We just had a busy weekends spooncarving. This was the first time we have run an “advanced” spooncarving course. Lots of folk have told us after our beginners courses that they would like to come back and do more, so this was a sort of trial run. We wanted to keep it small so just ran it at home with…
Last week was half term and Jojo wanted to have a go in the forge at making a woodcarving knife for herself. I was busy turning but able to pop across and give advice from time to time but she pretty much just got on with it. In the forge The first rough forged knife, she made 3 Rough grinding…
Today we had the official opening of my new bridge at the North Lees estate near Hathersage, Narendra Bajaria chair of the Peak National Park snipped the ribbon then we all ate local ice cream provided by the Chair of the Local parish council who makes gorgeous Hope Valley Ice cream using heather honey from the North Lees estate. The…
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,…
Its been a hectic time since my last post. Last Saturday was the Sheffield woodfair so I was turning bowls and again racing my bowl lathe against Mikes electric lathe, a rerun of the popular “man against machine” race we have done for 3 years. Nicola did a youtube clip of last years race here. To be fair I am…
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…
Woodturning has a long history as a craft but there are many folk who also push the boundaries into the art world. The Wood Turning Center in Philadelphia USA has been a focus for the best wood turned art for many years and every few years organises a showcase of the best woodturning in the world at the time. I…
Its been a hectic few weeks with courses at weekends and lots of work during the week and not much time for posting photos. Anyway this is the bridge I started back in May and now finally finished. I seem to have mislaid the other photos I took on the last day but will post some more next time I…
Nicola has just finished a video of the spooncarving course we did at Chopwell woods, it’s up on youtube here, you can see we had fun. And for those that enjoy bushcrafty type things I recently discovered a chap on youtube from Sweden who has some lovely down to earth videos. His name is Fredrik and I hope to meet…
