hurdle making at C.A.N.Ws weekend in the woods.

http://www.canw.woodlandrecollections.org/gallery/main.php?cmd=album&var1=WITW_2012

weekend in the woods, i was making hurdles (Sam Ansell was tutor). i really enjoy making hurdles and, having previously made a small one out of purely round wood, enjoyed cleaving the sticks and weaving and twisting the cleft rods (aswell as the rounds.) good hard brain and body occupying work.

this is me with my hurdle a bit further on. i was pleased because the hurdle turned out neat looking (unusual for me…) without much direct effort in that area. Lornas is in the forground.

this year we held a mini Coppice Olympics, first event was seeing how many people we could fit in polish petes van. you can see my hat, good effort on lornas (on dashboard) and Sams (in the footwell) parts. 17 was the total and a new PB for the van.

next event…leaf put (like shot put biut with a hazel leaf- no blowing)

grace and ian ‘ten trees taylor’, lines men/women, umpires, judges and general peace keepers for the event. the event was run in imperial measure ments the winner was 77 inch or something similar by newly christened kieth ‘the leaf’.

final event, a full egg and spoon(hazel) hurdle sprint. the bloke in the hat won overall (sorry ive forgotten the name).

well…

ive moved out of the flat i was living in (leaving the internet and laptop behind), so  my updates on this blog have become a bit spaced out (time wise…). but its good; not being on the internet, makes you realize how much time you waste on what is basically a massive advert for rich people to get richer….

pinning the hide, stretched around a frame to dry.

we have been saw-milling in the rusland valley. allthough planks are usefull and beautifull when done, the amount of machine maintenance and fuel to spend time and money on, makes me feel like it will be a potential branch to a buisness that i wont want to do. its also massively unpleasant. (its cleave and hew cleave and hew for me i think…)

exhibition at farfield mill.ive demo’d adzing and done two kids workshops (cleft boxes and besom brooms.) because of the exhivbition having funding these are paid and were great fun in theyre own chaotic ways. (thanks to viki naylor for helping me witht the 17 kids that arrived at the same time to make boxes!) this photo is my shelves i made in the exhibition.

my table in the exhibition. both this and the shelves sold and i got a comission to make a coffee table that matches the three layer table… which is a great feeling and makes me think there may be a wee light at the end of the tunnel for me as a ‘buisness’, hopefully not too bright though.

banjo in the exhibtion.

weve been felling in stoney hazel.this is my biggest tree there! not that impressive but very branchy and wieghted funny across a dip in the terrain.

weve also been felling (and dressing out) in a coppice ian cut when he first began his buisness. its not too bad, very bramblely and poor density (not dense enough) in some places where there are big shady yew trees the owner doesnt want felling. Mostly finding gnarly hurdle rods which im hopefully going start making hurdles with and hedging stakes.

bowls properly and other things

a cleft oak gate made by James (its a big 6ft one for a space in a deer fence.)

this is the spring/handle mechanism ian made from cleft oak to ensure it stays shut. looks good and works well.

i did a bowl carving day with Steve Tomlin- i was mostly interested in becoming efficient in tool finish and overall shape.these are his bowls he brought for discussion.

after cleaving the freshly cut birch log i brought we found quite a twist in it. i decided,as i often do, to run before i could walk and create an unusual slanted bowl, lower at one end than the other.

Steve puts particular wieght on the design of his stuff. ths is something id never really thought of,-more of a suck and see style usually! so we drew on the blank, using techniques such as using compasses to create balance and symmetry etc.

a spoon of Steves i decided to base the bowl design on.

Using the hand adze properly was a massive development, holding it in two hands and taking big swings directly ‘into’ (rather than with) the grain made the adzing take about a quarter of the time it had previously taken me.

to see more photos of the bowl and the bowl carving day, have a look on Steves blog at stevetomlincrafts.wordpress.com/ (which is also in my links)

developing the banjo- i bent a piece of oak green (about 5mm thick) around the steel form i had and left it for a few days, then i cut it down to length and put it inside the banjo hoop- the intention being that i can push it up against the skin to create more tension in places where the skin gets damp.

i also glued a thin piece of rams horm onto the bridge to give a little bit more brightness and volume to the sound of the bridge. THis is the bridge pre final filling down to size.

willow and bowl.

using birch from moss and heights and spring wood (after a work day earlier in the month.) i decided to have a go at carving a swedish style bowl with the BHMAT hand adze i am borrowing. this is the first stage of the process.

after finishing the inside shape i then used an axe to do the outside shape, struggle to do this efficiently and feel like i still didnt get the shape i was after.

I finished the inside with a spoon knife.

We have done the cutting at Ians willow patch. it was a really bonny day, frosty and sunny.

post cutting. ( did my cutting with bill hook, it was as fast as chainsaw, faster than loppers and mostly neat but some did shatter on the weaker stools- have to wait and see how (and if) they come back up again next year.

because of my recent attempts and aspirations to make willow baskets i persuaded ian that i should grade the willow. firstly we did this by height with a chart on the floor., simply picking them from the bundle starting with the biggest ones.)

this was a bit slow as the willow was difficult to separate neatly, Ian has seen the same process done from an upright barrel which i can imagine is a far more effective technique.

i borrowed the BHMAT tormek ages ago and finally had a go on it, i found it difficult to get the technique for setting it up right and found that the success of it mostly seems to rely on set up… i did a chisel to a reasonable edge. I also did a load of work on a second (or more) hand drawknife i bought but resorted in the end to a file because the knifes handles seemed to get in the way at any potentially useful angle

Ive been given a Rams horn by a friend to try on bridges and nuts for the banjo. so i began working it (and some bridges) with files and rasps and knives so far it seems reasonably successful- now to try glueing it and see how it goes.

pre christmas 2

alexander course- although it looks lie im fed up with this bloke and about to hit him with the maul, i enjoyed the chance to think about how i (and we) move and use our bodies during specific tasks in our work and how we can improve in terms of efficiency and to be physically less stressful.

i did my first days felling at stoney hazel with ian and james. were in a very boggy section cutting mainly birch and alder. it went quite well i felt as i had some quite large trees that were near a fence, i managed not to fell any trees directly onto the fence and had none hung up majorly. i enjoyed it too, felling combines a good mental and physical days exercise.

pre christmas

We did a cleft oak fence for a house near Pendleton. this is the original softwood one.

the fence went round in an arc shape so we had to do a lot of shaping on the tenons on the cleft rails as we put the fence in.

a farm cat from up the track came to cadge some food, he was quite a pushy little fella.

James invited me to join him at his stall at the Kendal brewery arts centre Christmas craft fair. i tried an experiment with kerf bent cleft oak Christmas cards with carved and pyrographed fronts.

this our set up. we both did well, kept busy with gypsy flowers and christmas trees. i sold all but one of my 16 spoons, sold out of butter knives (1) and my sold yew bowl. We even sold one of ians pimps! i also had a lot of interest in the banjo with a lot of questions and general interest and also a potential commission for the next one.

Christmas trees were a quick and easy way to double the value of each piece of gypsy flower wood, using the pointy bit left, carving it some ‘leaves’ and putting it on a small willow off cut.

magic wand for the world famous magic Karl.

banjo.

joint and neck dowel joint.

hoop bottom, where neck will screw to neck dowell.

hoop bottom screw from inside.

neck attached to hoop.

making the friction tuning pegs. the starting blank on the left and my first go (‘test peg’) on the right.

after rouglhy shaping the blanks i used a peg shaper, which is like a pencil sharpener which creates an even taper on the peg.

the peg shaper’s taper fits exactly with that of this reamer.

i did a test to test what depth to ream to.

i tried using oak for the pegs but when being turned in the shaper, it basically cleft the oak. i chose to use walnut as it has a closer grain.

here are the walnut pegs. i made a slight mistake on the drilling of the peg holes, drilled the bottom two to close together and had to make the handle on the bottom two pegs smaller so they could turn.

i whittled a (sheep leg) bone nut.

oak bridge and tailpiece.

the split happened because of the grain running perpendicular to pull of the tension.

when tensioning the strings the tailpiece split.

oiling (tung oil)

ian at lakeland coppice products quality controlling the product.

back to eaves wood.fire wood extracting.

eaves wood -top section. the regrowth is ok but the stools are still pretty few and far between. a few of the layers had come out of the ground (probably due to it being near impossible to find any depth of soil on the limestone.

eaves wood bottom section. better but still sparse, a few layers also hadnt stayed down.

quick shelves

needed some shelves for the flat so i made some a quick as i could without rushing.

theres a back column of peeled oak with the top shelve attached to it with oak pegs. and the other shelves wedged into slots in the back colum (pegged together at the front, with the bottom one also having legs pegged to the front of it to act as legs.)

i did no finishing so to speak of- just adze, axe and spoke shave.

other pictures

apple day in Stavely. Lorna and I made collection’ boxes for the events at apple day in stavely in the ‘log to box’ style, except with a slot in the top and angled cuts on the lid so it would slide in and out but not fall off.

Also on the apprenticeship gathering we visited High Grove, which apparently belongs to Prince Charles but i didnt spot him. They have recently been bringing old coppice back into proper rotation (whereas before individual products were poached from stools as and when.) For a none deer fenced site, the re-growth was very good and the stools contained promising sticks to.

this is a timber framed, shake roofed, barn down at Westonbirt arboretum. We visited Westonbirt as part of the apprenticeship gathering, it has coppice coups which have been cut several times by Brian Williamson (whos website youll find on the links page) and some serious trees.

sawmilling yak.

this is a photo ian too of me filling in my assessments for charcoaling, coppicing and firewooding.

weve been making a few post and rail fences for a couple of orders recently. this is me using the chain morticer for the mortices on the posts.