There isn’t an app for this?
Concentrating on the job at hand. If you look closely you can see the bowl that she is piercing in her hands.
Today was a half day of school for the local school kids. We have a good snowstorm going on today and it’s supposed to last well into tomorrow. Like a lot of kids these days our youngest daughter likes to play on her iPad. She likes to spend her spare time playing one of the game apps that she has downloaded or chatting on social media with any number of her friends. Becca had done some of that today, after finishing her homework. After we had finished supper, that she had cooked, I told Becca to come on down into the shop and I would let her play.
Carving a butterfly into a bowl.
I know she was fully expecting to have to clean something or some area of the shop. But instead I got out my high-speed carving tool. We set it up and I handed her a bowl that I had messed up. I was turning a piece of pine thin so that I could pierce through it and make a special tea light. When I say thin I was turning the walls down to 1/16 inch thick. Well I turned one area to thin and actually started to punch through the wall. So I set the piece to the side and figured that I would practice piercing through the piece before I actually did it on the final piece. Instead I showed Becca how I pierce using my high-speed carving tool and turned her loose on the practice piece. With the only instructions being to carve whatever she wanted and to have fun.
Some of Becca’s first carving’s on the bowl. You can also see where I turned the bowl a little to thin.
When I tell you that she is carving with a high-speed carver I should explain that the carver is actually made to be used by a dentist. It is an NSK Presto and is air operated and turns at 320,000 rpm. Generally I use it to pierce woodturnings and to add detail to carvings that I have done.
A look at some of the butterflies that she carved.
If you could see her face when she was done you would know that she had fun and she says she wants to do more. Tomorrow! She was unplugged from the digital world and it didn’t seem to affect her at all. To my knowledge there isn’t an app for this. You just have to get your hands dirty. So what did you do on your snow day?
- Kim Dailey
