The high school students have been making snowshoes with Woodworking Teacher Rob Palmer as the community engagement component of their Winter Main Lesson.
The class began by making a bending form—measuring, sawing, nailing, and screwing together 11 bending forms that can be used as the foundation for students in the years to come. This is a challenging process and there is an expected amount of failure as the rigid wood often splits as it is being bent. The bending of the wood takes place in a short two minutes after soaking for days and steaming in a box for an hour at temperatures upwards of 180 degrees Fahrenheit.
The amount of effort leading up to the moment that the wood is bent is where the real work happens. On Thursday we made our first attempt at bending the ash wood. We experienced many frustrating setbacks, including failed forms, nails coming loose, and splits in the grain of the wood. After regrouping and learning from our setbacks, we reinforced our forms, re-steamed our wood, and took another stab at bending our forms.
Success! After learning from our mistakes our second try was a huge success. Everyone came together, worked as a team, and persevered through challenges to successfully bend the once rigid material into a graceful, functional snowshoe frame. This was an exciting and rewarding moment for the high school students and Mr. Palmer!