As far as I can remember this is the longest day I have ever worked. Many years ago I did run two jobs working a seafood restaurant and burger bar in Cocoa Beach Florida but that was just 16 hour days and this was much more fun. This post follows on from the last but must now be around 10pm…
I am back from my Dover boat building project and have a bunch more pics to share over the next few blog posts. It has been quite a ride and folk that have been following the UK news may already know the outcome. I’ll start where I left off with the four main base timbers in place, that is as…
Now I have been working with bronze axes and adzes every day for 2 months and have answered many questions about how to set up the edges and haft them efficiently. There are lots more questions I would love to explore but shall not have the time about the metallurgy of bronze. We did get into this a little when…
Another update on the progress of the bronze age Dover boat. Ancient woodworking specialist Damian Goodburn visited last week and declared this the most complex example of prehistoric woodworking ever reconstructed. Well there is a lot of headscratching and thinking involved and I have to say my understanding of the bronze age has been transformed. The Dover boat is very…
Things have been so busy the last few weeks I have not had time to post about the Heritage Crafts Associations spring conference to which our President The Prince of Wales sent a marvelous message copied below. We also had the great pleasure of having our new patron Emma Bridgewater speak with passion about the Stoke Pottery industry. You can…
The beauty of building a replica of the Bronze Age boat in Dover is that we are just 100 yards away from the 3,500 year old original. Whilst it has been studied and drawn in great detail there is no way every detail can be recorded but we can go and check fine details on the original boat as we…
What can I say? just watched this and am blown away. “When I am working I am fully focused” [vimeo http://www.vimeo.com/23095780 w=398&h=224]
One of the highlights of last year for me was Fritiof Runhall coming to Edale to teach two carving courses. He was such a fun and inspiring teacher. Part of the fun was that the course participants varied from beginners to some of the best carvers in the country and we were all learning together. This is what Steve Tomlin…
SPOONFEST is a gathering of everyone interested in spooncarving for a weekends fun, sharing and inspiration. It started out as a sort of pipe dream of getting all our favourite carvers together to talk spoons and carve together, it seems to have taken off into a genuine international event with carvers, collectors, beginners and fellow obsessives from Sweden, USA, Holland…
The Dover boat reconstruction I have been working on and blogging about over the last 8 weeks is pretty special and so we get lots of film crews around. The best record will be a Time Team special on the bronze age and particularly bronze age boatbuilding. It is as always fascinating to see the team work and crafting a…
