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.

woodland pioneers

its been a bit since woodland pioneers but due to camera problems im only just rounding up a collection of the photos other people have taken of me. We made an oak bridge, hewing the beams, cleaving the pailings and rails for the fence and pegging it all together. not sure what im doing with the mugs, or why im doing it, although i know its not essential for the success of the bridge. To see more pictures of the bridge being built and of anything else that happened on woodland pioneers, click this link to the BHMAT website- http://coppiceapprentice.org.uk/pioneers2011.php#7bridge

on friday, i ran a small morning group on how to make a simple box out of a equally simple log. (its a similar technique to the log to lute but without the neck.)

one i made as an example.

 

Links

Ive just begun a ‘links’ page (above), here im putting links to websites of crafts people, coppice workers, organizatinos and anything else related to my apprenticeship and the things im doing/ have done. have a look and keep checking it as ill add more as i meet more people and do more stuff. nice one.

Bench.

ive broken my phone that i have taken most of my photos on so, from now i will be posting interesting projects/happenings that i can get to with a proper camera and/or with other peoples proper cameras!

for my grandads 80th my mum wanted to give him a benhc. my dad made it from reclamed floor joists and i made the back to fit it (and pegs to fit it with) and carved the words ‘dad’ and some oak leaves and acorns on it. we then used danish oil on it.