Hey, All!
As a science teacher I'm required to do lab investigations 20% of the time we are in class. Well... All the kids want to do is blow stuff up or make something poisonous, or dangerous otherwise. So I decided to spend these two days before our Thanksgiving holiday on something I've grown to love.
Today and tomorrow we're working on a board bow I had started earlier.
I hauled my shaving horse and hand tools to the classroom. Brought a couple of board bows I'd completed. And the roughed out stave along with a fresh board for demonstrating.
I wrote some trad terms on the board and modeled the finished bows to give the kids an idea of what our objective is. Also shared a little bow common courtesy and good behaviors on handling bows.
Next we discussed determining draw length and bow length. A few of the kids knew what was up but not many. I passed around the less dangerous handtools to let the kids actually feel what I feel when working on these boards. I demonstrated the more hazardous tools, the hatchet, drawknife, scraper (fillet knife) and so forth.
(If Eric Krewson reads this they were very impressed with your gizmo and especially liked the name.)
Then I went to the shaving horse where I began making out a bow on the extra board I had brough along. Then I shifted to the rough stave to save time and began rasping, drawing, and shaving on one limb. I had to stretch this out because I have 6 classes of 8th and 9th grade sciences. Almost every kid was all ears...
(Bona, the girls are very impressed that a girl can make bows, too!)
Well, my last class just came in, I'll be back later.
Stan