The Wood County Historical Center and Museum will be highlighting several updates to the museum at its Spin into Spring event on Saturday.

The museum closed for the winter in December, and the spring opening will feature demonstrations and new exhibits added over the winter.

“The big change is the opening of the log cabin,” said Kelli Kling, marketing and events coordinator for the museum.

The Buck family log cabin was relocated to the museum grounds from Penta Career Center’s campus in 2007.

The cabin is furnished as it would have been around 1865, Kling said.

There will be quilting demonstrations on a loom in the cabin, while inside the museum there is a new gallery space which will have a quilt exhibit.

The exhibit is in conjunction with the Wood County 4-H’s Quilt Square Trail, a series of large plywood quit squares that can be found outside around the county, including at the museum.

There is also a room inside dedicated to the history of 4-H in Wood County, said Jenny Morlock, 4-H program assistant.

“Having a history from 1919 till now is quite a longevity,” Morlock said.

With more than a thousand kids currently in 4-H in Wood County, it’s important for them to know where it started, Morlock said.

Making the past relevant to the present is a mission of the museum.

“It’s not the dusty old past,” Kling said. “We want to show our history, but also make it relevant.”

One way of doing that is through the “I love the 80s” exhibit, Kling said. This exhibit compares the 1880s and 1980s.

“People my age like to walk through and say ‘Oh my gosh, I remember that from when I was a kid,’” Kling said.

The exhibit is also nice because people can actually touch the objects from the 1980s, Kling said.

When people can touch an object or see a demonstration, it makes history more exciting, Kling said.

Blacksmithing demonstrations seem to be one way to make history exciting.

“I don’t know what it is . . . [but students] remember the blacksmith when they get back to school,” said Bob Willman, a board member of the Northwest Ohio Blacksmiths. “All boys that age want to make swords.”

He will be one of roughly a dozen blacksmiths demonstrating the craft on Saturday.

Willman has used his blacksmithing skills to make improvements around the property. This includes crafting a mechanism to hang cooking pots at adjustable heights over the fire in the log cabin.

Spin into Spring will occur on Saturday from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. Donations of $4 for adults and $1 for children are suggested.