David Bassham, Robson Ranch Woodworkers President
As president of the Woodworkers, I have the good fortune to have a pool of incredibly talented individuals to call on for whatever projects present themselves. These run the gamut from money making to charity and anything in between. Recently we have been making memory boxes for the Pediatric Intensive Care Ward at Children’s Hospital. These are boxes that are given to children with terminal illnesses. They color them or put stickers on them and keep their treasures in them.
At the beginning of this year, we began offering a series of basic woodworking classes for our members. These were short information-filled talks to start to introduce the basic skills of woodworking to some of our less experienced members. This month we followed those up with two hands-on box making classes that were spread over two afternoons and provided training for about 11 of our members. Woodworkers Vice President Boyce Irwin taught the classes with the help of Jack Rhead, and the groups were able to make about a dozen memory boxes.
While the boxes are relatively simple to make, they require the use of most of the basic woodworking tools. This gives our new members an opportunity to get more comfortable with the tools and techniques and will, hopefully, give them the confidence to start projects of their own. Woodworking is a process of combining some simple skills to make increasingly more complex projects.