Best selling wood projects - Visit to the Alexandria Seaport Foundation Virginia

Best selling wood projects

While in the USA in November, I was delighted to visit the Alexandria Seaport Foundation, in my quest to check out youthworking programs which use woodworking activities.
This pic shows me outside the ASFs floating office.


Some background info from their website:

Doing Big Things with Small Boats!
Through the building and use of wooden boats, the Alexandria Seaport Foundation helps at-risk youth turn their lives around and provides families, community groups, and schools with meaningful educational, social, and recreational experiences. Full-time apprentices earn their GED and prepare for a career in the building trades. The latest additions to our program include vocational training in green construction, a summer program, and an afterschool program.

Special thanks to the legendary Joe Youcha, the hands-on Executive Director of the ASF, for meeting with me and showing me around the workshops. An inspirational guy with a very exciting set-up. One of the wonderful things about this program is the use of volunteers from the community, who work alongside the young people as they build the boats together.


This pic shows Joe Youcha (right) chatting with one of the young participants, who was working on varnishing this beautiful wooden boat he had helped to build.

Prior to the Global Financial Crisis, the ASF had a very high success rate in transitioning the young participants into the mainstream workforce. With high unemployment in the USA now, these outcomes are more challenging to obtain - however the organisation through its wonderful commitment to its participants is exploring other creative ways to assist the trainees to find ways into the workforce with their woodworking skills.

There is a lot of complex maths involved in setting out the hull of a wooden boat. The ASF program has developed very effective ways of teaching mathematics to young people who may have been able to make sense of it in school.


This pic shows the guys working on the preliminary setting out being done for another boat hull.




Beautiful boats made in a very positive learning environment. This program was very exciting, and I was so pleased to be able to check it out!

The website for the Alexandria Seaport Foundation is definitely worth having a look at:

http://www.alexandriaseaport.org/



For more great info and pics about the ASF, check out the Meyer Foundation Annual Report via this hyperlink: http://www.meyerfoundation.org/annual07/seaport#/images/annual/seaport/sp10.jpg
Best selling wood projects

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Best selling wood projects - Visit to Washington DC Guild of Woodworkers

Best selling wood projects

While in Washington DC recently, I was privileged to be able to visit the November meeting of the Washington Woodworkers Guild. Like the Fine Woodworking Association of Western Australia, where I am a member, the Washington group at the meeting was made up primarily of older blokes and just a few women. There were about 35 people present, and it was an honour to also be offered a 15 minute slot to speak about Woodworking in Western Australia.
I gave the Guild a few samples of WA native timbers I had brought with me especially for the occasion. The meeting also included some business, the sharing of tips and ideas for jigs, some input by a member with suggestions about safety in the home workshop, and the primary speaker - a sales representative from Felder who was speaking about the European style combination machines they have brought into the US market. This session generated some very interesting discussion amongst the meeting about riving knives, safety guards, the pros and cons of combination machines, and sliding tables on table saws. The Australian OH&S standards are very close to the European standards, whereas the USA does a bunch of stuff very differently, so it was fascinating to be there for the discussion. I have been reading a number of US woodworking magazines since the 1980s, so it was a delight to be there and to start to understand woodworking in this country.
Special thanks to President Stu & to John Machey and the members for welcoming me to the meeting. I am particularly thankful to Bill Walmsley for kindly giving a ride all the way home across the city!
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