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Building a dug-out canoe
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| SPRING LAKE LAUNCH - Eighth grade students prepare to launch a dug-out canoe they made using only hand-tools in their Green Woodworking Class, taught by Julian Shaw. Students are enrolled in teacher Marianne Kennedy’s eighth grade class at the Sebastopol Independent Charter School in downtown Sebastopol. The redwood log used for the canoe came from a local landowner in Freestone. - Photo by Susan Olson |
By Patricia M. Roth - Sonoma West Staff Writer
SEBASTOPOL - In the corner of the play yard at the Sebastopol Independent Charter School, students gather in a woodshop. A mosaic of wood curls and chips cover the ground, and the air in this little corner of downtown Sebastopol smells like a deep forest.
This is where students in grades six through eight take a Green Woodworking class. And it's where eighth grade students chipped away at two enormous redwood logs for four months. During this period, they marked their progress in inches for nearly two hours every week as they transformed logs from a fallen Coastal Redwood tree into two dug-out canoes.
Though students said their instructor Julian Shaw had reminded them that it was “the process” not “the product” that mattered, they cheered when they first sailed their boats at Spring Lake.
Under misty skies and with a capful of Jamaican rum, students christened the boats “Wednesday” and “Friday,” named after the days that they meet for their Green Woodworking class.
The handcrafted canoe was their final class project - and a big undertaking.
Students used handtools called adzes and clubs to split and hew the wood of a redwood log, which weighed 6,000 pounds and measured four-feet wide and 13-feet long before being split in half.
Instructor Julian Shaw teaches Green Woodworking, a type of woodworking that goes back thousands of years to before the ancient Egyptians. Shaw introduces students to primitive handtools and slowly moves them into the 20th Century.
“It is an interesting challenge to find exciting projects that are within the students' skill level, and yet fire the imagination,” said Shaw, who made many of the tools for class, including clubs of various sizes and weights, foot-powered lathes and shavehorses.
The tools support the practice of green woodworking, which Shaw said is “a method of working wood with hand-tools only and using the minimal of man power.” He explained how wood is largely worked where it is felled: cut, split, shaved and worked up on a foot-powered lathe to product before being transported out of the woods.
However, for this project, the wood was brought to them. “We were lucky enough to find a local landowner who had a number of windfall trees which were of the size big enough for making a dug-out,” said Shaw. The forester transported the halved redwood tree to the school and left it on the edge of the parking lot.
“We had to use physics to work with the canoes,” said eighth grade student Jordan Boone, pointing to the far end of the yard. “When they were over there and still half stumps, Mr. Shaw had us figure out how to get them over here using big round posts. We used eight posts and a long rope.”
“We came up with the design for the canoe so we could learn how to use the adzes,” said student Wyat Jamieson. He explained that the canoe was modelled after those made by Yurok Indians, a tribe of Native Americans who live along the Klamath River. Their tradition included burning out the center of the logs but Jamieson said they “carved them out by hand instead.
“It took months to do. Each week we kept a record of the average amount of depth we took out. We found out we needed to take out two inches every day of class to be completed by our date of intention,” said Jamieson, adding, “We went two weeks over.”
They launched the boats on Jan. 26 at 9:30 a.m.
“I was a little bit concerned when we went on the lake that the boats would tip over, but they were very stable. The students did very well, said Shaw.
Shaw is a former research physicist from London who, 15 years ago, specialized in making magnetic detection devices for scanning baggage for narcotics and explosives in airports. After growing restless with the corporate world, he took to working with his hands, starting out as a wood bowl turner and selling his wares at arts and crafts shows on the West Coast. He started teaching wood turning, using a lathe, five years ago and became more interested in the historical side of crafts.
Two years ago he approached the Sebastopol Independent Charter School to see if they were interested in a green woodworking program. Executive Director Susan Olson said they felt “blessed” that someone like Shaw had decided to join the teaching world. “I love it when people with amazing skills and completely different professional backgrounds join the educational realm,” she said.
During the launch, “many passers-by stopped and watched. Most were older, retired folk who didn't think there were still schools around doing anything other than reading textbooks,” said Olson.
“The onlookers' interest also gave the students pause. As Waldorf students, they sort of grow up doing things like knitting their own socks and making bread at school, and perhaps think all students sit around at school, doing such things. When the onlookers expressed that what the students did was remarkable, they seemed to be even more proud of the canoes.”
For the rest of the year, Shaw said students will “continue with pole lathe work, taking freshly cut logs, splitting, shaving, and eventually using a foot-powered lathe (probably mankind's' first machine) to make rolling pins, mini baseball bats, candle sticks, meat tenderizers, and other small cylindrical household objects.
“There are very few woodshops still around,” he said. “It's something kids need to do” as they develop coordination to push hand-operated tools and then machines that use a pulley, a cord, and the big leg muscles rather than the smaller muscles of the hand.
“It's like the evolution of man's existence,” emphasized Shaw, “and eighth grade is the final year for the students at the school. They are going on a journey. We hope to equip them with the necessary depth of experience and provide the tools to help them find their way.”
This is where students in grades six through eight take a Green Woodworking class. And it's where eighth grade students chipped away at two enormous redwood logs for four months. During this period, they marked their progress in inches for nearly two hours every week as they transformed logs from a fallen Coastal Redwood tree into two dug-out canoes.
Though students said their instructor Julian Shaw had reminded them that it was “the process” not “the product” that mattered, they cheered when they first sailed their boats at Spring Lake.
Under misty skies and with a capful of Jamaican rum, students christened the boats “Wednesday” and “Friday,” named after the days that they meet for their Green Woodworking class.
The handcrafted canoe was their final class project - and a big undertaking.
Students used handtools called adzes and clubs to split and hew the wood of a redwood log, which weighed 6,000 pounds and measured four-feet wide and 13-feet long before being split in half.
Instructor Julian Shaw teaches Green Woodworking, a type of woodworking that goes back thousands of years to before the ancient Egyptians. Shaw introduces students to primitive handtools and slowly moves them into the 20th Century.
“It is an interesting challenge to find exciting projects that are within the students' skill level, and yet fire the imagination,” said Shaw, who made many of the tools for class, including clubs of various sizes and weights, foot-powered lathes and shavehorses.
The tools support the practice of green woodworking, which Shaw said is “a method of working wood with hand-tools only and using the minimal of man power.” He explained how wood is largely worked where it is felled: cut, split, shaved and worked up on a foot-powered lathe to product before being transported out of the woods.
However, for this project, the wood was brought to them. “We were lucky enough to find a local landowner who had a number of windfall trees which were of the size big enough for making a dug-out,” said Shaw. The forester transported the halved redwood tree to the school and left it on the edge of the parking lot.
“We had to use physics to work with the canoes,” said eighth grade student Jordan Boone, pointing to the far end of the yard. “When they were over there and still half stumps, Mr. Shaw had us figure out how to get them over here using big round posts. We used eight posts and a long rope.”
“We came up with the design for the canoe so we could learn how to use the adzes,” said student Wyat Jamieson. He explained that the canoe was modelled after those made by Yurok Indians, a tribe of Native Americans who live along the Klamath River. Their tradition included burning out the center of the logs but Jamieson said they “carved them out by hand instead.
“It took months to do. Each week we kept a record of the average amount of depth we took out. We found out we needed to take out two inches every day of class to be completed by our date of intention,” said Jamieson, adding, “We went two weeks over.”
They launched the boats on Jan. 26 at 9:30 a.m.
“I was a little bit concerned when we went on the lake that the boats would tip over, but they were very stable. The students did very well, said Shaw.
Shaw is a former research physicist from London who, 15 years ago, specialized in making magnetic detection devices for scanning baggage for narcotics and explosives in airports. After growing restless with the corporate world, he took to working with his hands, starting out as a wood bowl turner and selling his wares at arts and crafts shows on the West Coast. He started teaching wood turning, using a lathe, five years ago and became more interested in the historical side of crafts.
Two years ago he approached the Sebastopol Independent Charter School to see if they were interested in a green woodworking program. Executive Director Susan Olson said they felt “blessed” that someone like Shaw had decided to join the teaching world. “I love it when people with amazing skills and completely different professional backgrounds join the educational realm,” she said.
During the launch, “many passers-by stopped and watched. Most were older, retired folk who didn't think there were still schools around doing anything other than reading textbooks,” said Olson.
“The onlookers' interest also gave the students pause. As Waldorf students, they sort of grow up doing things like knitting their own socks and making bread at school, and perhaps think all students sit around at school, doing such things. When the onlookers expressed that what the students did was remarkable, they seemed to be even more proud of the canoes.”
For the rest of the year, Shaw said students will “continue with pole lathe work, taking freshly cut logs, splitting, shaving, and eventually using a foot-powered lathe (probably mankind's' first machine) to make rolling pins, mini baseball bats, candle sticks, meat tenderizers, and other small cylindrical household objects.
“There are very few woodshops still around,” he said. “It's something kids need to do” as they develop coordination to push hand-operated tools and then machines that use a pulley, a cord, and the big leg muscles rather than the smaller muscles of the hand.
“It's like the evolution of man's existence,” emphasized Shaw, “and eighth grade is the final year for the students at the school. They are going on a journey. We hope to equip them with the necessary depth of experience and provide the tools to help them find their way.”
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