How do you Help Interest Grandkids in Woodworking?

[Stew Denton]

I just picked up a book: "Woodshop for Kids" by Jack McKee, pretty good stuff!

It is obviously written for average folks, not woodworking/carpentry junkies like the types that inhabit this site. I say that because everything about how to use the tools wisely so you can teach the kids, make things like kid size benches, etc., is stuff virtually all of us know, and probably have even forgotten when we learned them, many we learned as kids working around our dads tools.

That said, it has a lot of practical stuff on working with kids, shop safety for them, and projects that he has done with kids, so you know that those projects are "tried and true" for kids.

I am in the process of slowly rounding up tools, even though I have most of them. I didn't however have the kid sized handsaws until I just bought them the other day. They are the one I just posted the question about restoring, and they are for my grand kids to learn with. It will be a few years until they grow into them, but time goes fast. Nor, do I have things like an eggbeater drill, and other simple hand tools that I haven't used myself in 40 or 50 years.

I wish I had kept my dads eggbeater drill now, but at the time never thought I would ever use it. I don't think I will ever use one myself again, but when my grandkids are here, will help them use one. Still, you never know, sometimes one would be handy for a small job that I don't want to run a long extension cord for.

My wife chewed on me a bit about Ebay purchases when the book came in this morning, as I have made 3 purchase within the last week or so. However, when she saw it was a book about kids and woodwork everything was good. She thinks that Grandpa doing things like that with the grandkids is great stuff. Then everything was good again.....she has absolutely no problems about spending money on the grandkids! In fact, all of my recent Ebay purchase have had to do with grandkids and woodwork.

Last week our younger grandson was here, and I set up a way to hold some soft 1X2s I have at his height, and he had a great time sawing off sections. My dovetail saw was too much for him, but I had grabbed a coping saw with a very fine blade in it, just in case the dovetailing saw was a bit much. The coping saw worked great, and he loved it. I used a try square to mark lines across the 1X2s square, and encouraged him to try to cut to the line, and he did pretty well after he had some experience using the saw, that is when I reminded him.

However, mostly he just wanted to saw the boards off into the small sections I had marked....I now have more clamp blocks than I did before. I had to loosely hold the top of the coping saw frame to help him keep it straight but he didn't seem to mind that at all. After cutting off about a dozen sections he was ready to quit, but he obviously had a great time...and grandpa did too. I had to badger my wife and daughter to come out and watch him but they came out, and were glad they did, and in fact my daughter used her cell phone to tape him cut one section off. I started the cut for him each time, but he tried some, and the last time did a good job of starting the cut. He is a few months from being 5.

Stew