I recently got the chance to take my first Woodworking class here at the Folk School. It was the “Making a Traditional Moulding Plane” class, where we made a variety of 19th century quarter sawn beech planes using antiques as examples, and using many antique tools to do the work. It was a great class that had been very skillfully prepared and presented. It was taught by Bill Anderson and Peter Ross.
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I am glad to see Jesse Knight’s finished documentary filmed here during the Timber Framer’s Guild’s big event at the Folk School in 2009 when they converged to craft and raise the white pine and oak timber frame for the new Clay Spencer Blacksmith Shop. I got to be a small part of the documentary, and was happy to spend some time with Jesse as he moved around during the two weeks filming and interviewing the participants. He had time lapse cameras set up, which I like, and had a good style of roving about and being right in the middle of the action without being in the way.
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Last week we welcomed Bob Rupert of Pennsylvania, and his assistant Gary Cooper to the Spencer/Whitaker Blacksmith Shops for their first visit to Brasstown. They both quickly acclimated to the new Five Star facility, and found it easy to fall into the spirit of the Folk School during the week.
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We recently had local artist/blacksmith Joe Miller back to teach his popular “Critters” class in the blacksmith shop for one of January’s advanced weeks. The class is a combination of forging and fabricating, and the students make a critter or two of their choice that might be some kind of a fish, a bird, spider of a animal of just about any species.
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