Injecting testosterone

So on Sunday, after church, the girls went off to a birthday party and it was just the boys and I at home. They wanted one of their friends to come by and play so that was authorized and we all headed home. After lunch, they went outside to see what trouble they could get into and decided they wanted to fashion some swords to duel on the front lawn. I saw this as the perfect opportunity to take these young men aged 10, 7 and 5 and inject testosterone in them! We began by going over a few real swords carefully. We were careful with the blades to not cut anyone or anything but it gave them all a feel for which sword style they wanted to copy. The two young ones were looking at the short sword and the oldest wanted an orc sword from Lord of the Rings. So off to the shop we went! We began with a large piece of 1/2" PVC pipe and some people would have hacked off a chunk with the hacksaw and started hitting each other, but since I wanted to help these boys with some man work I made it very complicated! We first tried out various hand positions to see what length was needed. We marked the length and then cut it with the air-powered cutoff tool. Then the 6" belt sander was fired up to clean up the ends. Now the boys held the swords again to determine how much of a handle they wanted so we could mark that spot and begin with the handguard. Of course, the easy method would have been to hack off another chunk of PVC and hook it on making a cross and calling it good. I avoid that when possible! We went to the lathe, selected a 3" diameter chunk of acrylic and proceeded to drill then bore a hole down the center so it could slip over the sword, then we cutoff the appropriate thickness for the handguard. Once that was done and glued into place we decided that the balance was just wrong. We needed some counterweight in the handle, so back to the lathe we went to select a piece of steel, turn it down so it would fit into the PVC sword with a small lip at the end so it would stay in place. We then made that permanent by gluing a PVC cap on the end. By this time we had pretty decent swords so all that was left was to wrap the handle and cover the end with a rag to try and cut down on pain and they went after each other!

The boys all got to learn quite a number of skills. They learned about shop safety and how to handle themselves around the equipment. They all wore eye protection the entire time and had the opportunity to work the machines under my supervision so they could not only end up with a neat toy at the end, but know that they contributed to it being made...they created something! My goal was to help these young men understand that they can do it and they can make it and they can get things done if they just set their minds to it and get to work. The bonus was whacking each other with PVC pipes!