Planning the next Young Hackspace: wood working. Got suggestions?

[Martin Dittus]

Hey all,

I just started talking to Joy again who couldn't attend the first session. She can help us organise the next group of kids (she's home schooling and can get in touch other home schooling parents and organisations), and she already had a request for a workshop -- wood working!

Her initial suggestion was: let the kids build little sculptures from scrap wood. I really like the simplicity of this, and it gives us ample opportunity to teach the basics: hammer & nails, how to use a saw, wood glue, glue guns, ...

What other things could we do with wood and the tools in our workshop? Are you interested in helping out? Found a good source of scrap wood we can point them to?

Some more details:
* Since this will likely be an all-home schooling group a weekend date will not work. We'll likely do it on a Thursday or Friday.
* We're expecting a similarly broad mixture of age groups like last time, but this time also including older kids (teens.)
* We'll be very careful about who gets access to which tools. We'll book the quiet room for the young kids with more basic tools; older ones will be shown how to use other tools in the workshop area (under supervision.)
* As last time the parents or legal guardians will be present.
* We probably don't want to increase the group size (last time we had around eight kids; forgot to count.)

Quoting from Joy's email : "I was talking to one of the organizers of our home ed group about doing some things at hackspace and she was really into the idea [...] other families with older kids have been to the Tuesday evenings before but maybe felt a little discouraged because of their age." Now's our chance to rectify this :D

m.

[Billy]

Happily up for helping.

This is the Home Ed group that my kid goes to when she's in London.
They're a good bunch and the children are a lot more sensible than the
clowns i met when teaching teenagers.

Let me know the dates and i'll arrange my availability.

[Sam Kelly]

I'm interested in helping - I've taught children before, though not formally. I can teach woodcut printmaking, and we've certainly got enough space for them to carve a small block each (there is a risk here) and print a couple of cards to take home with them.

Cheers,
Sam

[Alex Pounds]

On Sun, Mar 06, 2011 at 04:07:03PM +0000, Martin Dittus wrote:
> Found a good source of scrap wood we can point them to?

Is the humongous pile in unit 23 not good enough?

--
Alex Pounds .~. http://www.alexpounds.com/
/V\ http://www.ethicsgirls.com/
// \\
"Variables won't; Constants aren't" /( )\
^`~'^

[laye...@graffiti.net]

woodcut printmaking? cool. i would be interested even if not a child. good idea!

[laye...@graffiti.net]

hello,

if you are interested in joining a stencil workshop have a look here:

http://wiki.hackspace.org.uk/wiki/Stencil_Art_for_Beginners

and show us that you are interested here:

http://wiki.hackspace.org.uk/wiki/Hack_Evening_Workshops

cheers,

chris

[Dylan Beattie]

Her initial suggestion was: let the kids build little sculptures from scrap wood. I really like the simplicity of this, and it gives us ample opportunity to teach the basics: hammer & nails, how to use a saw, wood glue, glue guns, ...

Given the coolest thing you can possibly make out of wood is a guitar (FACT), you can make quite a fun one-string guitar out of a piece of pine or similar planking, a sheet of ply/hardboard, and a couple of wood offcuts and some string - the first guitar I ever built (aged about eight, I think!) worked like this.

I hacked one together at the space this afternoon, as a sort of prototype/proof-of-concept - it's hanging on the whiteboard in the workshop if anyone wants to take a look - and there's notes on construction and photos on the wiki:

http://wiki.hackspace.org.uk/wiki/Project:OneStringGuitar

What might make this a really good project for kids - it involves some design and personalization; basic woodworking techniques (saws, drill, screws, nails), it actually works on the same principles as a proper string instrument, it can be made almost entirely out of scrap apart from a £1 sheet of MDF for the body shape, and you get to take it home with you at the end of the day.

If we can work out the timing, I'd be happy to help out running one of these workshops - it'd have to be an evening or weekend for me, though.

-D-

[Sam Cook]

happy to help :)

S

[Martin Dittus]

This is an excellent idea. What kind of tools would we need for this? (Considering what we already have; and that it should work with young kids too if possible.) Any particular kind of wood? Would (thick) MDF work?

m.

[Sam Kelly]

Any kind of wood will work (or even cardboard, polystyrene, whatever) and we've got an absolute metric shitload of good carving wood in the space. I don't see any reason why MDF shouldn't work, but it might be a bit more prone to causing injuries than natural softwood; I've never tried it. I'll try and remember to give it a go on Tuesday, and see what happens.

Regarding tools, we'd need some carving chisels, some ink, and a roller, and some half-decent paper. Spending £20 will get us all of those, and we'd still have the tools for future use. I'm quite happy to shop for them if this is reasonable, since I need to visit the supplies shop soon in any case.

The hazards are basically the use of incredibly sharp chisels (though a Dremel with a carving burr also works well); we can always deal with that by getting the younger children to draw a design on the wood, and one of us carving it out. NB: This is hazardous enough that I wouldn't give an adult one of these chisels and a block of wood without a quick safety talk.

Cheers,
Sam

--
Sam Kelly, http://www.eithin.co.uk/

That's it.  We're not messing around anymore, we're buying a bigger dictionary.  -  Tibor Fischer, The Thought Gang.

[Martin Dittus]

Ah. Let's maybe find a softer material then, I'd rather pick something that allows us to leave the kids to their own devices than something that requires close supervision & medipacks. Is balsa wood too fibrous?

Let's discuss this Tuesday.

[Luke Graham]

If you are going to carve the stuff out, why not use laser rubber? I
havent been following the conversation, apologies if this misses the
point somehow.

Luke

[Adrian Godwin]

On Sun, Mar 6, 2011 at 10:14 PM, Dylan Beattie <dy...@dylanbeattie.net> wrote:

Given the coolest thing you can possibly make out of wood is a guitar (FACT), you can make quite a fun one-string guitar out of a piece of pine or similar planking, a sheet of ply/hardboard, and a couple of wood offcuts and some string - the first guitar I ever built (aged about eight, I think!) worked like this.

Given the existence if Billy's bass, I wonder what other instruments could be made ? 

-adrian

[laye...@graffiti.net]

hello,

i suggest to meet around 5pm today for a quick chat to find out what kind of stencil everyone plans to do.

we could decide on the material to be used and what we probably have to purchase.

if that's all cool i'll see you later...

cheers,

chris

-----Original Message-----
From: laye...@graffiti.net
To: london-h...@googlegroups.com

=

[spooq]

I can't be there at 5pm (probably closer to 7pm), but I have two
stencils I'd like to make.

One, for the treb, some kind of flames along the side or something
equally silly ;)
Two, for the kiln, Simon and I were thinking the hackspace logo in
gold paint, to match the blue.

Cheers,
Luke

[laye...@graffiti.net]

alright luke,

no prob, let's talk about it later then... ;)

i guess it would be probably a bit busy today to get something finished - but let's see what we could start with.

i thought of having the official workshop rather on thursday this week when it is more quiet...

so i'm sure you could get your stencils done soon.

c

[laye...@graffiti.net]

hello,

some of you asked me recently when we could have another stencil workshop:

http://wiki.hackspace.org.uk/wiki/Workshops/Stencil_Art_Workshop_for_Beginners

i could do one either on the 

5th or 9th of may as there seems to be nothing else planned so far for those dates.

if you are interested in participating please let me know what day and time is most suitable for you.

costs:

i intend to keep the course itself free of charge. 

most of the material i could supply and are leftovers from my own scrap cardboard collection.

just for spraycans i'd ask you to chip in some money or if you prefer bring your own.

a good shop nearby is: 

http://www.chromeandblack.com/

49 Bethnal Green Road , London, E1 6LA

hope to see you soon,

C

[M]

sounds great, hope I can attend.

[tom]

and if anyone can find it: i have an a4 plotter in the space you can
use, let me know though and I'll bring the blades in from home.

on a related note, anyone found a uk supplier of conductive spraypaint
yet?

On Apr 28, 12:35 pm, layer1...@graffiti.net wrote:
> hello,

> some of you asked me recently when we could have another stencil workshop:http://wiki.hackspace.org.uk/wiki/Workshops/Stencil_Art_Workshop_for_...

[Adrian Godwin]

On 4/28/11, tom <bollo...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> on a related note, anyone found a uk supplier of conductive spraypaint
> yet?
>

http://uk.rs-online.com/web/2474251.html