Grade 7 knives 2019

R

Randydb

Joined
Sep 27, 2014
Messages
1,107
Hello All,

I am the administrator at the Maple Ridge Environmental School in British Columbia. We do place based, ecological hands on learning. Outside every day no matter the weather. It's a blast and an incredible experience getting to work there. About 5 years ago I got interested in knives and started putting my own handles on blanks and learned from Shane Alexander to make sheaths. 4 years ago I decided to do knives with our grade 7 students as their "take away gift from our school." These are the finished knives this year.

The students find their own wood in the forest and hand cut it. I send it off to be stabilized and then they either use their wood or else trade with me. I don't trade unless they have a beautiful piece! This year two traded me for koa and one for cocobola. Rest have the maple they found. The kids also did their own sheaths.

You should see the pride they have wearing their knives at school. They are pretty happy to have made these knives. I know wearing knives at school sounds off, but in my school half the kids will have a pocket knife on any given day. We have rules for knife use, and the kids follow them carefully.

These AEB-L knife blanks were made for us by Mike at Cariboo Knives. I've been learning to grind blades recently so next year's knife blanks will be made by the principal (me)!

Thanks to all of you that have encouraged me and helped me along my learning journey of knife making. You have inspired me and had an effect on more people than you know.
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Nice bird and trout/camp knives. We have 15 grade 7s next year so that will take a bit of time to do.
 
A Memorable experience A 7th Grader Assembling their first Custom Knife what a terrific opportunity to instill pride in accomplishment.:thumbsup::thumbsup:
 
Congrats to the young people, well done!
 
Good deal! Congrats to the kids and congrats to the principal too!! Very nice knives.

These two young Canadians from AB were in my booth a couple of years ago at a roping here in Cali. Ya notice they are both already wearing knives while they are looking at mine.

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Older brother bought one of mine too.

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Makes an old guy feel like there is hope for the world. I really commend you for this. Think of all, the kids are learning besides just skills with tools. Planning, analytical thinking, problem solving the list goes on. Betcha not a bunch of "I dunno' s in this outfit.
 
It's really good to see young people being taught these things ... and taught to be responsible and safe carrying knives ...

it used to be the norm when I was growing up the teachers borrowed a pocket knife from a student often ...

sad nowdays not many young people are taught the things we took for granted ... glad some still take the time and effort.

And looks like they did a great job with their knives and sheaths!
 
Those look great! And the smiles on the kids faces tell it all.

I'm actually a little sorry I saw this thread because I'm interviewing for a position at Trackers in Portland, OR, this Wednesday to teach blacksmithing to kids at a similar camp, and now I'll be really bummed instead of kinda bummed if I don't get the position.
 
Those are some lucky kids, and those knives look pretty good! In this area if they took a butter knife to school they would be expelled and most likely be arrested as well.
 
Eversharp! said:
Ahh! Sensible, non-political education. A breath of fresh air.
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I wish it was this. We are a public school and I have to fight hard to continue to exist because of a lot of political crap from all sides. It's a tough path dancing in a political minefield. But the stuff we do and the results we get with our kids makes it worth it.

Busto said:
A Memorable experience A 7th Grader Assembling their first Custom Knife what a terrific opportunity to instill pride in accomplishment.:thumbsup::thumbsup:
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We build them over a couple months. Right from finding and cutting wood for handles through to shaping handles with files, and making their sheaths.

Horsewright said:
Think of all, the kids are learning besides just skills with tools. Planning, analytical thinking, problem solving the list goes on. Betcha not a bunch of "I dunno' s in this outfit.
Click to expand...

You absolutely nailed our school philosophy here Horsewright. I have to do a presentation to a bunch of big wigs soon and I am going to use your quote here. "...not a bunch of I dunno's..."
Learning through activity winds up including all of the stuff required for success. There is math, reading, writing, problem solving, history, analytical thinking etc in knife making. An example of math is that they mock up a sheath and then find out the area of the piece of leather needed to make it. Then of course they figure out the area needed to make 7 sheathes and then figure out where to purchase leather and figure out how much it will cost per sheath and all together. They give me all the info and I get it for them (actually I have enough leather already so we just use the stuff we have but they don't know that on.) Similar thing happens with stabilizing. In the end they have done a ton of learning in numerous areas just through making a knife.

Ocelot85 said:
In this area if they took a butter knife to school they would be expelled and most likely be arrested as well.
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I used to teach in conventional school in the same district. One of my really good kids went camping on and forgot a pocket knife in his backpack. He actually pulled it out standing in line before school and told a supervisor he had forgotten he had it and wanted to give it to her so he didn't get in trouble. Crap hit the fan and with a zero tolerance policy he was going to be suspended for 3 days. I was irate. There were a couple very heated meetings and they finally agreed to overlook it.
So our district has come a long way now that they let us do some of the things that we get up to. But you should hear some of the meetings I have with higher ups.
Higher up: "Hold it. You have 7 ducks with the feathers and heads still on and the kids are making duck soup with them? Are there guts in them? Do they have feet?"
Me: "Yep, but they won't have any of that left when the kids are finished with them."
Higher up: "Oh my God."

The kids loved cleaning the ducks and the soup was great. I'm hoping to arrow a deer before school one morning and bring it to school to skin and clean....then have a bbq with the kids.
 
I'm surprised to see five or six girls in a class of seven.

Great knives and great looking wood.
How do you go about finding pretty wood ?
 
Randydb said:
I wish it was this. We are a public school and I have to fight hard to continue to exist because of a lot of political crap from all sides. It's a tough path dancing in a political minefield. But the stuff we do and the results we get with our kids makes it worth it.


We build them over a couple months. Right from finding and cutting wood for handles through to shaping handles with files, and making their sheaths.



You absolutely nailed our school philosophy here Horsewright. I have to do a presentation to a bunch of big wigs soon and I am going to use your quote here. "...not a bunch of I dunno's..."
Learning through activity winds up including all of the stuff required for success. There is math, reading, writing, problem solving, history, analytical thinking etc in knife making. An example of math is that they mock up a sheath and then find out the area of the piece of leather needed to make it. Then of course they figure out the area needed to make 7 sheathes and then figure out where to purchase leather and figure out how much it will cost per sheath and all together. They give me all the info and I get it for them (actually I have enough leather already so we just use the stuff we have but they don't know that on.) Similar thing happens with stabilizing. In the end they have done a ton of learning in numerous areas just through making a knife.


I used to teach in conventional school in the same district. One of my really good kids went camping on and forgot a pocket knife in his backpack. He actually pulled it out standing in line before school and told a supervisor he had forgotten he had it and wanted to give it to her so he didn't get in trouble. Crap hit the fan and with a zero tolerance policy he was going to be suspended for 3 days. I was irate. There were a couple very heated meetings and they finally agreed to overlook it.
So our district has come a long way now that they let us do some of the things that we get up to. But you should hear some of the meetings I have with higher ups.
Higher up: "Hold it. You have 7 ducks with the feathers and heads still on and the kids are making duck soup with them? Are there guts in them? Do they have feet?"
Me: "Yep, but they won't have any of that left when the kids are finished with them."
Higher up: "Oh my God."

The kids loved cleaning the ducks and the soup was great. I'm hoping to arrow a deer before school one morning and bring it to school to skin and clean....then have a bbq with the kids.
Click to expand...

Heaven forbid that children see where meat actually comes from, I'm sure they'll be scarred for life now. In all seriousness though, it's awesome that you're teaching these kids real life skills.
 
12345678910 said:
I'm surprised to see five or six girls in a class of seven.

Great knives and great looking wood.
How do you go about finding pretty wood ?
Click to expand...
Our school of 86 students is fairly evenly split boys/girls overall.

We are out in the forest daily. We start by taking downed branches/stumps etc and split them open to get an idea of what the wood looks like inside. Pretty quick they figure out how to spot wood that will be curly and burls. The realize that wood from stressed areas of a tree or from the crotch of a branch tends to have nice figuring. I like the surprise that happens when they figure out the old rotten looking stuff actually looks beautiful and that they find lots of colour contrast and spalting there. We also look at species. Cedar, hemlock and douglas fir tend to have fairly straight grains and less figuring. Most tend to like maple or spalted birch. Sometimes spalted alder.

It takes about 4 or 5 classes of learning and cutting to get their wood. They cut into a lot of wood before they find what they like. They cut with hand saws with a bit of help from me with a chainsaw. Chainsaw only happens if they want a piece out of a bigger log I will cut the round out of it and then they do the handsawing to get their board/block out of it. I often take a cut or two off of what they find because they come up with some beautiful stuff. I have some butternut that a student traded me a couple years ago that has amazing rays in it.

We cut it in June and let it dry and send it off around christmas time for stabilizing.
 
Randydb said:
Environmental School . . . We do place based, ecological hands on learning. Outside every day no matter the weather.
The students find their own wood in the forest and hand cut it.
You should see the pride they have wearing their knives at school.
. . . I know wearing knives at school sounds off, but in my school half the kids will have a pocket knife on any given day. We have rules for knife use, and the kids follow them carefully.
Click to expand...

That did me more good than you can know.
So there really is a bit of sanity and grace left in the world ! ! !

Beautiful and VERY USEFUL looking knives you all have there !
Way to go ! ! ! (and I don't mean just with the knives) ;) :thumbsup:
Thank you for posting.
 
Ocelot85 said:
Heaven forbid that children see where meat actually comes from, I'm sure they'll be scarred for life now. In all seriousness though, it's awesome that you're teaching these kids real life skills.
Click to expand...
I think they develop a lot more respect for their food when they see where it comes from and realize the life that was taken for them to eat it.

3 students didn't want to be there at all when we processed the ducks. About a dozen only wanted to watch and document the proceedings. The others all took some small turn in the process of cleaning the ducks. It took a while because they were learning all about the parts....inner and outer of the ducks. When they found out the gizzard was a muscle they voted to include them and the hearts in the soup. The kids ate 20 litres of duck soup and only about 7 litres of veggy soup.
They want to do it again.
 
Randydb said:
I think they develop a lot more respect for their food when they see where it comes from and realize the life that was taken for them to eat it.

3 students didn't want to be there at all when we processed the ducks. About a dozen only wanted to watch and document the proceedings. The others all took some small turn in the process of cleaning the ducks. It took a while because they were learning all about the parts....inner and outer of the ducks. When they found out the gizzard was a muscle they voted to include them and the hearts in the soup. The kids ate 20 litres of duck soup and only about 7 litres of veggy soup.
They want to do it again.
Click to expand...

I grew up in a semi-rural area hunting and fishing with my father, he had me assist in dressing game and filleting fish. I never saw anything wrong with it, seemed normal to me. I think anyone who wants to eat meat should have to hunt and dress game at least once in their life.
 
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