The delegates in my Constitutional Crisis class have expressed the need for a gavel, to bring order when the inevitable clamors of everyone talking at once occur. I could draw from our departmental budget to buy a very nice one online for a reasonable price, but that’s not Hanley’s way. What’s the fun of buying, when I can make something? And it just so happens that a recent windstorm gave me just the materials I needed. So…
Step 1: Go out to the burn pile in the back yard, thinking that it’s so unseasonably cool that this evening might be a good night to have a campfire, and grab that perfect size branch that blew down last week.
Step 2: Gather the necessary tools.
Step 3: Guesstimate how big the head should be–about a hand’s width seemed right–cut out that much of the branch, and drill 1/2″ hole in it for the handle, going about 1 1/2″ deep, to ensure a solid connection.
Step 4: From a smaller windfall branch, guesstimate a good handle length and cut it off. Screw up the first one by cutting it much too short, go get another small branch, and get the right length the second time. Then use the utility knife and rasp to narrow and round one end to fit in the hole you drilled in the head. You could select a straighter stick, but the crooked look emphasizes the naturalness of the material. Also, without a lathe you cannot get a perfectly straight handle, so a bit of exaggeration of the crookedness helps it read as an intentional design choice, rather than as a failure to achieve straightness.
Step 5: Trim off sharp nubs where other small branches came off this one. The head has a bulge on one side, and the handle is not uniform in dimension, but you do not want to eliminate these natural variations; you only want any bumps to be smooth, and comfortable to grip, rather than pointy and sharp. Your students will appreciate this, especially the spoiled ones with soft hands who’ve never done a day’s labor in their life.
Step 6: Make sure the handle fits the head, trimming and rasping until it fits in snugly. Pause to admire your work.
Step 7: Although you got the fit of handle to head nice and tight, and are feeling rather smug about that, glue the damn thing so it doesn’t fly off in class and hit a student in the face.
Step 8: Stain, if you want. You may be tempted to leave it totally natural looking, but you might decide that the shape is natural enough and that staining it would give it a nice finished look. So sand the wood down to get rid of dirt and some of the surface staining, but because you want to leave some of the natural look, do not go deep enough to remove all color variation. This shows up as intended in the staining, although if you choose a dark enough color the variation will be subtle.
Be sure to make a mistake here, too. Wait the required 6 hours for the first coat to dry, then being lightly rubbing the surface with a fine grade steel, and only then realize that because of the unseasonably cool weather, the stain is still tacky and now you have bits of steel wool stuck to it. Swear, switch to a fine grade sandpaper to sand out the steel wool, and go to bed frustrated. Wake up in the morning and apply the second coat of stain while your morning coffee is brewing. Let it dry and admire the finished product. Repeatedly ask your spouse, “What do you think, doesn’t it look great?” until they fling the gavel at your head.
Step 9: Write a blog post about it. You’ve already done the hard work, so go for the low-cost value added.
Step 7 = please hammer don’t hurt ’em.Report
Wow! That is so cool!Report
Thank you, Tod.Report
Hanley’s Gavel. I like the sound of that. (Could you make a virtual version to keep all us blabberers in line when commenting on your posts?)
As much as I like the woodworking aspect (awesome) and the over-the-top Professorial Coolness of this (impressive), I think it’s innerstin that the kids (the delegates? the Founders?) require leadership in order to establish a constitution. We all need a rule enforcer, I guess, no? And it doesn’t hurt to have a natural symbol of that authoritah.Report
A. That’s Dave’s job. I’m one of the last folks here to whom you’d want to give that authority.
B. All committes of any size need a chair. Remember the American Framers chose Washington as chair at their constitutional convention. I don’t know if had a gavel or not, but he was the type who probably didn’t need one. But none of my students has that carefully cultuvated aura of authority or heroic status.Report
“All committes of any size need a chair”
Even itty-bitty committees?Report
Even itty-bitty committees?
Someone has to be on the hook to guarantee a committee report gets done, and swear to the veracity of said report.Report
It just seems like on a small-enough committee (say, 2) that providing that kind of infrastructure and support would just be unnecessary padding.Report
Small reports tho, since the chairs themselves are so tiny.Report
Glyph,
An itty bitty committee can get by with just one chair, but a larger committee will need multiple chairs, unless it’s a standing committee.Report
@james-hanley
Intentional or not, you just out-Glyphed @glyph .Report
Begging the question… why must order be brought?Report
Everybody talking at once is unproductive, and usually it means they’re getting goofy, and hald the simuktaneous yammering is just jokes and other nonsense (it’s really just like a blog thread). They’re not striving for fascistic orderliness, they just want a tool to get everyone’s attention when things get out of hand.Report
Heh, sorry, I should have been more obvious in my sarcasm.
Along similar lines, I (generally) require my students to raise hands during meeting or lesson times to maintain order and structure to our discussions. I also insist that, during lunch, they raise their hand if they’d like more food (we serve from a central source); this is to avoid a chorus of “I WANT MORE!” These are the only times I require the hand raising. And during informal moments, they’ll just approach me and start talking. Like normal. But sometimes when I sit with them at lunch and we’re having informal dialogue around the table, they’ll start raising their hands to speak. “You don’t need to raise your hands to talk during lunch. We’re just chatting.” Yet they still do. I think they just like the little bit of structure it gives as they are not yet fully capable of structuring group conversation for an extended period.Report
Ummm… Don’t you need another hunk of wood, one of those coaster-looking things — I have no idea what they’re called, to pound this thing against? Otherwise I’m seeing a desktop or two getting the snot beat out of it.
Apart from that, cool bit of woodworking.Report
A sounding block. I could make one. But if they’re beating the table that hard they’ll probably break the gavel.Report
The hardest part for me would be getting step 4 right. It must take a real bit of skill (and practice) to narrow the end of the handle enough but not too much so that it would fit snugly inside the hole.Report
@murali
That part worried me most, but it was really an issue of repeated fit testing. I used a small object to measure the depth of the hole then mark that depth on the handle, then used the utility knife to whittle away some woof, being careful not to take too much, then used the rasp to round it and remove more wood, frequently checking the fit. It went surprisingly well, considering I don’t have practice doing that, and my skills trend toward rough carpentry rather than finish work.Report
@james-hanley
Ok, that makes sense. One further question, I’m still worried that the glue will come loose and the head will end up flying off and putting someone’s eye out. Wouldn’t it be more structurally sound to drill all the way through, secure the rod with two pegs and further secure the pegs by nailing it to the head?Report
@murali
It would be both more structurally sound and less aesthetically pleasing.
I anticipate–based on my experience with old furniture–that the loosening handle will become obvious long before the head is likely to fly off. And wood glue really does make quite a strong bond. I have in the past broken glued pieces of wood before I was able to separate them. Generally, lots of torquing and twisting will loosen a glued piece over time.
I probably could, with my nail gun, put a nail or two through it, but that seems inelegant to me.Report
@murali
Why bother with the nail(s)? If the mortise is deep enough to allow a hardwood peg all the way through the head of the gavel, all parts properly glued up, and I’d bet the gavel would outlast all of us, even given the low quality of the wood in the head and handle. For that matter, even the way James did it, I’d bet the wood fibers in the handle fail before the glue does.Report
@james-hanley @michael-cain
Fair enoughReport
@michael-cain
a hardwood peg all the way through the head of the gavel,
Do you mean a peg that goes through the tang of the handle? I like that idea and could do that. I’d need a drill press to line it up right, though. Still, maybe that’s a project for later, or maybe for my next gavel (our political science honors club, a chapter of Pi Sigma Alpha, the National Political Science Honors Society, has in the past expressed desire for a gavel, too).
even given the low quality of the wood in the head and handle.
I beg your pardon? The wood is silver maple. I wouldn’t build a cabin from it, but it’s perfectly suitable for this.Report
If an apology is in order on the wood quality, I offer it. Silver maple or no, I’ve never seen a chunk of deadfall that didn’t have problems.
Tang, tenon… the part of the handle that fits into the hole drilled into the head. Yeah, you’d probably need a drill press to do a reasonable job, and it would be gross overkill for this. Depending on the fit, you probably wouldn’t need glue. People built houses and furniture with no metal fasteners, just pegs, that have lasted for centuries. I’ve always loved — but have not a prayer of ever acquiring the patience or skill to do — Japanese joinery where the pieces look like a 3D puzzle that you can’t figure out how they were fitted together.Report
Ah, what I could do with that gavel and a black robe. ‘Cause you know, it’s ALL about the gavel!
That’s a nice gavel you got there!Report