More Reflections Of A 4-H Leader
At last, there is some improvement in my 4-H kids and their work. Sat down with them last night for about half an hour just fine tuning certain areas that they were having trouble in. Even though I had shown them the proper way of holding the mallet, none of them used it properly; so, I went through step by step how to pick it up and then using the wrist action, strike the tool of choice. They weren't happy about it at first, but as they used it more, then it started to come natural to them. The swivel knife came next. At the last class I noticed that all of the kids were using the knife at a very steep angle. I tried it that way myself to see if there would be any harm in using it that way and found that there was a lot of drag to the knife. So, the next thing last night was to bring the knife up to a straighter angle and after several attempts they were able to see the difference in their work. The angle of the knife is not all that important, at least to me, as I've seen the masters at work and some of them held their knife at about the same angle and were doing excellent work. But I felt that in the case of the kids, the proper angle would help them get a deeper cut. We next worked on the proper depth of some of the tools. The pear shader was first as all of the kids were trying to drive the tool through the leather. With the proper use of the mallet, they were able to get the right depth. Tapping the tool, not smacking it was the rule last night and it paid off. The beveler came next. I pointed out to them the different names of the tool, such as the toe and heel and the proper position of the heal when it came to placing the tool on the line. Many of the kids were beveling the line with the tool facing the wrong direction and later finding out that the background was no longer the background, but the foreground. I think the lesson given, will help many of them.The first three practice projects for Unit 2 were completed and we worked on another project that was not related to the unit. I had brought in a craftaid I had that was for a rounder. What is interesting is that that same pattern is the one I learned on 35 years ago and it hadn't changed any. I had tooled up a sample of what it was to look like and the kids used that to see what tools went where. They are slowly learning. One of the boys is picking up the use of the tools and will improve a lot this year. He is very interested in doing the work and will, in my opinion, turn into a good craftsman. One of the other boys, younger than the one just talked about has come a long ways and what is interesting is that he doesn't get frustrated easily. I feel that in time, he will also become a good craftsman.I had to put the younger girl back into Unit 1, but not because she couldn't handle the work. The powers that be decided that she was too young for the work she was doing and had to start all over again. Time is running out as the county fair will be here before we know it, and she still has a long ways to go to be able to finsh. I have a feeling that I'll be expanding my classes to two meetings a month instead of one. Time will tell.
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