sutton046

On a recent Sunday I had a very enjoyable gig to do. Sonia, a customer, had turned 40 recently. To celebrate this milestone, she organised a venue, the Victoria Park Arts Centre, and 11 of her very good friends to spend the day with her. My task was to facilitate a woodworking activity for the day. We designed and carved wooden spoons. It was a great day! Prior to the participants arriving, I had set up my portable benches and gear. We used only traditional hand tools: carving gouges, carving mallets, curved scrapers, bowsaws and coping saws, spokeshaves and rasps. Many had never done stuff like this before. There were nine different timbers on hand for people to chose from. During the course of the day (either sides of a beautiful meal together), each person designed and made a beautiful and functional wooden spoon. After the tool work, it was just a final light sand and a coat of Orange Oil to finish them off. Twelve people each with a very different spoon with which th...

I recently spent two days working with bods from a NOW Green program, building seating at the Crossroads Community Garden being developed in Gwelup, Western Australia.  This community garden is a joint project of the Scarborough Church of Christ, City of Stirling, the Department of Health's North Metropolitan Area Health Service, and NOW Green. The Crossroads Community Garden had received grant funding to enable significant expansion. The project will see an additional 50 garden beds, community meeting area, pizza oven, fruit trees, artwork and more. This would also include some seating in the centre of the circular garden layout. That's where I come in. The new garden bed walls are in, ready for the seating. My role was to work with the mob from NOW Green to lead the building of the central seating using predominantly recycled timber. Due to concerns about termites, CCA treated pine was used for the 16 posts. All the seats and supports were made from salvaged...