Cub Scouts Youth Turning!

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Charlie_W

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Nov 16, 2011
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5,918
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Sterling, VA USA
Last month, our woodturning club in conjunction with a local cub scout pack leader held a woodturning event for the kids. The leader likes to introduce them to hands on activities with tools when he can.
The venue was a huge gazebo! The space was enormous. We moved tables and chairs and had 8 lathes set up with a table for materials, safety equipment, etc and a table for finishing/gluing the components. We also made up safety shields for six lathes as we only had two with shields that we normally use at events.

We had 3 two hour sessions with 8 scouts in each session and made ice cream scoop handles from maple we had pre-drilled and tapped. The scoops came from Woodcraft.
All went well.....24 ice cream scoops, 24 smiling scouts & parents, and no blood!
It was a great day, lots of fun and fellowship while teaching wood turning to a new generation. You can be sure a lot of ice cream has been scooped since the event!

We also used a Nova Comet II which our club received from an AAW grant for youth training.
Here are several pics. Even though we had the parents sign a photo release, I am only showing limited views here. The finished scoops pic is from our first group of the day.
 

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Joined
Oct 4, 2016
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Maryland
sounds like a great time good job keeping the kids off the playstation. tonight is my son's the tiger scout, first meeting of the year. probably going to trick me into being the den leader.
 

JimB

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Mar 18, 2008
Messages
4,683
Location
West Henrietta, NY, USA.
It sounds like it was a great event and those are some very nice scoops. Our local club does events with the Recreation Centers in the local towns. I've been one of the instructors at a couple of them. It's mostly adults but lots of fun.
 

Charlie_W

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Joined
Nov 16, 2011
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5,918
Location
Sterling, VA USA
Mal, the scoops came from Woodcraft. Our local store gave us a discount for these!

A note on turning:
For the kids, we turned these a little differently than I would normally. Instead of mounting the threaded hole on a bottle stopper mandrel and using a live center for the butt end of the handle. We used another method.
We used a safety Drive center in the headstock and mounted the handle blank with the butt end to the headstock and used a cone live center in the threaded hole/tailstock end. This way, if there was a catch, the blank would simply slip and spin without any harm or damaging the threaded hole.

We also made some sizing/marking jigs which was 1/2 of a 7/8" drilled hole to check the initial size for the ferrule before finial fitting. Our jig also had a notch to mark the length of the Tenon for the ferrule so no measuring was needed.

Brian, Go for it! We did have a liability release form as well as a photo release form for the parents to sign. Also, our club has liability insurance coverage.

The best deal was that the scout parents did the heavy lifting and hauled the lathes to the site and back! This was a great help!

Also, we had 3 20A circuits onsite and I paired up the lathes and grinder according to amperage to determine which ones were on which circuit.
 

Gregory Hardy

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Joined
Jul 13, 2017
Messages
276
Location
Scio, New York State, USA
Good for you! I don't have a turners' group nearby, but I go into our school shop and we do a similar project. (I am the Superintendent od Schools - the teacher just says, "Yes," when I propose it). As an educator of nearly thirty-five years, I can't encourage people enough to share hands-on opportunities with children in a world too full of computers, video games, and no more household chores. Keep up the good work. You are changing lives for the better and forever.
 
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