When the onlookers expressed that
what the students did was remarkable, they seemed to be even more proud
of the canoes."
For the rest of the year, Shaw said students will "continue with
pole lathe work, taking freshly cut logs, splitting, shaving, and
eventually using a foot-powered lathe (probably mankind's' first
machine) to make rolling pins, mini baseball bats, candle sticks, meat
tenderizers, and other small cylindrical household objects.
"There are very few woodshops still around," he said. "It's
something kids need to do" as they develop coordination to push
hand-operated tools and then machines that use a pulley, a cord, and the
big leg muscles rather than the smaller muscles of the hand.
"It's like the evolution of man's existence," emphasized Shaw,
"and eighth grade is the final year for the students at the school.
They are going on a journey. We hope to equip them with the necessary
depth of experience and provide the tools to help them find their
way."
By Patricia M. Roth - Sonoma West Staff Writer
www.sonomawest.com/articles/2007/03/07/sonomawest/news/news1.txt
<http://www.sonomawest.com/articles/2007/03/07/sonomawest/news/news1.txt\
>
SPRING LAKE LAUNCH - Eighth grade students prepare to launch a dug-out
canoe they made using only hand-tools in their Green Woodworking Class,
taught by Julian Shaw. Students are enrolled in teacher Marianne
Kennedy's eighth grade class at the Sebastopol Independent Charter
School in downtown Sebastopol. The redwood log used for the canoe came
from a local landowner in Freestone. - Photo by Susan Olson
SEBASTOPOL - In the corner of the play yard at the Sebastopol
Independent Charter School, students gather in a woodshop. A mosaic of
wood curls and chips cover the ground, and the air in this little corner
of downtown Sebastopol smells like a deep forest.
This is where students in grades six through eight take a Green
Woodworking class. And it's where eighth grade students chipped away at
two enormous redwood logs for four months. During this period, they
marked their progress in inches for nearly two hours every week as they
transformed logs from a fallen Coastal Redwood tree into two dug-out
canoes.
Though students said their instructor Julian Shaw had reminded them that
it was "the process" not "the product" that mattered,
they cheered when they first sailed their boats at Spring Lake.
Under misty skies and with a capful of Jamaican rum, students christened
the boats "Wednesday" and "Friday," named after the days
that they meet for their Green Woodworking class.
The handcrafted canoe was their final class project - and a big
undertaking.
Students used handtools called adzes and clubs to split and hew the wood
of a redwood log, which weighed 6,000 pounds and measured four-feet wide
and 13-feet long before being split in half.
Instructor Julian Shaw teaches Green Woodworking, a type of woodworking
that goes back thousands of years to before the ancient Egyptians. Shaw
introduces students to primitive handtools and slowly moves them into
the 20th Century.
"It is an interesting challenge to find exciting projects that are
within the students' skill level, and yet fire the imagination,"
said Shaw, who made many of the tools for class, including clubs of
various sizes and weights, foot-powered lathes and shavehorses.
The tools support the practice of green woodworking, which Shaw said is
"a method of working wood with hand-tools only and using the minimal
of man power." He explained how wood is largely worked where it is
felled: cut, split, shaved and worked up on a foot-powered lathe to
product before being transported out of the woods.
However, for this project, the wood was brought to them. "We were
lucky enough to find a local landowner who had a number of windfall
trees which were of the size big enough for making a dug-out," said
Shaw. The forester transported the halved redwood tree to the school and
left it on the edge of the parking lot.
"We had to use physics to work with the canoes," said eighth
grade student Jordan Boone, pointing to the far end of the yard.
"When they were over there and still half stumps, Mr. Shaw had us
figure out how to get them over here using big round posts. We used
eight posts and a long rope."
"We came up with the design for the canoe so we could learn how to
use the adzes," said student Wyat Jamieson. He explained that the
canoe was modelled after those made by Yurok Indians, a tribe of Native
Americans who live along the Klamath River. Their tradition included
burning out the center of the logs but Jamieson said they "carved
them out by hand instead.
"It took months to do. Each week we kept a record of the average
amount of depth we took out. We found out we needed to take out two
inches every day of class to be completed by our date of intention,"
said Jamieson, adding, "We went two weeks over."
They launched the boats on Jan. 26 at 9:30 a.m.
"I was a little bit concerned when we went on the lake that the
boats would tip over, but they were very stable. The students did very
well, said Shaw.
Shaw is a former research physicist from London who, 15 years ago,
specialized in making magnetic detection devices for scanning baggage
for narcotics and explosives in airports. After growing restless with
the corporate world, he took to working with his hands, starting out as
a wood bowl turner and selling his wares at arts and crafts shows on the
West Coast. He started teaching wood turning, using a lathe, five years
ago and became more interested in the historical side of crafts.
Two years ago he approached the Sebastopol Independent Charter School to
see if they were interested in a green woodworking program. Executive
Director Susan Olson said they felt "blessed" that someone like
Shaw had decided to join the teaching world. "I love it when people
with amazing skills and completely different professional backgrounds
join the educational realm," she said.
During the launch, "many passers-by stopped and watched. Most were
older, retired folk who didn't think there were still schools around
doing anything other than reading textbooks," said Olson.
"The onlookers' interest also gave the students pause. As Waldorf
students, they sort of grow up doing things like knitting their own
socks and making bread at school, and perhaps think all students sit
around at school, doing such things. When the onlookers expressed that
what the students did was remarkable, they seemed to be even more proud
of the canoes."
For the rest of the year, Shaw said students will "continue with
pole lathe work, taking freshly cut logs, splitting, shaving, and
eventually using a foot-powered lathe (probably mankind's' first
machine) to make rolling pins, mini baseball bats, candle sticks, meat
tenderizers, and other small cylindrical household objects.
"There are very few woodshops still around," he said. "It's
something kids need to do" as they develop coordination to push
hand-operated tools and then machines that use a pulley, a cord, and the
big leg muscles rather than the smaller muscles of the hand.
"It's like the evolution of man's existence," emphasized Shaw,
"and eighth grade is the final year for the students at the school.
They are going on a journey. We hope to equip them with the necessary
depth of experience and provide the tools to help them find their
way."