Hand tool story/daughter gloat
Mike DeHart, South Jersey
>Sunday night I got �the little princess�, daughter Emily, now 4, away from the Disney video tapes and down in the basement to help build a bird feeder for the missus. It is a simple thing, just a piece of 2x4 with a roof of 1x6 and a couple of dowel peg perches. It has finish nails above the perches for hanging halves of oranges and grapefruit. It is supposed to attract Orioles. Anyway, I got Emily to help build it. I had the materials I needed. I warned her that �the big saw machine,� what she calls the table saw, would be loud but easy for cutting the angles that made the roof. She told me that I shouldn�t use the machine, I should use the �handle saw� because the machine is �too noisy.� From that point the whole feeder was built entirely with hand tools that she could help with. I measured, she marked. I held the square, she penciled lines. I cut to lines while she helped hold the boards. I used a block plane to chamfer the edges and she planed a couple edges herself, holding the plane with both hands like a bench plane. She sure likes to make curly chips! She insisted that we use HER hand drill to make the holes for the dowel perches.* I got the nails started, she drove them a bit, and I finished them flush. That hammer practice over the last couple years paid off, where I would paint little targets on the anvil and let her whack them as much as she wanted. She hit the nails almost every whack. She even hit them (just barely) hard enough to move them. Talk about one happy girl! She took some bits of wood and in a couple of hours she turned them into something useful and pretty. She has been helping me in the shop since she could talk, but this is the first time she started and finished a project in which she was a full partner. The sense of accomplishment just beamed from her smile. Also, Lydia, Emily�s baby sister who just turned 1, got to explore the shop (with Momma watching her) while we worked. Of course I took a picture of her (and her drill) next to the finished feeder. It is on film, you'll have to wait a while :-(.
*By age 3 she took a liking to drilling holes in scrap wood while I worked on things. In the interest of keeping my good eggbeater drill and bits from living on and in the concrete floor, I fixed up a nice little hand drill and gave it to her with a small bit for Christmas �03. She is a great shop helper. It has only been recently that she decided she wanted to be a princess instead. I may have just won her back from Ol' Walt.
