I am Wisconsin to learn and share. We have a had a brief break from canoe building work to get ready for the bowl turning course I am teaching at North House Folk School. We visited Jarrod’s friend Mike to borrow his well equipped blacksmith workshop and to forge a bunch of tools for the students to use. I’ll be…
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,…
Meet Dietrich a German Journeyman. His odd costume tells those in the know that he is a fully trained craftsman traveling and looking for work to broaden his experience. In Germany folk instantly recognise this and so it makes life easy to get lifts when hitchiking or folk will simply offer him food and lodgings in exchange for some work.…
Just a few more photos showing progress on my new bridge. It looks over-engineered for the tiny stream but 6 weeks ago the water would have been lapping just under the main timbers. Cutting the last handrails. If you look closely bottom centre you’ll see a newly hatched family of mallards. View across the cricket field. It’s all coming together…
My friends Michail and Hannes visited last week, we visited Owen Jones in the Lakes and the Carpenters Fellowship Frame event where we were all demonstrating hand tool woodworking. It was school holidays so Ollie came with us. Lots of good times. This is Owen working on a basket. He lives on the banks of Coniston and let us take…
Last week we were on holiday in Germany visiting Michail and Hannes the friends that built our woodshed for us last year. We lived in a yurt for the week the sun shone, we carved lots of spoons visited craftspeople sat late into the evening round the campfire and had a lovely time. I have not sorted the pictures from…
This morning I took my German friends to the airport at 5.30am after a most wonderful and inspirational 2 weeks. Michail and Hannes helped me to build a new timber framed wood store, the process was a real eye opener. Timber framing involves hard and skilled manual work, an eye for beauty but also a remarkable amount of careful planning,…
Yesterday I went out to the woods to choose some trees for my next little project at home. I need somewhere to store logs for the fire under shelter and since I have always fancied doing a bit of timber framing I am building it to a bit higher spec than is really necessary. The timber will be larch from…
Just to show the European hewing technique as a contrast to the Japanese, here is some video again from 2005 Kesurokai. The technique of hewing by cutting out notches, chopping off the block between and then finishing the surface with a wide bladed axe is the same as was used in Britain to create all our wonderful timber framed buildings.…
I was just discussing axe design and use with folk on the British Blades forum and was reminded of one of the most wonderful exhibitions of woodworking skill I have seen. In 2005 I attended the first european “kesurokai”. This was an event inspired by a German carpenter journeyman spending time working with Japanese temple builders. In Japan the carpenters…
