Bodging with the High Woods Rangers

We've been in Colchester this weekend running a 2-day workshop for the volunteer Rangers at High Woods Country Park. These places are green oases and are under a fair bit of pressure from the urban environment which surrounds them.

We took two lathes . . .


and three shavehorses . . .



They had laid on a really good pile of green wood which had been cut from the site - sweet chestnut, lime, ash and sycamore - but the twelve people who attended hardly managed to make a dent in it so I brought a load home. Hopefully they are going to set up a lathe and a bodgers camp and make some items which they can sell in their visitors centre rather than Chinese imports ! At least they now know how to make few simple items such as dibbers, rounders bats and kitchen treen like spoons and spatulas.


I really like these Gothic dibbers-come-garden lines made by Richard (who organised the event) and Louise . . . .



For a similar event in your location contact :-
treewright@mac.com
or visit -
www.treewright.co.uk

Spring Snow

I can't quite believe it was like this at seven o'clock this morning . . .


We went out and had a walk in the Abbey Gardens. Here's a pic of Vanessa looking like an extra from Dr Zhivago under a cherry tree in the orchard -


By the afternoon it had all vanished and the sun came out. Good fun though - we don't often see it.
I made this lucet with a turned handle from sycamore http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucet


I'll do a post about my lucet making sometime

www.treewright.co.uk

Celtic Shaving

I got a load of fairly straight-grained sycamore recently and I've been having a go at a technique for making spoons where you firstly turn a shape . . .


Split it in half . . .


the one at the back had a bit of wild grain and hasn't split very straight.

Then carve out the bowl . . .


These were originally going to be salad servers! but they've come out looking more like scoops or kasas or kuksas.

I was shaving some spatulas afterwards and this amazing Celtic Shaving appeared - I've been fascinated by this kind of thing since I was a kid.

It probably says something in Arabic . . .

Paint Ball Games

It worried and annoyed me when I went down the garden this morning and discovered that multicoloured paintballs had been fired at my lathe, I could see where they had hit the shavings from a bowl I made yesterday afternoon. Recently we had some apples thrown at the shed from a similar direction (we worked out the trajectory like Columbo or Sherlock Holmes). Imagine if they had hit us on the head?!

Vanessa went on a diplomatic offensive, with a bag of the evidence, to talk to the mother of the prime suspect( I was ready to kill) who said “Oh my God! as soon as I saw that thing (the paintball gun) I knew there would be trouble - I’ll deal with it.”
Well let’s hope she has .. it’s the Easter Holidays and I don’t want them firing at clothes on the washing line.

I was a bit of a Just William or Dennis the Menace when I was a lad - funny how when you get older you see it from an adult point of view!

www.treewright.co.uk

A venerable turner

I've been at an all day demonstration today at E. Herts Woodturning club by Bert Marsh who has been turning for over 60 years. Pictured here making one of his signature vases from a piece of very green, rotting sycamore. He turns them about 2-3mm thick. What amazed me was that he managed to sand and finish the wet wood to a lustrous shine.
He also demonstrated making a very thin shallow bowl from ash, a small box with lid from teak and this bowl from pearwood . . .
He made it to show a method of holding it on the lathe so it wouldn't have a foot and luckily didn't sand it or apply any sealer so you can see the toolmarks (I hate fine dust and the smell of sanding sealer).
At lunchtime I asked him how much he wanted for it and he gave it to me! It was the least I could do to buy his book which looks very interesting.

One day I'll get a power lathe and use it to turn simple, honest, functional bowls like this.

P.S. Vanessa has bought some pure chocolate from "Willy's Wonky Chocolate Factory" and tonight we're going to try pheasant cooked in chocolate gravy . . ?!

Birthday Course

It's good to see the smile on these two ladies faces at the end of the day with the items that they have made to take home. We had to endure high winds and heavy rain all morning and the cover of one of the lathes practically ended up in next doors garden. I seem to be battling with the weather conditions quite a bit lately - still . . what don't kill you makes you stronger!
Lady on the right had given the course to her friend as a surprise birthday present (she thought she was going to a health farm or spa). But when she organised the day she told me her friend "loves wood" so I knew it would be OK.

If you want to come on a course and have fun look up www.treewright.co.uk

Bodging in Hainault Forest

We were asked to participate in this event in Hainault Forest, Essex organised by The Woodland Trust. The aim was to to provide some interesting, fun activities for 40+ Scouts who had done some tree planting. There was also a guy making birds nesting boxes and a lady doing willow weaving.
Well, we all arrived at 9am and set up to be told that the scouts wouldn't be with us till 12.30! so we sat about freezing our pieces off waiting (good job we had been training for that all weekend). They finally turned up at around 1.30 and instead of the 14-15 year olds we were expecting were around 6 or 7 (Leo Blair apparently somewhere amongst them). Instead of the demo and hands-on bodging I had envisaged, just had time to help each of them make a hazel twig pencil before they went off home after an hour !

I took the photo before it eventually kicked off and it was so full-on for that hour that I forgot to take pics when the kids were there.

BUT for that hour we're getting paid more than twice as much as for the whole weekend - quite weird. I'll believe it all when I see the cheque.