Girls don't sweat

I warned Kashley and Megan that session two was going to be a sweaty one.

When they arrived I had them each continue working on their spoons. As I've mentioned before, the spoon carving exercise has nothing to do with making a spoon and everything to do with understanding how to cooperate with the wood's natural tendencies and to learn to identify what those tendencies are. They are both progressing extremely well.

As soon as we were all settled in we discussed hand saws. They learned how to distinguish a rip saw from a cross-cut saw and where/why to use each. We looked at a saw bench and discussed why mine will seem "funny" to them. We learned to use a panel gauge and after very little sawing instruction Megan chose to go first. She needed a 5" wide piece 10 feet long piece of cherry.

I had pre-selected two pieces of cherry that were 10 feet long and 12" and 15" wide respectively. After a discussion of the merits of each the 12" wide piece was selected for their plinths (case skirt). As we learned last week, Megan is a natural sawyer. Straight, plumb and quick. Kashley also saws straight not quite as plumb, but she is fast! I'll put her up against anyone with the same amount of experience. Give them two more weeks and they'll be ready for the Neanderthal Olympics.

Next they cut the long board into the pieces they need for the plinth. Megan cut all of her's with a tenon saw and bench hook. Kashley used a cross-cut filed hand saw for her first cut and then switched to the tenon saw and bench hook method. In an unprompted quiz, Kashley stated that the hand saw is quicker but the tenon saw produced a finer cut, I completely agree. On the other hand, the ends of the board will not be used straight from the saw. We will shoot them square before we layout and cut the dovetails.

Flattening boards by hand is truly a learned skill, I don't believe there are any "naturals." Since Megan completed her sawing first, she started to flatten her boards first. This was when she learned that the sweat I had warned them about had nothing to do with sawing.

Despite the fact that both sets of boards came from the same original board, Megan's boards all had one face that was nearly flat untouched, yet Kashley's were all suffering from some degree of cupping. Next week we finish flattening the boards and layout the dovetails.

Here are some spoon work pictures from last week. Oh, and girls do sweat.