SALEM, Va. — The lathe hums quietly as a HopeTree Academy student carefully passes a cutting tool to a small piece of wood. With a steady hand, patience, and gentle pressure, he soon coaxes a curved, elegant cylinder from a simple block of wood. The cylinder is destined to become the barrel of one of the customized ink pens the HTA woodworking class has been producing since March.
Student begins creating a pen by turning two blocks of oak on a small lathe.
|
The pens are just one of many projects vocational instructor Jeff Young has devised to serve as teaching situations for his woodworking, welding and mechanics classes, designed to give students a basic introduction to tool usage and safety and allow them to expand and develop their skills at their own pace.
“When students take a piece of wood that is formless and make something out of it, they become an inventor. It helps them realize that something that is worth little can be made valuable because of how they visualize and craft it,” says Young. Confessing to being a huge bluegrass fan, he says the idea for the pens came as he traveled to bluegrass conventions and saw vendors with handcrafted wood items.
A wide assortment of oak, walnut, pine, cedar and other woods that the students cut from woods close to the school are used to create the body of the pens. They select it and let it dry and choose different pieces for crafting. Some wood is more sought after than others, says Young, but many times a student can make a really beautiful pen from a piece of wood that others passed over because of its texture or color.
Young and his students have also experimented with different types of acrylic material. Between the variations in materials and the artistry of the students shaping the pens, no two of the instruments are identical.
Pens handcrafted by woodworking HopeTree students.
|
The writing pens began three months ago as a simple project to give the students a change of pace from building larger items like Corn Toss Games and log furniture. However, they have become so popular that the class has produced over 500 for distribution to friends and supporters of the agency.
Through the vocational programs at HTA, students learn valuable, marketable skills as well as enhance their own feelings of self-worth. Coupled with other ‘real world’ skills learned, they are putting themselves in a position to ‘write their own tickets’ to successful futures once they leave HopeTree.
Mark Early ([email protected]) is director of communications for HopeTree Family Services. Religious Herald staff writer Barbara Francis contributed to this article.