sutton046

While in the USA in November 2010, I was pleased to visit an organisation called "Urban Boatbuilders" in a suburban shopfront in Minneapolis. This was another fantastic project I had checked out at that time, in my quest to explore youthworking programs which use woodwork as the primary tool to work with the young people. The Mission of Urban Boatbuilders is:   Positive Youth Development through the Building and Use of Boats. Wooden boats are a big thing in the USA, unlike Australia. I guess they have tens of thousands of inland lakes and waterways, so that must help, plus a much longer tradition of wooden boatbuilding. One of the views inside the workshop.  Three years later, wile staying with our friends in Minneapolis again, I contacted Urban Boatbuilders for another visit. Great to see that they are still there! Not all organisations survived the GFC and subsequent belt-tightening. I braved the traffic on a deadly treadly, riding on the "wrong" side of the road...

My delightful Green Woodworking Odyssey in the USA continued, learning from Drew Langsner, in the Blue Ridge Mountains - about an hour from Asheville, NC. While I had come to the USA to attend the Woodworking in America conference/gathering (WIA), I had also made it my mission to use my time in the USA to learn green woodworking skills. Once I had booked into the WIA many months earlier, I then set about trying to find some courses/workshops to do. While the internet is a wonderful way of accessing information, it was not easy to find what was on offer and be able to hook it all together logistically within the time frame available - especially with a very limited knowledge of the USA and its geography. As a result of my searching and emails back and forth, I had booked into a week with Roy Underhill at the Woodwright's School and a week at Country Workshops with Drew Langsner - both in North Carolina. I was not to be disappointed!! Louise and Drew Langsner. At the WIA, I plugged i...