Wood Working 101

This morning we went outside and cut some small cedar branches from a branch in our brush pile. We each took turns with the saw and our safety goggles. My intent was to cut some larger cedar rings to use for this proiect. But I couldn't find the big saw and there were a ton of mosquitos so we used some rough oak wood blocks that were cut with a chain saw. The kids were simply excited to use the saw.

It isn't obvious from this photo but the wood is very rough and bumpy. We sanded our rough and bumpy wood with several different grits or roughness of sandpaper. We sanded and sanded and sanded. We used 100 grit, 60 grit, and 220 grit. The kids talked about the roughness of the sandpaper, what it was made of, how to use it best, what happens when you look at the wood dust on your piece of wood and blow with out eye protection, how hard to push and how long it takes to make a piece of really rough wood smooth, what happens if you sand bark and many more questions and observations.... Very cool. We continued to sand...

Until our rough pieces of wood were smooth.

Then we oiled our wood using beeswax and orange oil.

Our sanded and oiled pieces of wood.