Locking Lidded Box, finishing the notches and tabs

Someone who follows me on Instagram asked that I explain how I carve the notches and tabs for locking-lidded boxes.  Here you go.

Carving Club

    After some positive conversations with local families and with the support of Tinkerhaus, a maker space in Newburyport, MA, I am excited to announce that we will be offering an afterschool slöjd/whittling program for grades 3-5 starting in March, 2025.  For a while now, I have been exploring the slöjd educational system in Scandinavian countries, reading folks like Otto Salomon and Gustaf Larsson and following the progress of the Sloyd Experience program in Louisville, CO. It seems well aligned with all sorts of recent research on growth mindset and grit, but I have shied away from trying to start a slöjd class because they traditionally center on bench work and I don’t want to lug around 6-8 small benches!  But with some encouragement from Max Sconyers from Cambridgeshire, UK and Ty Thornock from the US, both of which offer sloyd for 8-10 year olds,  I will offer a slöjd class more focused on carving and less on carpentry.  The class is not live on the Tinkerhaus website yet, but will be soon.

    For those interested, here are a few more details:

Overview

Designed for children grades 3-5, Carving Club introduces young people to the world of green wood carving.  Students will learn safe and efficient knife techniques as they advance through a series of progressively more challenging carving projects, from “dice” to “magic wands,” from “roosters” to “Roma Flowers,” from “foxes” to “peg boards.”  Based on the Scandinavian “slöjd” educational model, this class’s ultimate goal is to foster growth mindset, self-reliance, and joy.

Description

Welcome to the Carving Club!  We are so glad that you are interested in joining our class. The Carving Club meets weekly for 90 minutes, and class size is limited to eight students.  Each class focuses on a different project that builds on the skills introduced in the previous class.  We will make keychain ornaments and carve dice, fashion foxes and whittle roosters, engineer whistles and build pegboards, all with a knife, a saw, and a drill.  Each project is progressively more challenging, moving from the easy to the difficult, the simple to the complex, and the known to the unknown.  Most importantly, Carving Club seeks to foster intellectual and personal growth, especially building self-reliance, persistence, creativity, love for work, and neatness, all the while having a ton of fun.  

To illustrate how our class teaches both carving and character, take our lesson on making dice.  Students love making toys, and carving sessions often end with kids playing with their new creations.  But along the way they get to develop physical and intellectual abilities and dispositions.  Students get to practice knife grasps that they learned in earlier lessons, thereby building dexterity, confidence, and pride in their work.  They are also given a challenge and asked to problem-solve and make predictions.  “What is the best way to safely and efficiently carve a cube of wood from a stick?”  “How can we ensure that each side is square?”  “How can we measure without a ruler?”  “When finished, do our dice produce truly random results, or are they ‘loaded?’”  “How could we prove whether our dice are loaded?”  “If we know that our dice are loaded, can we guess why they are loaded?”  Our goal is less to carve the dice and more to engender learning habits.

Lessons Involve both group and one-to-one instruction, and every student is encouraged to progress at their own speed.  Projects are finished only when a student feels they are done, and can be worked on for multiple weeks if a student likes.  This allows them to develop their own sense of what is quality work.  Thus each student might be working on a different project in any given class, especially by the end of the two-month session, depending on interests, motivation, and skills.  Each new project is broken down into manageable steps, and each step is illustrated by a model.  “This is what your stick should look like at the end of this step.”  Students are given enough instruction to be efficient and safe, but not so much as to impede development.  I also try very hard not to touch a student’s work, allowing them to develop skills and pride in their efforts.  

At the Carving Club we celebrate our mistakes, as mistakes are how we learn.  If a student finds that their dice are misshapen, what does that teach us?  We try to cultivate both “grit” (the perseverance to pick yourself up after a mistake, learn from it, and improve) and “grace,” (not beating yourself up for making a mistake, but learning from it).  And if a student makes a mistake, maybe they mismeasured a piece and have to discard it, they can contribute to our “Box of Learning.”  “Suzie, did you cut your piece too short?  What did you learn?  If you like, you can sign it and toss it in the Box of Learning!”  

One final thought:  The Western notion that the mind and body are somehow separated is misguided, and Plato’s “world of forms” and Descartes' assertion “I think therefore I am” are, well, unhelpful.  The truth is, we think with our hands.  We learn with our bodies.  Research clearly shows, and has shown for a long time, that thinking is “embodied,” that we learn through our bodies interacting with and manipulating our environment.  If your child likes to doodle, tends to fidget, or gets squirmy when asked to sit down and pay attention, maybe that is them wanting to learn.  So, I hope your children will join us once a week to put down the phones, pick up a knife and a stick, and get to whittling.  

I look forward to carving with your children!

Some practical notes and ground rules.

• What to bring:
• Closed-toe shoes are a good idea.
• Keeping long hair tied back is also helpful.
• Snacks are encouraged, especially given how hungry kids are after school.
• Supplies
• All wood and tools will be provided.  
• If you would like to buy your child a knife so they can carve at home, I have them for sale.  The knives we use in this class are either the Mora Safe Pro, (MSRP is $13,) or the Mora 120 with the tip ground off (MSRP is $35.)  I also have the Mora 106 and 164 for sale, though I will not be using those tools with this age group.
• Safety
• Right from the start we discuss the difference between tools and weapons.  These knives are meant to be tools (and the fact that the knives we use don’t have a tip emphasizes this point.)  We will discuss how our feelings and intentions, for example, anger and the desire to hurt, are what changes a tool to a weapon.  In this class, we are all about joy and creativity.
• No “jump scares.”
• No joking about hurting others.
• No running.
• No touching anyone who is holding a knife.  
• If someone is carving, wait until they are done before you walk by them.
• Knives must be either in a student’s hand or in a sheath.  No knives are left lying around.
• Injuries.  
• While we won’t experience the injuries found in organized sports, like bone breaks, concussions, and blown-out knees, kids will occasionally nick themselves.  Normally these are minor cuts, and after a few minutes and a bandaid students are back at it.  A nick is a chance to learn from a mistake.  That said, I am very attentive to proper knife technique and closely monitor my students.
• Occasionally I will say “put your knives away,” and students will then put their knives in their sheaths.  This is usually followed by some sort of instruction or lesson from me.
• Occasionally I will shout “Stop!” or “Freeze!” or in some other way indicate my alarm.  At that point, every student in the class immediately stops what they are doing.
• I insist that kids tell me if they cut themselves.  This is a learning moment, and is nothing to be ashamed of or hide.
• Some days students might not be in a headspace to carve, especially if they are feeling distracted, angry, or sad.  If that is the case, students will be encouraged to read, draw, color, or perform some other soothing activity. 

Instructor Bio

Eric Goodson (he/him) is a green woodworker and craft educator based out of Newbury, Massachusetts.  He began woodworking and turning in 2013 while also pursuing a career as a high school history teacher, department head, and academic dean.  After twenty-seven years in the classroom, Eric began making and teaching craft full-time in 2022.  As a craft educator, he pays special attention to pedagogy, drawing inspiration from the Slöyd education system in Scandinavian countries that teaches students perseverance, growth mindset, and self-reliance through the process of making.  As a craftsperson, Eric’s work focuses on turning bowls and hand-carving spoons, spatulas, spreaders, and things starting with other letters.  His craft is inspired by British and Scandinavian historical woodenware and is meant to be used daily, hopefully enriching peoples’ routines with functional sculpture.  Eric has studied under craftspeople like Jögge Sundqvist, Robin Wood, Peter Follansbee, Dave Fisher, and Jarrod Dahl, and is an instructor at the North Bennet Street School in Boston, MA, Sanborn Mills Farm in Loudon, NH, and the Fuller Craft Museum in Brockton, MA.  He is a fully-juried member of the League of New Hampshire Craftsmen.

A note on Slöyd:

The educational basis for the Carving Club is the Scandinavian Slöyd educational system, established in the mid-nineteenth century and still compulsory in Scandinavian countries today.  While Slöyd was brought to the United States in the early nineteenth century and first taught at the North Bennet Street School in Boston, it has since largely died out in the U.S..  Unlike the “Shop” or “Home Economics” classes of the 1950s American classroom, which were driven by economic imperatives, Slöyd classes are driven by educational and moral imperatives.  Rather than focusing on making more craftspeople, Slöyd tries to instill character and values in students that will serve them in whatever field they pursue.  The outcomes that Slöyd fosters are self-reliance, persistence, resilience, love for work, and neatness.  Slöyd education was ahead of its time in many ways, and modern educational research on topics like “growth mindset” and “grit” back up much of what today’s Scandinavian schools already understand–working with your hands is how we grow our brains. 

“Comedian” and Craft

    In October 2018, a painting by the street muralist Banksy, titled “Girl with a Balloon,” went up for auction at Sotheby’s.  Known for creating graffiti art that is by its very nature uncollectible, Banksy has produced very few prints and even fewer paintings that might be bought and sold.  Not surprisingly, this piece was expected to fetch a high price.  And it did.  The auctioneer’s gavel fell, and a final price of $1,400,000 was set.  And then, an instant later, the piece began to self-destruct.  A paper shredder cleverly hidden within the frame began cutting the piece into ribbons.

    The audience gasped.  The auctioneer’s face went slack.  Some rushed to somehow save the painting.  Yet part way through the destruction the shredder malfunctioned, leaving only the lower half of the piece destroyed.  Despite its “transformation,” the buyer went through with the purchase, which seems to have been a good investment.  Six months later, in March of 2019, the piece was resold for an astounding $25,327,452, more than eighteen times its original value!

    Part of me understands how “Girl with Balloon” resold for so much more than its original sale price.  It was not the same piece of art.  Retitled “Love Is in the Bin,” this new piece had added meaning and significance.  But the original idea that Banksy was going for was entirely lost.  He seems to have been trying to subvert the art market itself, producing a piece that could not be resold and thereby denying the collectors and auction houses their profits.  Instead, the piece's value skyrocketed, and Sotheby’s central place within the meaning and money-making machine that is the art world was only strengthened.  At the sale of “Love Is in the Bin,” the auction house proudly proclaimed that the piece was the first to have been created during an auction.

    I was reminded of “Girl with Balloon” when I recently read about another auction.  In November of 2024, Sotheby's sold a piece by artist Maurizio Cattelan titled “Comedian,” which consists (consisted?) of a banana duct-taped to a wall.  Its final price was $6,200,000, including auction fees.

    The artist explained that the piece was a commentary on the art market and how, once a piece of art is sold, the artist ceases to profit from the value of the work.  “Auction houses and collectors reap the benefits, while the creator, who makes the very object driving the market, is left out.”  By making perishable art Cattelan was subverting this resale market, though “Comedian” did come with instructions and diagrams on how to mount a new banana once the original was gone.  The purchaser, Hong Kong-based cryptocurrency entrepreneur Justin Sun, proclaimed that he would eat the banana as part of a “unique artistic experience.”

    At first blush, all this feels pretty alien to the craft world: the de-emphasis of skill, the centrality of collectors and auction houses, and the astronomical prices.  And some might say, “Well, of course it feels alien.  Art and craft are different.”  Years ago I wondered about the art/craft hierarchy, and today looking at “Comedian” I might agree that there seems to be a pretty large gap between the two.  But the more I think about it the more I find the art/craft debate tired, slippery, and unhelpful.

    Some folks trace the origins of the high art/low art debate to Enlightenment thinkers in the late eighteenth century. Enraptured with the idea of reason, they wanted to distinguish between art that was worthy of contemplation and art that was merely accessible to the masses.  Others might go back to Plato and his privileging of the mind over the body, and logic over art.  Whatever its origins, over the past one hundred years this hierarchy has been challenged repeatedly, from the Arts and Crafts Movement up to the present day.  

    For me, the attempt to distinguish art from craft, even in the face of such conceptual art as ‘Comedian,” does not wash.  Can we really assert that one is unique and the other mass-produced, one contemplative and the other accessible, one aesthetic and the other merely useful, etc….  Every cultural producer, from Cattelan to myself, struggles with similar issues: How much should we produce? What meaning does our work hold? What is the relationship between the artist and the consumer? How will our work be used? What is the value of our work?  

    Well-carved spoons are useful sculptures.  Artists struggle with iteration and reproduction as much as craftspeople.  We all weave stories about our work—about the material, the process, the place, ourselves as artists, and the piece’s intended use—which adds significance (and value) to our work.  I think the best craftspeople among us disregard these art/craft distinctions.  Jögge Sundqvist comes to mind.  And even the most conceptual artists like Cattelan produce useful art (get it,…produce.)  

 Just see what is on Justin Sun’s menu.

    

How Plato Screwed the Craftsperson

(Leonardo da Vinci as Plato, detail of The School of Athens by Raphael)

I used to spend my summers as a bike mechanic, once the teaching year had ended.  Lots of folks seemed to think this an odd way for a teacher to spend a summer–why not do something related to my field of expertise, like teaching summer school?  The shops where I worked found it unusual as well.  While working for a Turkish-owned shop, the patriarch took to calling me “hodja” or “teacher.”  I even sensed that some thought the work beneath me–an educator, working with his hands!  Gasp!  But I looked forward to that work, partly as it fed my passion for bikes and bike racing, but also because of the nature of the labor.  After spending the school year working primarily with my brain, I found it cathartic to work with my hands.  Or, maybe more accurately, it was a relief to allow my brain to be “embodied,” to problem-solve through my body with my mind.  As my life changed and my interests shifted from bikes to craft, I found that carving or turning on the weekends and over vacations served a very similar role–repairing the mind/body split that modern academia expects.

But why is this unnatural mind/body hierarchy so central to schooling and Western society in general?  I would blame it on Plato (and Descartes.)  Plato argued the imperfect, changing, decaying world around us is just a copy of a perfect, timeless, and rational higher sphere, and that we should spend our time contemplating those higher forms and not their fleeting manifestations in everyday life.  This philosophy elevated the mind over the body and reason over applied skills.  It may be an oversimplification, but I can’t help but think that this is why we are left with an academia today that celebrates the “life of the mind” and casts a side-eye at trade education, why we seem to think that students learn best when seated in orderly rows, why poster projects are viewed as “easy assignments,” and why any student who does not fit such a system must be “hyperactive” or have “attention deficit.”  We have built an education system that not only poorly serves the many intelligences in our classrooms, but also fundamentally misunderstands how we learn.  We teach our children as if their minds were disembodied, instead of grasping a relatively simple truth: we learn with our hands.  

John Dewey got this.  He and other pragmatists rejected the mind/body dualism of Plato and Descartes (the “I-think-therefore-I-am” guy), and instead argued that there was a “continuity” between the body and the mind, that all of our “rational operations grow out of organic activities.” The “progressive education” that grew out of Dewy’s work recognized that rationality emerges from the body’s interaction with the environment.  Sadly, this movement did not fundamentally shift the trajectory of the American classroom, and we still teach students as if they are brains with no bodies.  

After stepping away from the high school classroom a few years ago and taking up craft and craft education full time, I find myself reflecting a lot on the Platonic and Cartesian mind/body split and how to heal that wound.  Plato had a decidedly dim view of arts and crafts.  He proposed that artists be banished from the Republic, as their messages might undermine the social hierarchy, and he placed artisans within the lowest class in his ideal society.  No wonder, as he so devalued the body and what it might teach us.  Craft education very well may be part of how we help heal this mind/body dualism.  

So, as I prepare for more craft classes, I am taking time to read about slöjd education in Scandinavian countries, and enjoying the journey.  I am also making my way through Sarah Kuhn’s Transforming Learning Through Tangible Instruction, which inspired some of this blog post.  And she asked a question that I want to leave you with: “Where do you do your best thinking?” 

I bet it is not at your desk…  

Why Craft?

I came across this wonderful poster at the Fuller Craft Museum in Brockton, MA the other day, and wanted to share.  It captures a lot of what I am thinking about these days.  Market season is nearly upon us, and I find myself anticipating the conversations I will have and the questions I will field from prospective customers.  Why should we invest in craft?

Wille’s turning hooks and traditional Swedish turning

I recently spent a delightful day working with Peter Lamb @gerrishisland at his lovely home in Kittery, Maine.  He wanted to get himself set up to turn bowls on an electric lathe, so we spent the day tinkering and turning.  For those of you who don’t know Peter, he is both a wonderful person and a fount of woodworking knowledge.  I think I first met him in 2015 at a course with Jögge Sundqvist up at Lie Neilsen Toolworks.  Peter was friends with Bill Coperthwaite, and after Bill passed he became a trustee for Dickinson’s Reach.  Peter has been connected to the greenwoodworking movement in the US for decades, and I always learn something when talking with him.

Not long after my visit, Peter sent along a series of photos that really got my attention.  These are shots that he took of Wille Sundqvist‘s turning workshop (included here with permission from his son Jögge).  What especially arrested me were the tools—massive hooks like those used on a pole lathe.  

 

Peter also loaned me his copy of Träsvarvning enligt Skärmetoden, a book written by Wille Sundqvist and Bengt Gustafsson and published in 1981.  The book discusses the Swedish turning tradition, and in the chapter on bowl turning describes these same hook tools.  

 

 

 

I am slogging through it, using Google translate to try to make sense of the text.  The translations leave something to be desired.

You can see that the hooks are used in both side and end-grain turning, depending on their design.  Obviously modern ring tools perform a similar task, and though they are designed for end-grain hollowing, they also work well in side grain as well.  I use the “Termite” by Oneway, which works well save for the fact that the small ring gets clogged.  I am curious about how one of these Swedish hooks might be used on the inside of side-grain bowls, working from the rim into the interior, like on a pole lathe.  The cut on a pole lathe is often well below center, and allows for a swooping, rising cut into the interior.  I perform a similar cut with gouges, but instead of working below center I swoop up above center and then down.  I am really curious if the below-center technique might work with these hook tools.  

The book also includes shots of a young Del Stubbs.  Before Del became the renowned toolmaker of Pinewood Forge fame, he was a turning phenom who traveled widely giving demonstrations.  Stories of him turning spindles with an axe and producing ungodly thin bowls abound.  Below you can see Del using a makeshift pole lathe driven by a spring suspended from the ceiling, as well as a lovely handled pot.  Notice that the portions between the handles are lathe turned, not hand carved, something you can only do on a reciprocating lathe…

 

After posting some of these shots on Instagram and Facebook, many folks provided leads on where to learn more.  Peter Follansbee recalled that Fine Woodworking ran an article about Wille and his turning hooks “way back when.”  He kindly looked up the reference: May/June 1983, “Turning Tools that Cut” by James Rudstrom, who Peter says was Wille’s neighbor.  I am in the process of getting that article now. My friend Jeff Kuchak, another pole lathe turner, reminded me of the video “The Spoon, the Bowl, and the Knife” that includes Wille turning, though I don’t recall him using hooks in that video. (I do remember him using a spindle gouge to turn a bowl—yikes!)  I will have to look at it again.  Jan Harm ter Brugge from Amsterdam said that he owns one of Wille’s hooks, and I am in contact with Jan now about that.  Finally, Merlin Fox @knivesfoxspoons mentioned that Svante Djarv makes those hooks.  Of course I could not resist and ordered one.  Svante’s tools are much coveted and often take up to a half year for delivery.  I own one of his carving axes (the “Little Viking”), which I absolutely love.  Thankfully, Svante has one of his medium turning hooks in stock, and I think it is ready to ship.

I leave with a few shots by Peter.  The first of a custom forged tool rest made to Wille’s specifications.  The second is of Wille’s workshop door.  So charming.

An experiment in carving

 

Above and below are a few shots of my most recent work. I have enjoyed the meditative time sketching and carving these designs, though they do take a while. I am not sure if the extra 90 minutes of carving will add enough value to make them worth the effort, and this sends me spiraling into the vortex of hourly wage calculation. I know this is not smart, and I know I don’t do this work to get rich, but we all have to earn a living at the end of the day.

Bowls like these take a lot of time, when all is considered. First I have to fell the tree, chop it into 4' lengths, end-over-end the lengths out of the forest, chop the lengths into rounds, split the rounds in half, and then shape the split halves into bowl blanks. Let's say that fist step of processing the material takes 20 minutes pr. bowl blank. Then I have to turn the blanks into finished bowls. That takes 40-60 minutes, if all goes well, but not every blank wants to become a bowl! I lose about 25% of the blanks to knots, bark inclusions, etc..., so we should add at least 15 minutes to each successful bowl. Once the bowl dries, I can then do the carving, which adds another 90 minutes. Finally paint and oil, which adds maybe 25 minutes and includes material costs. That adds up to at a minimum three hours of labor, but probably more like three-and-a-half or four.

So what can I charge for bowls like the ones above and below (once completed)? Can I get $100 for them? Or even $80? Depending on what I can sell them for, it is pretty obvious to me that I might make $20/hour on them, but probably more like $15/hr. Honestly, if I could sell them reliably, I would say GREAT! I would take that salary! But I am not sure I can. We will see. These bowls are sort of a test run.