Historic Warwick Blog: Woodworking: Making a Shaving Horse and Using It to Make a Bench

Sunday, April 1, 2012

Woodworking: Making a Shaving Horse and Using It to Make a Bench

When: Sat., May 19 10-5PM & Sun. May 20, 10-5PM.

Where: Hasbrouck Carriage Barn (Behind Baird’s Tavern, 105 Main Street )

Tuition: $375 includes shaving horse kit, vintage draw knife, slab wood, and length of wood for legs. Sandpaper provided.

This weekend class would entail putting together a pre-fabricated shaving horse kit prepared by instructor Dave Washburn. Students will receive a vintage draw knife with the kit. Once the shaving horse is assembled, students will create a bench out of slab wood. Students will drill holes in slab wood with bit and brace, create legs on their shaving horse, assemble and sand to satisfaction a bench to take home.
The Warwick Historical Society is offering skills workshops for veterans , but anyone else interested in taking a class is welcome too. Orange County has a very large number of returning veterans, and we want to offer them opportunities to learn about some traditional arts and skills that they might enjoy doing and which might inspire a side business for them in the future. There will be a 10 percent discount on tuition for veterans with an ID.

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At our Summer History Camp this year kids will dig up crystals that fluoresce under a special black light. The crystals were actually discovered in the area as early as the 1820s and collectors from all over the United States and Europe came to the specifically places like Amity in the Town of Warwick to find these rare specimens for their museums, universities and their private collections. One of the largest off site exhibitions of these crystals is found in the Ecoles des Mines in Paris; there are over 150 samples of minerals specifically from Amity, NY in that collection which were discovered in large in the 1830s. What is interesting to imagine is that geologist and mineralogists from the greatest institutions of higher learning were traveling by horseback and carriage to the wilds of Warwick in the 1820s and 1830s to find rocks for their cabinets of curiosities.

Wawayanda Furnace ( 19th century ) the furnace that many of us remember seeing on our trips to the New Jersey State Park actually was integral to iron ore production supplied by Warwick mines. On a recent sojourn into the woods we visited some local iron ore mines that would have supplied the mid-nineteenth century Wawayanda Furnace. Of course, these operations were supplanted by the end of the nineteenth century when places with better quality ore that were closer to cheaper forms of transportation, like water and rail shut them down.

Ken Hamilton, "Woodlands Interpreter", will present the early 18th century life of Algonquin-speaking people, like the Minsi people of the Lenape tribe, of what was later named by Benjamin Aske as "Warwick." Here we see a trade camp with historially accurate artifact reproductions produced by Mr. Hamilton by hand; he an accomplished leatherworker, blacksmith and silversmith. As an "historical artifact artist", Mr. Hamilton produces props used in many living history scenarios and museums throughout the country. He will share some of his knowledge with campers at the Summer History Camp 2012. See further details.