The New Agrarian

Since I’ve written a couple of times about working on a shaving horse, I suppose I should post some examples of what I’ve been able to do on it. So far, two stools, functional and good-enough looking, and good projects for building skills.

For my first day working on a shaving horse out at Duke Homestead I just grabbed whatever potentially suitable wood I had lying around, which happened to be some pieces of Bradford pear and dogwood branches I’d trimmed the previous spring, still with bark on. The dogwood was easy enough to work, the pear considerably more challenging: not only is it harder wood, but none of the branches was straight, and each had side branches that had to be trimmed, leaving knots. Back home, after I built my own shaving horse and bought a spokeshave, I had another go at the pear branches. The tricky grain made a good exercise for learning to use the tools, and with considerable patience they turned out gorgeous. So I dug out a piece of butternut I’d bought years ago, cut it for a seat, and made a stool. Read on

My daughter, who is five now, has been interested lately in helping me in the workshop. This is good because it means I can spend time woodworking without abandoning her all Sunday afternoon, but it also limits the complexity of my work, because a woodworking shop is, obviously, no place for an unattended child. I’ve been trying to find projects we can work on together; we made a few squirrel feeders back in the fall, with simple nails for holding cobs of dry corn, and now we’re building a winter warming shelter for chickadees (since a bird house would go unused for a few months).

For Christmas I bought her a few tools of her own — hammer, screwdriver, tape measure, try square, and carpenter’s pencils — never underestimate the value of rectangular pencils in making a child feel like a real carpenter! More important, I built her a workbench of her own. Read on