Update

Had some enquiries from regular blog readers wondering why there hasn't been much action here lately (Hi Bob & James).  Several reasons...
1.  Going through a period of being fed up and bored of computers etc.
2.  Building work still going on although it's nearly finished.  Too boring to write about but we now have a kitchen sink and will have an oven and hob today.
3.  Trapped sciatic nerve or slipped a disc picking up a worktop awkwardly - been living on painkillers.

Apart from that everything's OK.  Nic Westermann sent me some more spoon knife blades  for evaluation which I hate to admit I haven't tried out properly yet.  These aren't laminated and are around half the price.

Can't believe it's a year since my Dad died, time seems to pass so quickly.  We had a family get together at my sisters' in Canterbury at the weekend...

Spooning Around

Looked in on the European Woodworking Show at Cressing Temple yesterday.  Didn’t stay long as it was so hot and we had to leave Jed in the van.  I demo’d at this show last year and was told that someone else would be doing it this year ‘to give the show a different look’ - the only different thing I could see about it was that I wasn’t there!  (Don’t think I’ll neeed to go again.)


The real reason we went was to pick up a spoon hook from my friend Nic Westermann.

In my opinion Nic is making some of the best spoon hooks around at the moment.  They are laminated steel and take and hold a lovely edge and his curves are very nice - not the usual generic spoon hook shape. 

I helped him with some R&D earlier in the year and he gave me the smaller hook, the larger one is a ‘finishing knife’ although he has started referring to it as ‘the Fawcett hook’ and is really great for those final cuts in the bowl of a dry spoon.  He showed me one back in July and I’d been hankering after one ever since.

On Thursday John Abel came over with a twca cam he’d made by inserting a Svante Djarv blade into an 18” long handle.

It worked quite well although with the end of the handle in the groin rather than under the armpit as suggested in some of the old books.

Be nice to try with some different shaped blades.  Barn uses this technique - see Rob Wood’s blog here.

While testing Nick’s blades I also decided to do some research into different handle shapes and sizes.

Ultimately the best one (for me) was the one on the right where I took a lump of wood and kept carving it until it felt good in my hand.  It's not far off Duncan or FYGT's (2nd from right).  The pistol grip at left was surprisingly comfortable and the middle one is just a beefed up version of the Orford/Djarv/Frost handle which doesn't get lost in my hand.

Progress

Where did September go?  Taken up with construction, demolition and dust I think.

Terry's really got stuck in and is doing fantastic things to the kitchen/bathroom.

It's like camping in your own house although we have still just about got access to the cooker...

...but no washing machine and washing up in the bath!

Church Ale

Firstly, sincere apologies to anyone who turned up at the Ranscombe Farm 'event' last Sunday (specially my Mum, Sister and Niece!).  We waited over an hour for someone in a 4WD to come and ferry us to the woods as the mud was so thick and impassable.  There was absolutely no publicity to show that there was anything going on - the words "piss-up", "brewery", "couldn't organise" sprang to mind.  We started to get really bad vibes so we cut our losses and left - after all money isn't everything we have to enjoy what we do too.

By way of contrast the Wivenhoe Church Ale that we took part in yesterday was a lovely event - very well organised and publicised.

In mediaeval times "Ales" were held in support of many different causes: the church-ale, held to encourage parishioners to come and pay their tithes and so to help pay for the upkeep of the church building; the bride-ale, used to benefit a newly married couple; the clerk-ale, to support the impoverished curate; the bid-ale or help-ale, where ale would be brewed and friendly folk would gather round to drink, contributing the money collected from selling the ale to a worthy local who'd fallen on hard times.
Perhaps confusingly to modern ears, an 'Ale' meant the event, the feast, the fête, the party if you like - not the drink itself.
What all these "ales" have in common is that they were communal drinking sessions to raise funds.
But more than anything it was an opportunity to socialise, and contributed to the social cohesion of the community.

Only problem was that we were so busy when I went to try the Ale they'd run out!

Colcheter Waits Shawm Band

Going Up

It's exciting to see the progress as the brickwork and blockwork go up.
Terry is a craftsman and diamond geezer...

Going to be demonstrating at Ranscombe Farm near Rochester on Sunday 12-4 if anyone's around that neck of the woods.

Bitten by the Bug

As soom as he arrived at our Woodland Craft Workshop yesterday I could see that Simon was keen.
He'd brought a couple of tools to make handles for and went through the bodging process to make a Chestnut rounders bat for his wife's Brownie troupe.

I think he was going straight home to start work on a pole lathe and shavehorse.

PS Note that cross-pein hammer which he's going to use for blacksmithing.

Hawthorn & Elder

We were demonstrating at a show near St Albans on Saturday at the Woodland Trust's HeARTwood Summer Festival.  A young furniture maker (power tools) called Ben asked if I ever used Hornbeam.  "Only when it's really freshly felled," I replied, "or you find out why it's called Hornbeam!"  Apparently he'd been dropped off some logs by a local tree surgeon, didn't count on using them and offered them to me.  About an hour later he came back with the largest log which I could see straight away was actually Hawthorn.  Great, even better, I love it for turning and spoon carving - a very dense, hard and pinkish wood.

Jed added the tennis ball for scale

This is typical of the hit-and-miss way I source my timber - someone else also gave me a nice Hawthorn log only the other week (he also gave me a lovely piece of Apple and a Laburnum log - thanks Mark).  So now everything will be made of that for a while as it was from Catalpa earlier in the summer.  I've had a load of Sweet Chestnut for the courses this year but now I'm bored of that and fed up with cleaning the purple gunk off the tools.  I found a nice Ash log stuffed under a hedge in the Abbey Gardens last week but I would be happy if I could find a more regular, reliable supply.

I notice that in Mike Abbott's latest book 'Going with the Grain' he notes two suppliers of chairmaking Ash but only in Herefordshire and Gloucestershire.  Wouldn't it be good if there was a nationwide directory of people who are willing to sell logs of different species of timber to green woodworkers?  I'm willing to compile such an index and would be grateful for the names of any woodland owners, tree surgeons, wildlife organisations etc that I could add.

* * *

On a different note this Elder tree doesn't seem to know whether it's coming or going at the moment, bearing both ripe fruit and fresh blossom at the same time...?