Colonial Woodworking techniques

[Tom Bender]

Make a miter box and let them saw some miters on soft trim. Quick and easy and if you keep a few bandaids and tweezers handy it should be safe enough.

[Dan Sheehan]

In my experience with the youth, the spokeshave and drawknive are big hits for hands on activities. If you have a shave horse all the better. How about a M/T joint in a timber by hand with an auger bit and framing chisels. A demonstration of Square Rule or Scribe layout might be interesting.

You might contact the Timber Framers Guild to see if you could post on their site.. Those guys often like demos as opportunities for free publicity. There was also a guy named Adam Cherubini in that area who did demos at some historical site. Haven't heard of him for some time. But he had the whole costume and was very good.