There must be no bowl turner in the world that can get by without one of these. It’s the first tool you use to mark out the wood yet most folk have nasty flimsy ones that don’t do the job very well. I love these old forged ones. I like the way they feel in the hand. I like that…
Nothing to see here unless you like pictures of nice Japanese axes. These gorgeous woodworking tools came from my Japanese friend Tomio Imaru. Imarusan and his woodworking friends have very kindly scoured Japanese auctions for me to collect these beautiful tools. I hope to share some of them with the European carpenters that came to Japan with me and also…
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…
I get asked which is the best axe for carving a lot so thought it would be good to make a blog post which I can refer folk back to. In the world of Bushcraft most folk go for the Gransfors Bruks small forest axe, it is recommended by Ray Mears which no doubt helps it’s popularity. It is like…
Gränsfors Bruks are a small company who forge rather nice axes in Sweden. They started forging axes in 1902 but the advent of chainsaws and the move to mass produced drop forged axes meant that the company was strugging by the 1980’s. In 1989 they took the bold move of choosing to market themselves on their traditional workmanship. Where all…
Some may have seen that we have started a new blog on the Heritage Crafts Association site and that many of the posts there are copies of ones from here. I have been blogging increasingly about HCA work over the last year and we felt it would look more professional now to have those HCA and general craft posts on…
This period between Christmas and new year is a time for playing with things that I would not have time for at other times. Whilst I have been experimenting with bowlcarving over the last months I have been primarily working in a Scandinavian/European tradition both tools and designs. I have always very much admired the work of the native cultures…
And the other question is what age is it OK for children to use knives? I am a great believer in teaching children the safe use of knives as tools. This is best done with one on one supervision in the home, starting with food preparation. Our children started before the age of 3 helping make a fruit salad using…
So Monday in the House of Lords and Wednesday stood in the rain sawing up logs to make bowl blanks, my life is nothing if not varied at the moment. Today I cut up a sycamore log and I can tell from the blanks that it will make really nice star bowls. I have been out of stock of them…
