February Update
It should be no surprise that the shortest month of the year has flown by the quickest. I’ve quite enjoyed my February, despite it being the most miserable time of the year.
Back in December I found out that the spot where I hosted all my Madison workshops was closing up shop. I had my last workshop there in January and was hunting around for a new location. Fortunately Madison is a pretty funky city, so there were several options available to me. For the foreseeable future, I’ll be teaching my workshops out of Communication, a non-profit all about building creative communities. Which is great. Especially as it aligns perfectly with a new initiative I’ve been wanting to roll out for a long time.
My one-day workshops are great for teaching people all the skills they need to get into green woodworking. My focus in the workshops is always on skill building, not so much creating a polished final product. The idea being that spending more time in a supervised environment learning how to safely use the tools will let participants go home and practice with confidence. The downside is that many of the folks that take my class don’t yet have all the tools they need, nor do they necessarily have access to suitable green wood.
This month saw the first of my Chop and Chat sessions for past participants of my workshops. Everyone who takes one of my workshops has the option of joining in. These are fortnightly evening sessions where they have access to tools and materials. I’m around to answer questions, remind them of the processes and techniques involved. I’ve got some fun ideas for mini-workshops I’d like to run during these sessions, but for now I want to build a welcoming space where people can hangout and continue to work on their spoons. The first two sessions were a lot of fun, so I’m looking forward to seeing how this develops and grows.
I had a busy few days this month prepping spoon blanks ready for the upcoming Farmers’ markets. It was a fun three days. I really enjoy intense bouts of activity like that. Day one I split up a couple of logs, processing them into billets ready for the bandsaw. Day two was eight hours in front of the bandsaw. Day three was processing the off-cuts into more spoon blanks, as well as axing out the underside of all the spoons from Bandsaw Day. In three days I went from having two maple rounds to blanks for 14 kitchen spoons, 10 right-hand cooking spoons, five left-hand cooking spoons, 10 round spoons, 10 bent spatulas, five straight spatulas, 30 teaspoons and 20 scoops.
Roughing out is always a lot of fun because going from tree to spoon-shaped object is so quick. But removing the last 10% of material always takes 90% of the time spent on a spoon. Still, I’m looking forward to loading up on some good podcasts and getting back into the groove of batch production.
Looking ahead, at the time of writing, I have 5 spots left on my March 28th workshop and just two spots remaining on my April 25th workshop. On March 14th I’ll be with Driftless Folk School at Canoecopia, demonstrating spoon carving in the morning, so come say hi if you’re attending the event. Other than that, I’ll be in the shed, head down, working!
