Lynchmere common – Log Day

Every October we hold a ‘Log Day’ on the Lynchmere commons to get rid of logs extracted during the year. The logs come from trees cut to keep the heathland clear, windblown trees and dead or diseased trees. We sell the logs as firewood although members of the society can collect a car-load for free. The day is always popular and this year more so given the price of fuel and more people putting in wood burning stoves.
On Saturday Robert, Stuart and I cut the last of the trees and extracted the wood with tractor and trailer whilst Felix and Seb manned the Kelly Kettle.

By the time we finished stacking the logs I estimate it was over 12 tonnes of cord wood (4 foot lengths) and another 3 or 4 tonnes of mixed wood. Cord wood is the traditional length for selling firewood and comes from the measure of a Cord of wood, which is a stack of 4 foot logs 4 feet in height and 8 feet in length – a volume of 128 Cu ft. The name ‘Cord’ probably comes from the use of a standard length of cord to measure the stack.

On Sunday a team of volunteers turns out to help marshal traffic, move the logs and take the money. We were also joined by Mark with his vintage Fergie tractor and saw bench to cut the logs for those who could not handle the cordwood – saving a lot of effort with the chainsaws.

Despite the bad weather it was very busy and it wasn’t long before we had a queue of vehicles waiting outside for their turn load up with logs.

The team worked hard and to our amazement the entire pile vanished in front of our eyes. It had all been taken by lunchtime. A very successful day, thanks to everyone who helped prepare and turned out on the day. Now the work starts all over again, there will be plenty of fallen trees to clear over the winter and the next log day is in February.

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Working by Moonlight

I am not the fastest to get going in the morning especially when its dark and cold outside. There always seems to be plenty to do before I can leave, so at this time of year I tend to end up working into the twilight and sometimes by torchlight until I become accustomed to the early evenings again.For a couple of evenings recently the moon has helped out, casting a cold blue light over the work site and I couldn’t help trying to take some photos of the contrast with the warm red light from the dying fire..

There is a tawny owl in the woods very close to the site . As the light fades I sit in a chair and I can hear her (apparwntly you can tell because the females call the males ‘twit’ whereas as the males call to the females ‘twoo’!) as she moves round the fire.

It seems as if I’ve been on this job for ever and it has taken a lot longer than I anticipated but I’ve finished enough timber for various projects as well as bits and pieces for friends. There is still more to mill up but I’ve finished the work at the site for now and spent some time clearing up. Very little will be wasted as the offcuts will go to make firewood shelters at my charcoal site, if not for more chairs (they seem to be much appreciated by all, and I have a couple of orders already).
I’ve left quite some of the timber as ‘waney edge’ boards, a little different and more rustic than what you buy at B&Q, but I can rip them down later to square them off if needs be. Unwanted logs will go to the firewood pile on the commons and the last task is to move the sawn timber from the site to a more sheltered location.

It will take a few days to complete this in between other jobs, even with the help of the tractor and trailer.

 

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Pole Lathe – Turning a pair of egg cups

I wanted to turn a pair of egg cups and it was a good opportunity to test my newly re-tempered favourite hook tool. Despite the chaos of my shed I managed to make it to the pole lathe and get turning. 
With small items like egg cups and goblets they can be turned as spindles with the cord wrapped around the wood as it’s turned. This allows me to use my normal gouge and skew chisel to shape the outside of the wood and the hook tool is used only to hollow out the inside of the vessel. 
In this case I went a little mad and decided to turn a pair of cups from the same piece of wood – one on each end.

For the eagle-eyed amongst you, yes the work piece has got shorter in the final photo. Thats because the wood developed cracks. It’s some of the Wild Cherry that I have been using for a while and I had to start again having cut off the ends. But all’s well that ends well – and I do like the grain of this wood which makes it worth the difficulties of working.

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I lost my temper – Tilford Rural Life Centre

It would be more accurate to say that I didn’t temper my tools properly in the first place. This winter I am keen to make good use of my hook tools and so last Sunday I took time off from my planking project and went over to the forge at the Tilford Rural Life Museum.

The musuem is between Farnham and Haslemere. It may seem strange for Surrey to have a rural life centre but its well worth a visit for its extensive collections of tools and rural items. (Tilford Rural Life Museum ) They have a great collection of Moss edge tools (local blacksmiths and much prized items). They even have a big wheel lathe there that I have been told is useable. The collection was started by one of the founders of the Tilhill forestry company, which I assume started life on a hill in nearby Tilford. It would have been open heathland until Tilhill started – I hear that the original Tilhill plantation is now an RSPB reserve and being returned to heathland again.

Hook tools are often used by pole lathe turners for bowls and is one area where pole lathe and power lathe turners differ in the tools they use. The photo shows the first hook tools that I made a year ago for small items such as goblets and egg cups. I made a batch and one is really suited to goblets but its been hard work as I failed to get the temper of the tool right and its been losing its edge really quickly.

 

John and Nick are the blacksmiths who work from the forge at Tilford and John helped me to improve the temper on my hook tools. Sorry about the rotten photos John.

Edge tools are tempered by heating the edge to a specific heat and then quenching (or cooling) rapidly to ‘freeze’ the metal orientation at that temper. You can do this scientifically in an oven by setting the temperature, or it can be done as originally by buffing the metal to a dull shine and then watching the colour of the metal closely.
John decided to retemper the tool by heating it in the forge until it was bright orange or dull yellow and then quenching just the hooked tip. This allows the heat in the thicker stem to flow back into the hooked tip and you can see the colours of the tip turn. After some tests we decided to temper to straw just before the very tip turned blue. As the tip turned clearly straw and just before it turned to blue John then quenched the whole tool. Comparing filing of the edge before and after retempering the tool is harder than before. During the last week I’ve been using the tool and my impression is that it’s sharper and keeps its edge much longer – but sometimes all it needs is a good feeling, so its not an objective measurement.
It was also a Landrover day at the Museum so I got to park inside for a change. Here is a row of Series II Landrovers drawn up for inspection – most look immaculate, The tatty one at the other end is mine. Next year I am hoping for a prize for tattiest Landrover so I can win!

 

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Lynchmere Common – Fallen Birch

The Lynchmere commons covers 300 acres of mixed heathland and woodland on the edge of West Sussex between Haslemere and Liphook. In 1998 the commons were purchased from the Cowdray Estate by a local society (The Lynchmere Society). At that time the commons were almost entirely very poor scrub woodland with only remnants of heath. Over the last 10 years a lot of progress has been made in clearing scrub and restoring areas of lowland heath with much of the work being carried out by volunteers.

 

I started working on the commons as a volunteer in 2000 to get experience in conservation work and as stress relief. I enjoyed it so much that now I help to manage the commons. Clearing fallen trees from paths and fencelines is one part of what I do on the commons. The wet weather this year has caused a lot of problems for trees. At some times of the year tree clearing can be on a regular basis especially with all the birch trees growing on the poor heathland soil (upper greensand of the Western Weald).

 

But the birch I cleared this morning had fallen because of a fungus in its roots. I think its a Ganoderma applanatum (or Artist’s Fungus) but I will be very happy to hear from anyone who can offer a more accurate diagnosis. Ganoderma rots the roots and base of the tree so it will fall very easily. You can see the bracket in the photo – brown top with white margin and white underside.

 

From the stump you can see the rot was quite well advanced in the base of the trunk (click on the image to enlarge it). Very little sound wood remained so the tree snapped off just above the base. This one went only a foot above the ground but when it pivots a few feet off the ground while being cut down its called a widow’s seat or barber’s chair , both references to the danger of being caught behind it when it goes.
As it happens I wanted some fresh birch for turning this week as I have some wood turning to do and some hook tools that were worked on at the weekend to try out. I managed to find a few lengths of the tree that might be useful for turning, the rest will go onto the firewood pile.

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Time for a chair

It’s not what I’d planned to do today, but I just needed to sit by the fire this afternoon.

The pine project is taking a little longer than I anticipated, having been rained off over the weekend and with progress a little slower than I had thought. But I am now back on it for the next 3 days. I need to plank up another 10 logs, burn up the old brash and then tidy the site, as I will be onto other jobs for a while.

Having a good fire going is an invitation to sit by it, so all I needed was a chair. No time for anything elaborate but luckily I have a pile of pine offcuts and they need to be used one way or another. A simple way to make a seat is to take two large offcuts and bore a hole through one (the seat back) allowing the other to placed through it as a rustic seat. Generally the larger the offcut the more throne-like and eye catching is the eventual seat. Surprisingly enough they are very comfortable – this may be because of the slope backwards on both the seat and backrest.
I first saw one of these chairs placed at a local viewpoint in a chestnut coppice looking out over the Weald towards the South Downs. That was made several years ago by Colin when he cut the coppice. I will leave a couple here and hope they get as well used.

 

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Pole Lathe – ‘Extreme Turning’ & Bronze Age Axe Handle

This weekend turned out to be an exercise in extreme turning due to the weather. Normally I relish the Autumn celebration at the Weald & Downland museum, one of my favourite shows in the calendar. Saturday started with a frost in the morning and got windier and wetter as the day went on.

I was joined by Wayne and his son Olly who had brought both their bowl turning lathe and also a small lathe worked with a hand held bow and both were dressed up for the event to the delight of the visitors who braved the weather.

But by the afternoon the wind was rising and the intermittant showers became continuous. In the face of driving rain and gale force gusts of wind Olly took to an anorak but Wayne is clearly made of sterner stuff or………

The photos don’t really capture the force of the wind and rain. My shelter is not upto a full gale and started to suffer from the wind so I was unhappy to leave it overnight. Sadly I took it down and packed up on Saturday evening in the face of even worse forecasts for the night and Sunday morning.

However the experience seems to have given us something of a taste for extreme turning, perhaps an olympic sport for 2012 and the next venue is still to be decided!

Because of the rain I could not leave my wares out for long and so failed to sell anything – for the first time that I can remember. But as so often happens, just as I was totally losing motivation something interesting turned up.

This time the question was ‘Can you make a me a handle for a bronze axe-head?’ I’ve learn’t its best to go with the flow, and this sounded like fun. Besides I was suffering from the cold and wet and I needed a challenge. Before long I was talking to a weekend class who were casting bronze axe-heads to a 3000 year old pattern.

I started to make an ash handle and partway through was joined by the course members who watched the process. I enjoyed turning a handle for the axe head. I learnt about bronze age tools and we also had interesting discussions on the turning or spinning of early metal and the evidence, or lack of it, for bronze age wood turning.

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A Shedload of Wood

Why is a lot of something referred to as a shedload? Perhaps because an empty shed is a rare thing? It certainly is in my case, but the reason that this is a shed load is because it will be my new shed….eventually. In fact its about a half a shed load at most, but then I am planning quite a large shed. The pile of timber is the result of the last few days work and is now air drying before use.

To move the logs onto the sawbench my capstan winch has been pressed into service. Once the logs are in front of the bench I can then roll them by hand.
This landrover is a 1960 Series II that should be taking it easy in its retirement but it still works for a living. It also has to carry my pole-lathe and shelter to all the shows.

For those who have been watching the recent TV documentary Axmen following Oregon lumberjacks, this is my version of the skyline, and it comes with all of the sound effects and bleeps.

The capstan winch made light work of moving the logs. Not everything went according to plan as this is the second rope this week, the first one broke under the strain.

There is something about a fire that makes a worksite, especially as the weather gets colder. Here the pine brash is burnt, to keep me warm. but only the wood that won’t be used as kindling or firewood so little is wasted.

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Pole Lathe – Flat Pack Throne

I’m posting these pictures of our chairmaking competition earlier this year partly as I’ve spent the week almost entirely working with chainsaws and partly so I can link them to a greenwood photo thread on the bodgers ask’n’answer forum which you can find here – bodgers ask’n’anwser greenwood photos. In May pole lathe turners and greenwood workers get together for the annual Bodgers Ball. This year well over 200 of us descended upon a field just outside Horton-cum-Studley in Oxfordshire. It’s hard to believe it now but the weather was sweltering which helped a magic weekend full of demonstrations, workshops and competitions. From axe-throwing to chair seating and fire-lighting there was plenty for all,interests and having been attending for only 3 years I can say it is a very, very welcoming crowd. New this year was a chair making competition and the Sussex group entered a team almost entirely devoid of chair making experience. Just as well really, because if we’d known more about it we probably would have chosen discretion.

I missed the beginning of the competition because I was busy visiting the second hand tools store run by a charity, tools for self reliance , who ship useful tools to Africa and sell many in the UK that are not appropriate, thereby raising money to support the charity and also supporting greenwood workers in the UK by keeping these tools in use.

Once I extracted myself from the tool stall we fought with an odd assortment of twisted Yew, Sycamore, Hazel and some ash – of which a well reknowned chair maker was heard to say ‘ I wouldn’t even call it firewood’.

There was plenty of expert advice. The back of the chair came together really well and lulled us into a false sense of security as all of the joints fitted tightly.

Our team comprised Dave, John (the brummy bodger), Barry, Frank, myself and Mike. As Mike was also on the PA and another member of the team wisely decided to become a spectator we substituted Rich and Christopher (who came over from Germany for the Ball).

I certainly learnt a lot from the experience, trial fitting joints and not borrowing drill and tenon cutter from different people being good examples. For those who might be wondering how chair legs fit into chairs so well, John is holding one of the legs onto the shave horse whilst Frank uses the tenon cutter in a brace to size the end of the leg.

After 5 hours, or was it 6? Memory fails me, we almost had a chair, nay twas a throne…fit for….. falling apart again, in our case.

As we put the finishing touches to it, time ran out and despite pushing our luck as far as we could we had to leave it unfinished.

When last heard of the self flat packing throne was with Barry who was still trying to find the allen key and somebody to translate the Swedish instructions.

I am off to the Weald and Downland Museums Autumn Show this weekend so 2 days of pole lathe turning are in order to recover from a week of chainsawing.

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Pine Planks

The wet summer weather has put me way behind on some jobs. One of these is to make pine planks from some timber logs we cut early in the year.Planks are always useful and I have a number of small projects for the winter that will use quite a lot of wood, so as the weather has been reasonable this week I’ve been spending a lot of time making them.

The woods are on Marley Common, an area which is now a mature pine plantation but which was open heathland for many centuries. It is slowly being returned to lowland heath and we felled about 20 trees to make a wildlife corridor at the start of the year. With the poor weather the pine logs are starting to go off so its the last chance to make decent timber from them

To make planks I use a chainsaw mill. This is a powerful chainsaw (for afficionados I am using a Shtil 660, thats a 92cc saw with a one piece milled 25inch 3/8 bar and a PMZ 1/4inch ripping chain)as cutting down the grain of the wood is much harder work than crosscutting. To make the work much more accurate the chainsaw fits into a cradle which runs up and down an 18ft long guide rail. The logs are rolled (easy to say but not so easy to do) up onto the log bench and the arms can then be raised and lowered on the ratchets to allow accurate cutting.

A chain saw mill is slow work in comparison to a mobile bandsaw (woodmizer) or even a lucas mill (mobile circular saw system). It also creates a lot more sawdust than other narrower blades. What to do with a tonne of pine sawdust? Sadly nothing as far as I am aware. But it is easy to carry to the site and to store when not in use. Although I was very tempted to upgrade to a bandsaw it doesn’t make sense for an occasional user like me and even the top of the range Logosol M7 system which I am using here costs a fraction of a mobile bandsaw which makes it affordable. For more on cutting timber with big chainsaws you can find the logosol UK website here – Logosol UK .

When I started planking a few years ago I just used a standard chainsaw, a simple home-made guide rail and chainsaw attachment. I was hooked instantly. It just feels good to be able to utilise logs that otherwise would go to waste and to make something using timber that you have milled yourself. As well as saving money and timber miles! You can start very simply and cheaply. Some people use simple attachments which hang off an aluminium ladder to get the straight cuts. It’s hard work doing the work manually but it really pays off when you have isolated hardwood logs in places that you can’t easily reach with anything but a chainsaw and lightweight mill. The planks can be carried out when the logs often can’t be extracted.

The finish on the planks is excellent and it always surprises people that its so clean. It can be used as it is for external work or put straight through a planar/thicknesser for planed planks. It doesn’t save a lot of time and money to make pine planks as they are so cheap at the building merchants but as I have both the mill and the timber it seemed to make sense at the time.

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