Boys Winter 2016: Art of Carving

The Art of Carving is a skills journey explorers can venture on for their entire lives.  Multitudes of things both practical and beautiful can be crafted from pieces of wood found in the forest or on the seashore with very basic and inexpensive tools.  The skills that accompany the art of carving serve our explorers even when their tools are not in their hands.  One has to be focused, deliberate, measured and calm when you are working with knives.  This outing is one that mentors eagerly anticipate because it is an important threshold for our boys and it is really exciting to facilitate the safe and effective use of knives with them.

The tenor of this outing is much more serious than most, and while explorers typically conduct themselves in a safe manner; Explorers Club is often a place of boisterous energy and exuberant play.  While there is always play and exuberance in our outings, the art of carving begins with a lesson on proper knife safety.  In its essence basic tool safety can be distilled down to five fundamental rules

1.     Be aware of your “Blood Circle” (Who is near you?)

2.     Be seated (we don’t walk with an open blade)

3.     Safe follow through (know where your blade is going to go)

4.     Be serious (carving and “horse play” are not compatible)

5.     Always stow your knife when you are done

Keeping thee five things in mind keeps our bodies and tools safe.  Rule number three deserves a bit more attention.  The beginning carver (which is nearly every explorer) needs to be especially vigilant about safe follow through.  The most common injuries in carving occur to the fingers and thumb of the opposite hand, so it is important to think about where you hold your work.  Injuries to legs are also common when boys carve in their laps, better to keep your elbows on your knees so that you can keep your follow through safe from your legs.

Before the mentors introduced the carving project, we had a brief show and tell about everybody’s knife.  Each explorer showed how to safely open and close their blades and showed how the blade’s locking mechanism worked or how their sheath operated.  Both mentors also showed a few carving tools beyond basic knives (small gouges & spoon knives) to help show some more specialized carving tools. 

The carving project was to create a simple two tent stakes from a wooden stick.  This is a fantastic introductory project as it teaches several fundamental carving operations and its handy to know how to fabricate a tent peg in the field if you lose, break or forget one.  Here is a link to an excellent video on YouTube done by Ray Mears of the Woodlore School in the UK.  He demonstrates how to carve the tent peg in more or less the same fashion as we taught the boys.  He is a very skillful knife user and his demonstrations are fascinating to watch.

The boys applied themselves with total focus and carefully worked through all the steps in creating the tent peg.  As mentors our primary focus was observe the boys and offer individual encouragement and suggestions to help them become more comfortable and confidant carving with their knives.  The boys worked steadily until they all had made a pair of tent pegs!  After all this crafting and deep focus lunch and a couple of rounds of spider’s web was deeply needed! 

We finished up the day with a strong closing circle and the boys offered their gratitude for a chance to learn new skills and to spend time in the forest exploring and playing! Looking around at everybody’s tent pegs it was clear that this is a group of boys off to a strong start with carving.

Our hopes as mentors for your son’s carving journey from here forward are that they take it slowly and practice carefully.  I suggest that your son learn how to sharpen his knife with an adult family member so that he can continue to carve safely.  A sharp knife is easy to control, as it requires far less effort to make cuts in wood with.  A dull knife is hazardous because it requires more force to make each cut, which make it difficult to have a safe follow through.  There are a number of sharpening devices available at places like Hardware Sales, Yeagers or REI, but a simple and very affordable way to make you cutting tools very sharp is with Wet and Dry sand paper.  A strip of 600, 1200, and 2500grit paper stuck to sections of 1x3” lumber with double sided carpet tape is a pretty economical way to make a blade very sharp.  There are a number of YouTube videos out there for those that wish to learn this skill.

Finally we wish to thank all the boys and their families for making this outing possible.  We know it can take a leap of faith to send your son into the woods with a knife and we deeply appreciate the trust you bestow upon us.  Thank you so much for supporting this work we do! 

Boys Winter 2016 - Art of Play 1; Lake Padden; 1/16/16

I imagine most of us have felt it…the event starts 10 am tomorrow. You’re excited and you’re pretty sure it’ll go well. It’ll be fun….won’t it?

But the weather is right on the edge. The rain could subside to showers mid-morning as forecast or they could be guessing wrong and these 1st, 2nd and 3rd graders, their mentors and volunteer mentor could get dumped on. The wind could remain below 25 miles per hour as forecast or we could get a sudden gust that threatened to rattle branches out of the many big-leaf maples in the park, sending us scrambling to the relative safety of the open field near the dog park. 

We could have eleven gregarious, funny, well behaved boys who regale us with insightful tales of good clean adventure or half of them might be anxious and withdrawn in the presence of kids they don’t know. Several of them might be unnerved by a cold rain and mud in their boots (I’ve witnessed an explorer empty about a cup and a half of water out of his boot at the end of an outing!), leading to five hours of discomfort and grumbling.

Boys have also been known to express their unease in a new situation by squirreling out or locking on to the one boy they already know and excluding all others.

No guarantees. It makes the work challenging and rewarding at the same time. 

By start time, the signs were good. The morning’s rain stopped a short time before we gathered and almost all of the boys knew a few in the group from other activities. The wind worried Tim and Brian some, but a triple check of the forecast promised more goodness, so we bid the parents fare-thee-well and splashed into the field to be true to the outing’s promise by playing our first game - Fire in the Forest. A chasing game, Fire in the Forest calls for accelerating, stopping short and cutting back and forth to evade capture, actions made much more difficult on the muddy, puddle-y field. More than one explorer slid to a stop like a Mariner stealing second. Of course, limbs encased in mud could lead to difficulty staying warm, but we were feeling more relaxed about the weather (and we were committed now) so we transitioned to the trail in search of a good location for games of stealth such as Eagle Eye, Hide!, and Spider’s Web. 

Play was the order of the day, so we played Cougar Stalks Deer as we moved up the trail. Volunteer

Jared was pressed into service as the deer and soon learned that these boys are capable hunters. After getting captured twice, he upped his game through evasive maneuvers and a sharp eye to call out the “cougars” who were unable to stop in time to avoid detection.

When we located a spot to go over the plan for the day and key individual and group behaviors (e.g., when you hear a “crow call”, return immediately to the source of the call), the mentors realized our concerns about the boys were unfounded. These explorers got along well, learned the games quickly and went with the flow when issues arose. A good example happened in the Fire in the Forest game. One of the pursuers called out that he tagged one of the “animals” running through the forest; the fleeing animal, wearing a thick coat against the promised cold rain, objected that he hadn’t been tagged. A quick conversation about how in Explorers Club we play with honor and, “after all, it’s just a game” and the pursuer shrugged and conceded the point. Even the wind had subsided, and the rain….what rain?

After several games of Hide! and some lunch, which we fortunately were able to avoid sharing with several four-legged friends in the dog-off-leash area, we set about teaching the boys how to play Spider’s Web. Spider’s Web rewards patience and stealth, qualities that aren’t often used to describe young boys. The “Spider” needs to guard his food source and try to send all the “flies” back to the web. The flies try to capture the food source and return it to the web undetected. Quick movement tends to draw the eye, so running to the food source will get a fly sent to the web most every time. In our first game, there was a fair amount of running and getting called out. But these boys are quick learners; after reviewing the first game with mentor Tim (our Spider), we saw much more crawling through the ferns in game two!

Time flies, as they say, and a quick time check confirmed it. We had just enough time for our time-honored closing circle of thanks (scroll down through this list of EC mottoes for "Attitude of Gratitude") before heading back down the trail.

The weather held and the boys were resilient, willing and flexible. What could’ve been a long, slow, cold slog turned into a fun, relaxed walk in the park with 11 great kids.

Click here for the rest of the photos (Jan. 16 gallery) from our outing.