Pre-School creations at St Marks Anglican Community School

Recently we did a woodworking incursion at St Mark's Anglican Community School, in Hillarys, here in Perth, Western Australia. This is the third year I have gone to the school to work with the Pre-primary students.

We had two classes of 30 kids - 5 year olds - and they had a ball! It was great to see the amazing things they created. It was our normal set-up for "Free Creative Play" in a school context. Across the 14 small benches we had 30 cross-pein hammers. On each of the benches were a pair of pincers, pencils, and nail containers with assorted nail sizes. The Sawing Station was set up with 8 assorted tenon/carcass saws at various heights appropriate to the size of the kids. There was a big pile of softwood pieces in various shapes and sizes for the kids to use, which we kept topping up.

After a briefing/demonstration about safe and efficient tool use, the kids get to make whatever they like from the material available.

One of the two tables of completed creations.

It was good to have a heap of parent helpers along to assist the kids, and they often get to learn a few tricks and techniques with hand tools too. Of course, the parents are asked to not "take over" (something Dads are notorious for) but to just hold things and generally help while the kids creativity goes wild. Thanks to those parents adn the wonderful staff for helping make it a great day.

What are the benefits for 5 year olds doing woodwork?
The benefits are numerous, but here are just a few:

• Using any hand tools, but exsecially the saws, requires some body awareness. Sawing involves so many macro and micro muscle movements. Getting your body and body parts in the right position makes a big difference to the ease of sawing, When things "click into place" for a child using a saw, it is empowering and encouraging for them. They love it.
• Skills for life. As kids we learn from experience, observation and reinforcement. Learning how to use a hammer or a saw is something you can take with you into the rest of yoru life. If a kid goes home from school that day and asks their parent(s) if there is a hammer in the house, that's a great thing. Hopefully the parent(s) will let their kid use it and give them a bunch of nails and a few peices of wood.
• Working out how to put things together involves problem solving. So kids creating things with pieces of wood and a few hand tools will develop problem solving sklls - and problem solving builds resilience.   
• Making things with pieces of wood helps the kids develop spatial relation skills, as they work out how to fit things together. Comparing pieces, cutting to size, choosing the right nail size, finding the right piece in the big bin of pieces - all these processes in the making of something help the brain develop spatial relation skills.
• The encouragement and satisfaction derrived from completing the making of something is affirming and very positive. The resulting positive feedback the child receives from others around them helps to build self-confidence. Once again, self-confedence helps to build resilience.
• In a press-button instant world, it's great for kids to experience the reality of something requireing some physical and mental effort, persistence and committment around a tangible, tactile medium and the creatiion of a real thing which can be played with, given as a gift, or displayed as a decorative item of momento. The creation which keeps on giving.

We do quite a lot of work with really young kids. They thrive on it, so it is always a pleasure to see them blossoming in the short period that they are at the bench creating something with their own hands.


Great to see this little guy using the small end of a cross-pein hammer, to get at a tricky nail position -  just as I had demonstrated at teh start of the class. Kids are often smarter than we adults give them credit for...

We are never too young or too old to benefit from the joy of woodworking!

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Saw sharpening... a balance between rake, fleam, and set.

At the Perth Wood Show last weekend, I picked up a lovely Canadian-made Disston tenon saw from the second hand tool stand run by the Hand Tool Preservation Society of Western Australia. It's a beauty! However it just needed sharpening...

Yep, a very nice Disston tenon saw, with the handle in very good condition.

I have a few odd Disstons made in Canada. This is a new addition to my Canadian bunch. 

With a three day gig this week at a primary school doing woodwork with the K - 2 students, I needed another sharp saw on hand. I also had another tenon saw needing sharpening for the event -an older Disston saw. So it seemed a golden opportunity to get them both done during a window of opportunity I had on the day before the school program commenced.

The older Disston tenon saw, made in Philadelphia USA.

About the variables in saw filing - rake, fleam, and set.
In a nutshell, RAKE is the vertical angle of the face of the tooth, which also determines the aggressiveness of the cut. If the rake was 0 degrees, the face of each tooth would be straight up and down. FLEAM is the angle of the face of the tooth in relation to the line of the teeth. If the fleam was 0 degrees, the teeth would be filed straight across. Rip saws are commonly filed like this, so that the teeth work like little chisels. Crosscut saws are filed with fleam up to as much as 30 degrees, which makes the teeth like little knives as they slice through the fibres of the wood. Set is the applied by bending alternating teeth either side of the tooth line. Increasing the set widens the kerf cut by the saw, which stops the sawplate from binding in the wood. However, the wider the set the harder it is to push the saw, and the less accurate the cut. Dovetail saws typically have minimal set, which enables greater accuracy.  

These saws are going to be used mostly by small kids. I am still experimenting with filing angles and the amount of set which works best for the little people (age 4 up) who have short arms, limited muscle, and who are often using saws for the first time in their lives. This means that they are yet to get the hang of moving their saws in a dead straight line. The wobbling wrist and arm will tend to make the saw plate bind in the kerf, so a bit more set in the teeth than usual will help to prevent this. The trade off is that they have to remove more material to have a wider kerf, meaning more energy is required. It's a balancing act, and my experimentation is yet to achieve the optimum saw configuration for the little kids. The other ingredient in the equation is the type of material being cut. With the kids, I almost exclusively use softwoods and plywoods. With softwoods you would normally use a greater fleam angle than you would for hardwoods. So, I continue to experiment...

The new saw in the saw vise, ready for sharpening.

After jointing, shaping and setting the teeth, I filed the teeth with a rake of 30 degrees and a fleam of 20 degrees - hence the angles. The kids will be mostly crosscutting in softwoods.

Teeth being filed for cross-cutting, with a rake of  30 degrees and a fleam of 20 degrees. 

Two nice Disston saws, sharpened and ready for action.

I would have between 4 and 6 tenon saws in operation at the school. The picture below shows my standard "sawing station" set up. This 4 saw station is a bit like having 4 bench hooks set up on a pair of sawhorses. It also works really well, for right and left handed students.

The sawing station set up at the school ready for use. 

As I finish this post, I have completed the 3 day gig at the school. Eight classes of students had a great time  making stuff - using hammers, nails, saws, and a  pile of wood pieces. The saws worked flat out for much of that time. Amid all those cutting their pieces of wood to size, there are always a few kids who just love sawing! They might not make much, but they do create piles of little pieces! It's great seeing kids enjoying using tools for the first time. So empowering.

The verdict? For the really little kids, the 4 and 5 year olds, I reckon we might need just a little more set in the teeth...    I'm still looking for the right balance...

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