Carving with a Six Year Old and his Four Year Old Sister.

 On the weekend two of our Grandchildren were here for a visit. My Grandson loves to work in Opa's shop and his little sister is not going to miss out on anything going so she is right there too. Both of the children love to be helpful and always spend time sweeping and cleaning the shop, I got them small brooms and whisks to make helping easier. Oddly enough the shop always needs to be swept, always, even after I have spent sometime cleaning, there is always room for improvement.

 Aside from sweeping Kieran likes to make things and this weekend I hit on something that he (and she) can do that lets them work without my having to hold their hands.

 This weekend we were carving, soap carving that is.  I had a box of Ivory soap cakes that the kids carved into boats, mostly.

  

  The knives they used had been pate knives before I sharpened them a little bit, and they shaped and carved the soap cakes pretty well. I made the sail boat using the wooden tools as a demonstration and then let the kids go to it.

  Kieran's boats turned out not bad, Clara's were pretty good for a four year old. These are the boats that are left, the other efforts were used at bath time. Just a point of interested, a bar of Ivory soap has grain just like wood.

the left over soap chips, I plan
to melt them down and they can be
carved again.

  The other on going project is a large scale glue up for two segmented vases.

you can never have to many clamps.

  I put the plastic bags onto my K Clamps to keep glue off the bars. Once glue dries onto the bars it is a real pain to slide the clamping jaw up and down.

F-clamps and K-clamps are always useful

 It took David and I two hours to cut, joint and plane all these pieces of roasted maple and poplar. Once planed there was coffee to drink and the the glue up stage. Later in the week we will glue both pieces together and then cut the block in two pieces. 

Shop supervisor walking past on an inspection tour.