What GORDI has been up to lately... Wooden Pens!

[gordi]

My old pal "Moses" Jackson recently gave me some lovely spalted (beech?) wooden pen-blanks to experiment with.

Spalted wood, has amazing colourisation, graining & lines through it.
The spalting process happens naturally by the action of various fungi on the wood/tree, and by the actions of the tree trying to protect itself.

*Here's an example of Spalted Wood:



It was my intention to make "Moses" a wooden pen in exchange for the wood-blanks, but before I had started that project...
My wife (Chrissie) works in Forest School, and her immediate boss gave her a wee "challenge" for me to solve.

The Forest School takes groups of children into the woods, to teach them about the great outdoors. It is mainly play & craft based learning and involves situational awareness & safety, mindfulness, socialising & team-building, using craft tools, safe fire-building techniques, basic camp-fire cooking and getting them AWAY from their darned phones & computer screens!!

Some of the children are less-able than others, either through physical / mental disability or learning difficulties and they sometimes find it difficult to operate the fiddly standard kit (like fire-starting tools) that is out there, but the Forest School aims to be as inclusive as possible, so my challenge was to come up with a new handle design for larger-than-normal Ferro Rods (which are used in Fire-Steels) for creating sparks to light camp fires!

*Here's an example of a standard Fire Steel



So, they sent me a couple of Large Ferro Rods and I set to work, using the first of the wood-blanks from "Moses"....

And here is my first attempt:



The larger size, chunkier handle with concave finger grips should really help the less-able kids to have a chance of making those all-important sparks!

Here is the 2nd one, same type of wood - but containing more staining/graining/spalting than the first:



Another view:




The Forest School boss was really pleased and thinks that it will make a huge difference to her students, so I'm super-happy too - Job Done!

Oh, and you'll no doubt be pleased to hear that my old pal "Moses" did indeed eventually get a pen, made from his own wood!




... and a big thank you letter for helping me to help the Forest School kids!



G