Projects – Boot jack – Part 1

My eldest daughter has always expressed an interest in woodwork, so I decided to start a series of simple projects with her to encourage this.

She’s 5, very artistic and loves making stuff – patterns, collages, papier mache err … objects, as well as making up her own Art attacks.

Her first project yesterday used the first circle I cut with my circle cutting router base to make a face which she decorated:

Today we made a start on our second project, a boot jack which will hopefully make it easier for her to take her wellies off.

We gathered one welly from each member of the household and offered them up against the available wood.

It came down to a choice between a rough sawn board and another bit of the Ikea occasional table that we used for the face.

The sawn board is a little bit narrow and it’s cupped, but I think it’ll do the trick, so we went with that.

I like that it gives me the chance to show her how we turn rough splintery sawn timber into smooth planed timber and correct cupping.

She has her own ear defenders and some goggles and sits out of the way on an old office chair when any machines are running.

We fed the concave side over the planer, then squared the edges to that face and converted the SIP 01552 to thicknesser mode.

She liked watching the wood getting taken out of my hands and fed through the thicknesser.

It’s not a perfect finish but it’s good enough to work with.

About this time she started getting a bit bored, so we broke for lunch and will probably pick up where we left off tomorrow, as we’re off to a local farm to see some lambs this afternoon.