North House Folk School is a very special place. I taught a course here last year and was delighted to be asked back to share my knowledge of bowlturning and take part in the fresh cut symposium. I was so busy teaching I don’t seem to have many photos so these are just a small selection with other more general…
In just over a months time I’ll be heading for the USA to teach at the amazing North House Folk School. I am teaching two three day courses which are already fully booked but also there is a full weekend of activities as part of the “Fresh Cut” conference. It promises to be an inspirational time with events running Friday…
The last three days I have been teaching a bowl carving course, these are the bowls we made Here is the early stage Steve adzing out the hollow everyone made two bowls, the first is a standard design just to get to grips with the tools and techniques. Once that is done we start again with a larger piece of…
When I started teaching wooden spoon carving I would allow people to “go free with the wood” just teaching them basic technique and letting their imaginations run wild. They made crap spoons but were happy. After a while I decided for my foundation beginners course I had to restrict the options and teach in a much more methodical way in…
I have spent many years as a craftsman and then the last seven I have systematically developed a range of woodcarving courses. This has been a very interesting process and I thought it may be useful to others that teach to know how my mind works. So here are my 10 rules for teaching craft, they have been developed from…
I fell in love with the crooked knife 20 years ago when I watched Cesar’s bark canoe the most incredible wood craft film showing César Newashish, a 67-year-old Attikamek building a canoe with three tools, a cheap axe, a pen knife and a crooked knife. Apparently simple tools like these can often be surprisingly complex to get working properly with…
I have met and spent time with Wille Sundqvist several times and been inspired by his book Swedish Carving Technique, both the technical advice and the life philosophy, I had not met his son Jögge until this last week when he came to SPOONFEST taught 2 short classes in knife carving grasps for us and gave an inspirational lecture. His…
I started carving spoons 21 years ago inspired by Wille Sundqvists book “Swedish Carving Technique” back then there were no spoon carving courses the UK green woodworking scene was all about making windsor chairs on pole lathes. I was totally inspired by Wille Sunqvist “Carved utensils and other objects are a joy to use and live with. They are the…
Here are pics from bowl and spooncarving courses just finished. Rob Nicholson is a good greenwoodworker but this was his first go at carving bowls, he did a nice blog post showing all the stages here. Here are a couple of finished bowls and then it was on to spooncarving first cutting suitable raw material with a big Japanese pull…
This is Yvonne with a cherry kuksa she carved on my “fun carving course” last week. Close up of the kuksa, these are based on traditional Sami drinking cups. Yvonne is a beekeeper who’s business is selling the alternative products of the hive. I am a fan of a drop of propolis (bee glue) on a cut to speed healing,…
