I have just added a new blog index over to the right and whilst I was indexing I picked out ten blog posts which have been personal favourites, have initiated corespondence and debate or have led on to other things. For readers new to my blog I hope you might find these posts of interest. In craftsmanship and apprenticeship you’ll…
Hatfield forest is an incredible survival of a landscape little changed from medieval times. Here under the flightpath of Stansted airport there are hundreds of trees that were growing during Shakespeare’s lifetime, coppice woodland, pollard trees, flower rich meadows, marsh and a history of land management little changed for 1000 years. Hatfield has a special meaning to me, I lived…
This is Professor Oliver Rackham talking in the Cressing Temple Barley barn (built c 1205-1235) Prof Rackham is an acknowledged expert on woodland history and he talked us through the timbers of this great barn, 600 individual timbers which he calculated came from 480 mostly quite small oak trees. In the UK today we have lost the connection between woodworkers,…
The main purpose of this post is to show off some gorgeous pictures of sumitsubo, the Japanese carpenters ink markers, equivalent to European chalk lines. I’ll also give a brief overview of the measurement system and the different way carpenters mark out their timbers. Whilst Japan went metric in 1924 carpenters the world over tend to hang on to old…
Sheffield is famous across the world for steel, cutlery and metal trades. Steel was first mass produced here using the crucible process and stainless steel first made into cutlery here in 1913. Times move on however, the majority of that kind of manufacturing moved out to China and Sheffield Council have successfully invested in rebranding the city “Creative Sheffield“ English…
Whilst building the tea house in Japan we used a many axes and adzes. The axe that got most use was the carpenters ono, a bearded laminated axe that comes in various sizes from small one handed hatchets used for removing the waney edge of boards to large heavy versions used for squaring beams. This is Tak at work and…
Whilst in Japan I used very many saws and chisels all of which were of the finest quality and not to be confused with the cheap Japanese tools available in the UK. The saws used by Japanese carpenters typically cost £200 and chisels around £150 each. I found it quite shocking that folk would pay £150 for a single chisel…
Japanese hand planes are simply a delight to use. When well set up and sharpened by an expert they glide through wood with little resistence and leave a surface finish second to none. The thing that impressed me most about planing wood on the kesorokai tea house project however was the way the worksite was organised on a sloping site…
Today I came across this video of the most wonderful wooden bridges in China and wanted to share. This is some of the most wonderful woodworking I have seen for a long time. It reminded me of some wooden bridges I first saw on a trip round Europe 25 years ago. I revisited them this year whilst on a motorbike…
Having just come back from Japan I have lots of photos of our craft skills exchange to share but as a first post I thought I would share some more general thoughts answering the question everyone has asked since I got back. “What was Japan like” Like any tourist I only saw a snap shot, a brief view of a…
