We just had a busy weekends spooncarving. This was the first time we have run an “advanced” spooncarving course. Lots of folk have told us after our beginners courses that they would like to come back and do more, so this was a sort of trial run. We wanted to keep it small so just […]
We have another spooncarving course this weekend so I was out collecting suitable carving wood today, one of my favorites is birch since it carves easily when fresh but becomes quite hard as it dries. This is the rather beautiful little woodland where I collect my birch from.
Its been a hectic time since my last post. Last Saturday was the Sheffield woodfair so I was turning bowls and again racing my bowl lathe against Mikes electric lathe, a rerun of the popular “man against machine” race we have done for 3 years. Nicola did a youtube clip of last years race here. […]
Nicola has just finished a video of the spooncarving course we did at Chopwell woods, it’s up on youtube here, you can see we had fun. And for those that enjoy bushcrafty type things I recently discovered a chap on youtube from Sweden who has some lovely down to earth videos. His name is Fredrik […]
We are just back from a very enjoyable weekend of spooncarving fun. We ran a carving course for the friends of Chopwell Wood bushcraft group near Newcastle. The site and the folk were perfect. We worked under a large parachute shelter with a nice fire to sit round. Many folk can use knive pretty well […]
Last weekend was the annual meeting of the Association of Pole Lathe Turners and Greenwoodworkers. We have been members since there were only a few dozen folk but now there are about 500 members and over 250 turned up for a weekends log bothering. Last year the same weekend we were freezing in Northumberland but […]
Our bank holiday weekend was spent teaching a spoon carving course. Green woodwork has become a popular hobby in the UK but the most common route people take is chairmaking. In Sweden a much larger variety of greenwood crafts are practiced and most of them are based on skilled use of the knife and axe. […]
It has been a busy time since my last post. I have continued playing with birch, this time making a birch bark box. I have admired these for years and at Christmas was sent two by a German friend, they were made in Lithuania. I managed to take one apart and put it back together […]
Well I had partial success and partial failure with my new turning hooks. I have used them heavily for several days now and 3 have broken, the tips have snapped off. Close inspection showed the grain structure was fine so there are three things I can work on for the next batch. Make the whole […]
