Friday, September 12, 2014

JOTMOST Underway For Veterans


A young lady tries out the spokeshave at my booth during the Ayer Fourth of July celebration at the town park. Photo by Amelia Pak-Harvey, used by permission of Nashoba Publishing.

JOTMOST, the Joseph O. Thornton Memorial Open Shop Time for veterans, has been going well. I currently have four participants learning hand tool woodworking skills in my basement workshop on Wednesday evenings.

This is a free program open to all US military veterans and active duty, any service, any era. Full information is available here.

One of my past students came over for the first session and wanted to help pay for things. So I used his donation to stock up on materials for the program at Parlee Lumber in Littleton (they celebrate their 200th anniversary as a small working lumber mill next year!).

Generosity begets generosity; as I was chatting with the yard manager at Parlee and told him what I was using the lumber for, he told me to take a couple of extra pieces off the stack.

To help get word out, I setup a booth at the Ayer, MA Fourth of July celebration. I had a number of people of various ages stop by and try out the tools.

I also sent a notice to the town Veteran's Officer, and he very kindly posted it on the town website and Facebook page, helping to bring several people in.

The reporter from the local paper who had taken the photo above asked if she could do a story, so she visited the workshop a couple weeks ago to meet several veterans and get some photos. She wrote up a very nice story that you can read here.

While I only have space for four people at a time, if you're interested in attending or know someone who might be, I can start a wait list and notify you when a spot becomes available.