Over the Christmas holidays I had the chance to spend a day in the shop with my daughter. As you can well imagine this was a great thrill for me and more importantly, she enjoyed it too!
The day in the shop came about as a Christmas present from her the year before. She had asked me what I wanted and since the only thing to get a man that has everything is ‘time’ I told her “something that we can do together”. So one of the things she gave me was a “coupon” for a day with her doing anything of my choice. When I received the gift I quickly said, “Shop time!” Try as we might throughout the year our schedules just didn’t mesh but she stayed with us over the holidays this year which gave the perfect time to redeem my coupon. 🙂
In addition to the great time we had she also a very productive day turning. She was able to turn a pen, a wine stopper and a bowl!
We started off the morning with some instruction on safety and tool use and then proceeded to practice the various tools that included the roughing gouge, the skew and spindle gouge.
After lunch she began her projects, beginning with a Sierra style pen made of Red Palm:
Next she turned a wine stopper made of Zebrawood:
And for the grand finale she turned a 9″ bowl made of Ash:
This was a great day! She certainly was thrilled to have created these three beautiful projects herself.
Like with my son it was my intent, besides spending quality time with her, to open her horizons a bit more, to offer an opportunity to delve in the art of craft. To be able to do this was rewarding in it’s self but to see the smile on her face as she completed each project was divine. It was a great day, on all levels. 🙂
Back to the shop…