Bowl Carving

I got hold of some Sycamore logs the other day with the intention of slicing them up to make blanks for walking stick handles to give to members of a local club. The logs are rippled and burry so I thought I'd have a go at making a large bowl out of one of them. The bowl is going to be a real tour de force as I only intend using hand tools and the blank is about 2ft by about 16" wide. In the above picture I have already started work with the Karlsson Bowl Adze and hollowed out quite a lot of material. This is the underside:

I love working with Sycamore, it is easy to work green, is quite resistant to splitting whilst drying and ends up as quite a durable hard timber once seasoned. On top of that of course is the fact that it is food safe which makes it ideal for kitchenware. It's going to take me a while to complete but I can tell with all that ripple figure and burr clusters it will look stunning once it is dry and oil finished. Here's a close up of some of the burring:

Here you can see the scooping marks left by the adze. I love this tool- it can waste material very quickly with full swings but can get towards a refined finish as you shorten the swings and use both hands interlocked to hold the handle.

The tool in the bowl is one of the Crook knives that Rob Wood advocates on his bowl carving courses and I believe is inspired by the ones used by Northwest Indian tribes in the USA. I can certainly recommend one if ever you do one of Rob's courses. Here I'm using it to clean up the adze marks. At this stage I'm not going for a final surface finish- rather removing the deepest adze marks whilst the timber is still wet and easy to waste.

Progress being made to thin the walls and smooth out the inner surface. Once I've done this I'll set the bowl aside for a good few days and allow it to dry before returning to it and take some finish cuts.

Here's something interesting I picked up on ebay recently. They're a couple of Snell Boring Machines, made in the USA. They were intended for making the mortice holes for barn roof beams. One of them is a fixed vertical borer, the other having an adjustable angle of attack. This will prove useful I hope for boring the mortice holes for chair/stool/bench legs.

Great thing about this purchase was the fact that it came with a complete set of augers in really good condition from 2" down to 1/2". They just need a good clean up.

Shavehorse

I have struggled on long enough now without a Shavehorse but enough is enough, time to make one. First job is to split out a large log for the bench of the horse. I suspect mine will have to spend most of its time outdoors , so I have elected to use Oak with its high Tanin content. I enjoy using hand tools as much as possible so I crosscut a 6ft log with a handsaw, split it with wedges and a mallet, and flattened the top surface roughly with an old British Rail Adze I was given. I am interested in texture in my woodworking so took the opportunity to experiment with Knives, an Adze and Gouges whilst smoothing out the surface. Working at dusk on a nice sunny evening is great with the low light for showing up any imperfections.

Next job is to source some suitable material for the legs. Again I will be using either Oak or Chestnut for durability. The leg tenons will be 1 1/2". There are many patterns of shavehorse, dependant on the primary function it will be put to. I intend to make something similar to this one I used recently on a course with Owen Jones- the cumbrian Swill maker

Blackthorn Pt1

This year seems, like last year, to have yielded a bumper crop of Sloes on the Blackthorn bushes here in Yorkshire. Unlike last year though I have harvested some to make my own Sloe Gin. Sloes are like small plums slightly smaller than black grapes that are extremely bitter to taste straight off the vine, as it were, but are used to flavour Gin for a warm winter hip flask filler. There are many fancy recipes on the internet for Sloe gin involving the addition of Cloves and other aromatic herbs and spices, but I'm sticking to basic advice from friends who have made Sloe gin for years. I will be adding 1/3 by volume of Sugar, Sloe berries, and cheapo Gin from the local supermarket, Into an air tight container.

It is important to prick the skins of the Sloes before they are added, which is a rather tedious task. The advice is to pick your Sloes after the first frosts, but the ones I picked yielded very easily so I think they are nice and ripe. Once the ingredients have been blended together, the containers should be stored in a warm , dark place such as an airing cupboard. The mixture should be agitated every day for the first week , then once a week there after to mix the sugar. If the Sloe Gin is made now it should be ready for Christmas, when the container contents are strained through muslin before the gin is ready to drink. I am going to make 3 or 4 batches to experiment with sweetness ie:- sugar volumes. I'm sure none of it will be wasted because my son starts university next month!!

I'll blog more soon about other uses for Blackthorn,

Recent work

Well I,ve been away for a while during the holiday season but I have been busy making woody stuff when I've had the time. I'll make a post on my holidays and some of the places I've been to (including some enjoyable but costly days at the races) anon ; but for now I'll update on some of the things I've made.
Firstly, some bowls i've made just for the hell of it, from logs I had laying about the place. The large one on the left is about 14" long and is in Sycamore, the smaller one on the right is Blackthorn. I deliberately made these with rounded bottoms so they would find their own central gravity point. To my surprise they are actually quite stable; even when you start loading them up. One of the lads at the Stickmaking club said the Blackthorn one reminded him of a freshwater mussel;- I can see what he means. That particular bowl was carved extremely thin (about 1/8th inch) and done green. Just after it was finished it was very pliable but now its like a nutshell.

Apart from messing about with those bowls for fun I've had a couple of commissions to make. First is a bench I promised my gaffer at work for the locker room for us to use whilst getting ready for pt etc. He was quoted £250 for a nasty plastic thing, so I fished out this scabby looking Elm plank which I paid £4 for. Ok it needed at lot of work doing with it but in the end the grain looks stunning for a coat or 4 of Teak Oil. The legs are Oak by the way. I chose these timbers because the bench will be in a potentially moist atmosphere and both contain a lot of Tannic Acid.

Finally for now another job that I got because of my inability to say no. I'm no woodturner but I do have a lathe and dabble. Somehow I ended up making some stair spindles for a friend of a friend of a friend. It took me ages measuring and turning to end up making these 3 copies from an original broken Victorian spindle- I'll get a pint out of it if I'm lucky!!

Carving a wooden spoon Pt3

Here's how the Sycamore spoon/ladle turned out. I think I took these pictures after an initial 3 or 4 day soaking in a bain marie that I have full of cold pressed linseed oil (aka flax seed oil). It takes quite a while for the oil to fully cure and the wood benefits greatly from subsequent soakings from time to time. I find that I can get a better tooled finish on some timbers if I do the final finishing cuts AFTER a soaking in oil. I guess this is due to fibres consolidating and the lubricating action of the oil.

The delicate finishing cuts may incorporate some of the cuts described in previous posts but in the most part , I use the 'thumb push' stroke. As illustrated below , the thumb of the hand not holding the knife handle either pushes the blade through the wood, removing small shavings; or , the thumb acts as a fixed fulcrum point, and the knife hand performs a sweep to remove the shaving.

Here are some spoons I recently made as gifts for folk. I've experimented with a bit of ornamentation 'Sundqvist style' to make them bespoke. Most of the top set are in Rhododendron, and the bottom one is in Whitebeam. I use instant coffee to fill the engraving cuts.

Green Woodwork course

Well it's been ages since my last post so over the next few days I'll post some catch ups on what I've made and been up to. Last things first, I went on a course in Clissett Woods near Ledbury, Herefordshire last week and thoroughly enjoyed myself. The specific course was titled 'Sculptural and Garden Seating'. I have the intention of making rustic style chunky municipal benches in the near future, from the abundant felled Oak which gets mostly chipped round here; so thought this would be an ideal starting point.

The courses are run by well respected Greenwoodworker and furniture designer, Gudrun Leitz. She is a co-owner of Clissett Wood along with 6 other syndicate members. One of the original partners was Mike Abbott, another well known green woodworker and author, but Mike has now moved on and has his own woods. I soon learned that the course title is not a strict mantra, as many students wanted to just make a small chair or stool for indoors- which was easily accommodated. Gudrun has assembled a team of assistants who help course students along the way and attend to the cooking in the camp kitchen. These assistants were really good and made our crazy project ideas an attainable reality- thanks alot guys and gals.

This is the outdoor workshop looking out from the kitchen area.In the foreground are the sawing breaks, to the left is the cleaving area and beyond that the shavehorses and pole lathes. The whole area is under suspended light tarps, which seem to magnify the light and allowed those of us chose to camp on site to work late into the night.

And turn through 180degrees to look back into the camp kitchen. This is very much the hub of the operation; where meals are cooked, components are kiln dried and folk share ideas and learn from each other's booboos!! I was lucky- we had a great bunch of folk from all walks of life coming together for tea breaks and sharing a common enthusiasm for green woodwork.

This is a poor picture taken on my phone but it shows the cooking range with bellows, in the foreground the wooden access to the wood drying kiln and on top - the bell shaped clay oven. there is no shortage of fuel of course in the form of knotty coppice material from the woodland management scheme.

This is the steamer box, used for steaming components such as back splats and chair hoops prior to bending. You can see some formers and cauls used to shape the pieces into their new shape. The chair hoop in the foreground is a Chestnut pole that has been formed by this method.

Finally for now, a really poor picture of the fruits of my labour back at home. If you fancy having a go at one of these courses I couldn't recommend them highly enough. It is very intense however so make sure you get stuck into the work from day one, if you want to complete your project; one or 2 people dithered for the first couple of days, and as a result, really struggled to complete. Also I recommend camping or staying in one of the shelters on site as this made the experience 5 times more enjoyable. I made some really good friends sitting round the camp fire with a tipple and having a laugh and joke- cheers guys, what a hoot!!

A trip to Ashley Iles

I don't know how to create a link but Ashley Iles have their own website, they are a very small company who make Woodturning and Woodcarving tools, as well as sharpening systems. They have a policy of allowing clubs and associations to visit their tiny factory near Horncastle in lincolnshire, for a guided tour and opportunity to pick their brains.

We have a Stickmaking club in our village called the 5 towns stickmakers club, so decided to visit them yesterday. The factory really is tucked away in the middle of nowhere and could easily be overlooked as just another farm outbuilding.

The company is now run by brothers Tony and Barry Iles, with a small team of employees. The whole of the chisel making process is is very much done by hand, but using some very old but reliable Sheffield plant. This picture shows how a typical chisel evolves through the process; the top left being the Manganese steel billet as it arrives at the factory and the one at the side of it shows the bolster and tang having been drawn out on the power hammer.At this stage it is called a Mood.

Here's Barry giving us the low down on the incredible power hammer that pounds the mood from above and below simultaneously.

And here are the Hollow and Round formers that correspond to the radii of the various gouges.

These are loaded into a press to form the curvature required.

As we passed from the heavy plant forging side into the grinding and finishing side, we were shown ashley's clock-maker's anvil, apparently it is mounted in horse manure to get the necessary "ring". It has various angled cut outs to wedge work pieces and "devils" for bending and forming.

From there Tony took over and showed us how the tools were hand ground on massive grindstones, about 3ft diameter. These stones are man made and imported from Austria. Each one lasts about 18month to 2yrs and it's a major operation changing and re balancing them before normal grinding can recommence.

We were also shown various linishing stages but it was difficult to photograph due to limited space. Before we left we went upstairs to have a look at the finished goodies. I decided to treat myself to an 1 1/4" bent gouge that I will use for hand hewn bowls.
All in all a very worthwhile trip and nice to see a UK tool company thriving in the 21st century. I will endeavour to support this small family run business in the future, having seen the attention given to producing quality tools