Turning Sorbus

First show of the season this weekend and I’m busy making some turned treen and garden products to sell. I’ve wanted to post on turning Sorbus wood for a while. That’s all of them, not just one but I only ever seem to have two of the three at one time. I’ve cheated a little as I have some old dry Whitebeam (Sorbus Aria), a load of Wild Service (Sorbus Terminalis) and recently some pieces of Rowan (Sorbus Acuparia). Turning the Rowan has reminded me just why this is probably my favourite turning wood.  This is the butt section of a small tree, no more than 10 inches in diameter at the base. Typically for Rowan it has a pale creamy wood except for a darker section in the middle.

Being Fresh the wood streams off the chisel in long ribbons and it has plenty of character in the grain. I can turn it all day, but unfortunately I also need to turn some of my fairly dry ash and sycamore so I’ll have to ration my pleasure.

So here are the three Sorbus woods. Wild service on the left, a dibber and a honey drizzler, Rowan for the rolling pin in the middle and a whitebeam dibber on the right (it ended up as a dibber as it was a bit too hard to do anything else with it).

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For Khandles

No, no, Not For Khandles…..Fourc Andles!  Groan, very BIG GROAN!!! I can hear it from here, but the old ones are the best ones and you can only guess how long I’ve been waiting to do that one!

Anyway what prompted this is that I’ve finally got around to putting a new ash handle on a friend’s fork. She’s managed without it very patentially for over a year whilst the job has lingered but then her other for khandle also snapped whilst digging the potatoes so I did this one whilst the weather was bad.

Luckily she was delighted with the new fourc andle, especially because the ash is from a local wood. It’s not cheap getting a new handle put on, I should charge £15 (I won’t say what I charged in this case) and you could buy a new one for that price. But looking at the tines on this fork they are here to stay for a few decades yet and the new tool should easily outlast a cheap imported one. For the environmentally minded amongst us it’s a more sustainable option than buying one shipped from China made with Ore and coal imported from Australia.

Mind you I’ve not managed to reduce the work load as I now have another fork to rehandle and I’ve promised it won’t take a year or more this time.

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Earthburn 2010 – Day 2 onwards

As you will have realised, I didn’t get the chance to post any further updates during the Earthburn last week. Now finally back home after leaving the Earthburn on Friday and going down to the Weald & Downland Museum for the Steam Festival (where the smoke smelt entirely different but I probably fitted in quite well) I can catch up with the story.

The burn started slowly and deceptively gently. Here Mr Jameson tends to the hay and soil covering as the burn creeps down the stack. By late on the first evening all was going well and in the ‘hurry up and wait’ nature of things it looked as if the hard work was over for a while. By just after midnight the top of the kiln was starting to collapse noticeably as the top tier of wood burned. But  I decided to get some sleep and missed all the excitement in the next few hours.

Under the gently exterior the burn was gathering pace and beginning to build up heat. Around about 3am the burn broke through the top of the kiln as woodgas was released and ignited. For the next hours the team fought bravely (or so they told me over breakfast) to contain the burn using water, soil and a few bits of tin lying around the site whilst the heat was gradually reduced and the last of the woodgas burnt off. In my opinion birch has something of a habit of doing this, especially when it’s still slightly green – quite easy to lose your eyebrows and even with my small oildrum kilns it can just about blow the lid off when the gas mixes with oxygen. So I can imagine that controlling a stack of several tons of birch 8 feet tall and 20feet across is quite a dangerous occupation. No wonder a few charcoal burners used to go missing from time to time.

So I missed all of the dramatic photos in the early hours of the morning and by breakfast time it looked as if everything was under control – except that the kiln had reduced in size dramatically overnight.  Alan Waters and Mark Cox debate the next course of action.

Peter Jameson demonstrates just how comfortable the one legged charcoal burners stool can be when you’ve been up since 3am.

One of the team drew this very authentic sketch of the scene using willow (artists) charcoal to hand.

As Thursday (day 2) drew onwards the kiln became progressively more peacefull with the last of the moisture and volatiles driven off the fire is burning right down to the level of the hearth and the smoke is starting to turn bluish. It prooved to be a quieter night though still busy as the hay and earth covering is constantly being tended to whilst the wood contracts under it to prevent the fire breaking through again.

The winds were light throughout the burn which was helpful, but it doesn’t need much movement to fan the flames and make it hard to control the burn evenly around the kiln so these screens were erected, gate hurdles covered in hessian, to reduce the air flow over the kiln.

Jimmy on watch over the kiln inspects the drawing his son Jacob has made of the scene, complete with his dad’s coffee mug.

Unfortunately I didn’t get to see the kiln opened as I had to leave for the next show on Friday. It’s not as simple as leaving it to cool, as you do with metal kilns and oil drums as it’s not possible to completely seal the covering. So the fire has to be put out by using water – though its the boiling of the water into steam which actually stops the fire by reducing the heat and excluding the oxygen, rather than by dowsing or drowning the fire. Once it’s been ‘steamed’ the coals can then be collected, sieved and bagged.

Alongside the charcoal burn were a number of greenwood courses taking place and some demonstrations – including the polelathe so I’ll post on these next.

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Lynchmere – Working in the Barnyard

Somehow we chose one of the hottest days of the year (on Saturday) to hold a volinteers work day up at Mare Barn to clear the back of the yard, dismantle an old fence line and to start putting up a new fence line for a small orchard.

Fence gone, hazel cut back and just the butt of the large red oak left to be dismantled.

Some of the old fenceposts were in good shape. We’ve carefully rolled up the wire for reuse and extracted the posts using one of my high-lift jacks and a strop. the vertical lift from the jack pulls the posts out with ease.

Fresh chestnut posts from the coppice just beyond the fields. Hard work as the soil is now dry and like concrete, and the temperature soared to 30 degrees.  Here we will be planting a small community orchard over the winter with 2 or 3 dozen traditional apple trees – mainly old Sussex varieties such as Knobbly Russet (from Midhurst), Bramshott Rectory (from bramshott only a couple of miles away), Sussex Forge and so on.

So some relaxing scything in the shade seemed a good reward. Yes we reward our volunteers with more hard work! Here Dave joined us in the afternoon and was keen to experience the joys of scything. Hopefully he’s now hooked.

..and of course we Cocked It Up! If you mow the grass for hay on the wrong day and it starts to rain before its ready to take in then a quick way to preserve the hay is to make a haycock which helps the water run off the curing grass. Hence to Cock It Up, is when things don’t go according to plan! I have heard other explanations for the phrase but this one seems to make most sense to me.

I got out a polelathe that I keep at the workshop in the barn. It’s made entirely with wood planked up from the commons, birch and scots pine.  Seb kindly helped me set it up and manned the lathe during the evening.

We finished off with a barbeque for the volunteers and members of The Lynchmere Society to celebrate the handover of the barn and the fields – it’s not often you get to take on the stewardship of a 17th century wealden barn and 50 acres of traditional hay meadow and pasture, hedges and woodland belts.  And then around the bonfire which worked well at keeping the insects at bay. No point in leaving until we’d finished the beer – local of course, Golden Bine and Best from Ballards at Nyewood who are celebrating their 30th anniversery this year.

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Playing with scythes

Making a scythe snathe or handle is a project which I’ve been working on in the background for a while now. But the Somerset Scythe festival is fast approaching and so it’s now or never for my firts scythe snathe. Anyone notice the not so deliberate mistake on this photo? answer at the bottom of this post.

I’ve used one of the Swiss made snathes I currently use as a pattern to guide me but adapted the design to allow me to make a simplified version as a learning experience. The Swiss snathe is made from ash, and although it has a slight curve it has, like most continental snathes, a cranked (extended) lower handhold or nib.

For simplicity I decided to make my first snathe from a straight section of sawn ash (which I milled up a year ago in the hope I’d get around to it). There is something of a debate amongst some scythers about the merits of a curved handle and so by making a straight one I shall also get to try another variation for myself.

The two handholds or nibs I made as a pair by turning a cylinder on the lathe and then reshaving on the horse to something approximating a handgrip shape  – a bit like making two billhook handles.

The metal work at the bottom of the snathe is designed to take the tang of the blade and clamp it but allow for slight adjustment of the angle of the blade. In this case I simply made the fittings from bits of mild steel lying around (one is an offcut from a landrover repair section and the thicker piece is actually part of an old landrover chassis section, cut on the guillotine  and then drilled.

First trial fit of the blade onto the snathe. I am using the same clamps as the swiss handles as they are available quite cheaply from the scytheshop.

Fitting the nibs or handholds onto the snathe. Using a spare section of ash to fashion the crank on the lower handgrip. These fittings are far from perfect but they will do in a pinch and just to be able to try out the handle

which seemed to work reasonably well on its first outing, though its not as well made as I’d like. But that was the aim of this – to learn what works and what doesn’t work. It should allow me to have a spare snathe for the scythe festival later this week. And yes, for the eagle-eyed the nibs are reversed here as I soon realised I’d managed to construct it with the nibs around the wrong way! You just can’t get the staff!

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Heavy Horses

Warning this post contains photographs with somewhat tenuous links with wood – though it is landrover free.

This weekend saw the Heavy Horses and working animals show one of the main events of the calendar at the Weald & Dowland museum. Saturday is a serious competition day when the heavy horse teams compete in a series of races around courses and obstacles. I managed to capture just a little of the energy in this photo as a pair of 1 ton horses thundered down the area.

Highlight of the day is the display by the St Giles steam powered fire pump pulled by a team of 4 heavy horses – though I have managed to turn their full gallop to the fire into a photo that looks more like a Sunday afternoon trot in the park – retaining very little of the magic of the moment.

The pump careers around the arena and then heads to the temporary pond to draw on the water

before dousing the fire with a very impressive jet of water, and on a boiling hot afternoon the crowd were quite grateful for any that found its way towards them.

The museum horses put on a genuinely woody display with Mac showing how to make light work of skidding out a half ton log using a timber arch (or Jim as they used to be known ). The arches in the Museum collection include some massive ones but this one is a more industrial and modern version which is actually used to extract timber from the woods and coppice above the museum.

Before pulling the log up onto the museums horse drawn forwarder in the traditional fashion.

While I remember – does anyone know why a tractor-trailer for extracting timber is called a forwarder? The story I have heard is that the original horse drawn wagons for timber loading included a lock which prevented them rolling backwards on a slope – hence they could only work forwards through the woods. Seems to make sense, but perhaps there are other possible explanations?

Proper Job! Mac (the horse) needed a minimum of instructions as he knew where to stand and how to move.  All that remains is for the log to be secured and Mac to be hitched up and tow away the log but I didn’t get to see the end of the demonstration

as I actually had some work to do, so back to the lathe for me. For some reason it was rolling pin day – sometimes I sell none and just when I think that rolling pins have gone out of fashion I start selling them again.  Sods law because in the heat the ash I was using was quite dry and very hard to get a flat and level finish.

I had the first batch of bowls that I think are just about good enough to sell on the stand. They certainly drew lots of attention – though none have sold yet. But it was more of a dibber, spurtle and rolling pin weekend anyway, and I am at least happy that I am not selling them too cheaply!

After a hectic week it was really good to spend the weekend working in the surroundings of the museum – it is a very special and tranquil place for me as you can see and I think it is a privilege to be able to work there (photo – the Lurgashall water-mill seen through the trees at the edge of the lower pond).

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Shavings – what are yours worth?

Shavings are a waste product for a woodturner. But I’ve never seen it that way, after all I put a lot of effort into producing a vast pile of shavings. The shave horse shavings are perfect firelighters. particularly with a handful of dry lathe shavings and we use them all winter in our woodburner and our open fire. I’ve seen them sold as ‘rocking horse pooh’ but never as a premium product.  They also work during the summer on the bbq  and at shows when they power my kelly kettle.  But do they have other uses? And if so how to establish a value for my shavings?

I have a number of friends and neighbours who keep chickens. When they are away it’s not unusual for us to be on chicken duty to let them out, feed them and shut them up for the night and of course we appreciate the eggs – they make fantastic omelettes. I’m on chicken duty tonight which is what has prompted me to finally get around to posting on this.

I noticed that the bedding is normally commercial softwood shavings which made me think – aren’t my shavings the Rolls-Royce of the chicken bedding world?  Unlike the commercial softwood shavings mine are native hardwood (I don’t turn yew or exotic hardwoods so there is no confusion or danger of mixing up shavings) and the greenwood process limits the amount of dust which is produced.

A few trials soon revealed that my Birch/Ash/Gean/Rowan mixture is indeed far superior and it doesn’t stop there. Robert’s chickens would not sleep on the pine shavings and for a while he was unable to put bedding down until he started using my shavings – and Dave’s chickens refised to go back into the shed when he ran out of my shavings and bought a bag of commercial shavings.

Contrary to rumour, in this case Chickens are not stupid. Some reseach on the interweb thingy reveals that the commonly available commercial softwood shavings have to be filtered to remove the pine dust which can contain nasty chemicals, and other softwoods such as western red cedar are even more of a problem. Whereas the English native hardwoods are not toxic and turning them green means that dust production is eliminated in spindle turning and not too much of a problem in bowl turning.

So in my limited survey 100% of local chickens prefer bodgers bedding! and I’ve cornered the local market in chicken bedding.

Part of the problem is convincing myself to believe that my waste is premium product and has value. The good thing about this use is that is provides a very clear value by comparison with the price of the best chicken/animal bedding in retail outlets.  The retail price comparison also helps to establish a barter exchange on an eggs for shavings basis. I’m happy to take more eggs when there is a glut and to provide more shavings when I have a glut – which is how things should work in my view.

Fire lighting and chicken bedding is a good start, but is there more? A friend in the Hampshire Coppice Craftsmen Group put me on track for the next application when I noticed him selling his oak chips from his shinglemaking at shows. Matt presents them as a premium product by bagging them in hessian sacks – in this case sand bags which are not too hard to get hold of at a reasonable price.

It turns out that if you use a gas barbecue – the one thing you really need to do is provide the cooked food with a genuine woodsmoke flavour. Apparently cooking on wood has never occurred to the modern convenience world, instead they prefer to buy wood chips to provide the smokey flavour – the world is barking mad!

Oak smoked is obvious, but I turn a mix of ash/birch/cherry and rowan is this as useful for smoking food – it turns out after a little more web research that it’s very useful for food smoking.

After talking with Matt I decided to follow a similar line and now sell both lathe shavings (for animal bedding and food smoking) and shave horse shavings (for firelighting and food smoking) at £2 a tightly packed hessian bag – and although I don’t sell a vast amount it does seem about right as I have a limited amount of shavings to sell. But if you have more then Robin Wood, on his blog, recently told us that he is now providing his bowlturning to a local craft business, I think it was a potter but I may have remembered wrongly. as a natural, sustainable and recyclable packing material.

If you haven’t had enough of my shavings yet then Richard Law on his flyingshavings blog will help you out!

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Wot no Rain?

The last May Bank Holiday Monday is always the Surrey County Show. It’s mammoth for a one day show (about 40,000 visitors or more) and it’s a lot of hassle for just one day. It also involves driving into Guildford which is not my favourite past-time on a Band Holiday Monday but at least it’s relatively quiet at 7am. One more thing – I normally know I’m at the Surrey County Show because it rains, but this year it was grey and dry, one might even say warm and muggy in the afternoon.

I demonstrate on the Merrist Wood College stand as a part of the countryside management team – and I get to share the stand with some of the college flock of (I hope I have this right) Badger Faced Welsh Mountain sheep.  A rare occasion when the Welsh name is both shorter and simpler – Torwen. It just goes to show that you can learn something new at every show.

I am at the show to work, but the sheep are only there for a hair cut. Not my idea of fun, a ride through town with your mates at 7am to have your hair cut in front of 40,000 onlookers. Understandably the sheep aren’t too keen either but Keith the college shearer copes admirably with the sheep the onlookers and the crowd and talks us through the process as well.

Rounders bats are always popular in Guildford and I was kept busy making more during the day as well as demonstrating the greenwood process by racing against myself to make a chair leg from a log. Not my best time as on the first occasion the pole fell over (thanks to Brian for carrying out running repairs -literally) and on the second attempt my perfect round of ash had a big knot in it and I ended up trying to work, talk and cope with the problems at the same time. Hopefully amusing for the large crowd that gathered if not so amusing for me.

This ash split out rather better and having used the main part for a rounders bat I was loathe to let the olive grain in the centre go for firewood.

So I took a risk on it working for a couple of honey drizzlers, one at each end and a simple bag handle from the centre section. I’ve learned to make the heads of the honey drizzlers as close to the end of the billet as the wood allows (some will split right at the end) and to make the cut for the head first – if it fails I can then work my way along and try again, but in the centre of the billet there is too much flex on a long piece to make the cut without splitting it off.

The finished pieces are very simple but by offsetting the blank slightly I’ve managed to retain a little of the pale outer wood, giving a two tone effect to the grain which should allow me to sell the pieces for a pound or two more than normal.

Meanwhilst I was learning to live with the ‘all day chainsaw carving’ only a few metres away as Henry and Catherine set about sculpting a squirrel and an owl from the logs.

Well it wouldn’t be right to finish without a photo of this ‘liquorice allsorts’ tractor lineup. Tractors and Guildford aren’t two words that naturally come together in my mind but the lineup at the Surrey County Show it always superbly organised.

It’s only a couple of days now before the next show – the Heavy Horses and working animals show at the Weald and Downland Museum which is always a great show  – but there is lots to do before then.

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Robert’s chairs

I am remiss. I have been intending to post on the greenwood chairs that my friend and neighbour Robert has been making recently, but the pressure of work has made it hard to get posts out and somehow it never quite happens. Robert made his first chair this winter (I posted on it here) and since then he has been busy in his tiny, but purpose built, shed making a succession of chairs. I’m delighted that he’s been bitten by the bug and seeing him drive by with a couple of chairs in the car  reminded me that I’d forgotten to post.

This is one of a set of six chairs (I think) which are made with cleft hazel and the components are shaved rather than turned – he’s squeezed a lot into his shed but not much room left for a lathe. Making a set of six is a big commitment but I think it’s also been a key to developing his style and skill which is coming on in leaps and bounds.

Here Robert is starting to assemble a half size version.

and here a couple of frames awaiting assembly  – though there is no room in the shed for both working and storing chair parts.

before long it’s in the back of the car on its delivery run. The shaved components retain an element of the natural shape of the wood which Robert has used to good effect in these chairs.

and now he’s branching out   – ooops, sorry couldn’t resist it – into roundwood(branchwood) designs.

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Hooked Again

After last weeks session at the forge I’ve put handles on the two new hook tools and now have 6 tools from the landrover coil spring material. As the material seems very hard (doesn’t file even when normalised) I have not tempered the last two hooks yet, and if I do I will do so to a fairly soft temper, as they seem to be very high carbon to start with and the last thing I want to do it break them.

The first hook works well, it’s a good shape and the (relatively) large size makes it both easier to sharpen and easier to take off larger amounts of wood from the bowl – here a lump of sycamore from the churchyard at nearby Blackmoor.

I thought I’d try a couple of small sycamore bowls just to get the handle of the new tools and compare with the existing ones.

When I got a handle on the final and biggest hook I was amazed at how easily it shaves the wood from the bowl – stepping up to another gear in comparison with my earlier hooks – and the one I originally bought from Gavin some years ago I have recently given away to a friend to use on rings (for model wagon wheels).

The ability to take off a bigger shaving seems to be related (as you’d expect) to the radius of the curve on the hook, similar to a roughing gouge and both of these hooks have the bevel on the outside of the hook – but it certainly doesn’t seem to be a problem.

Here the finished bowl is translucent where some flaws in the wood make an attractive grain – I’ll post pictures of it (them) once I’ve finished soaking them in our local cold pressed linseed oil from Durwin Banks at High Barn oils. It makes a very nice salad dressing as well!

I got carried away and put this larger lump of spalted birch on the lathe after the sycamore and almost gave myself a hernia – it’s very dry, hard and knobbly, a lesson in improving the shape of my blanks is required I can see.

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