Freedom Pens Project Participation

For a second year, I was part of the local Rockler Woodworking Store's (http://www.rockler.com/retail/index.cfm?store=32 Danvers, MA) effort to create custom woodturned pens that shall be sent to the military troops fighting to preserve our freedoms. This is a national program (http://www.freedompens.org/) and has had local participants from virtually every state of our country making many thousands of pens each year.

The idea of the program is to show support to the troops, making each recepient feel special in some small way as a result of this gift, and to advance the awareness of the wood turning craft within the local community. There were several members my local woodturning club, the Association of Revolutionary Turners (http://www.revolutionary-turners.com/) from Woburn, MA who helped instruct store customers on how to create a wood turned pen, while filling the periods between teaching by turning several pens each of their own designs and wood or color combinations. A total of some three dozen pens were made from this event, many by folks with no previous woodturning experience, and several of those were young people tagging along to the wood working store with a parent. What a wonderful feeling for them to perform a civic donation of time and effort while also gaining the confidence of being able to start and complete a woodturning project in less than an hours time. The joy in their faces was like that experienced from catching a first fish or a first score of a new sport for them, and that joy was shared by those of us instructing the craft to them. To pass along one's skills to others is a reward far exceeding the donation of the time and effort that it takes.

While I have taught a lot of people how to get started in wood turning projects, there are very few of those sessions from which I do not learn something myself, either in the manner that others approach a task or find a way to do it differently, or in differences that people's individual creativity can be expressed. I help the student to play the notes, as it were, but the music that is created is their own, and often exceeds the scope of the lessons taught, bringing smiles to student and instructor alike.

Ralph

RUMERY WOODS
Beverly, MA