Springtime…time for the blog to come out of hibernation!

Since Christmas life has been very busy at home. We have been busy getting the house and garden to a somewhat liveable standard and spending a lot of time with our little fella, Miles. I have been busy learning the craft of green wood turning. However, due to lack of space and the bad weather I’ve had to turn to the ‘dark side’ i.e. the electric lathe. Exponents of the art may find that derisory, a classical craft on a powered lathe, but I feel it’s better to turn than not turn at all.

The first finished product is an ash stool, pictured below. It’s seated in Seagrass, which I may be reluctant to use in the future considering it’s travelled ‘all the way from China’, as Leonard Cohen sang (on Suzanne). If anyone knows of a suitable, locally produced seat covering please let me know.

The current situation I have for work is not ideal as you can see from the picture. Subtle hints like, “you’ve got bloody shavings in the sink again” and “oh God, not more mess!” have given me the impression that working in the kitchen may not be fully appreciated by others, so it’s time to move out to a workshop. I have a patch of land in the garden which may be ideal to house a small bodger’s hovel, giving me the pleasure of working outdoors and the freedom to set up at will. Hopefully more pictures to follow soon.

The raised beds which I included before Christmas are now finished and are now home to onions, garlic, potatoes and will be completed with carrots and peppers once the seedlings are grown. The soil quality is good and is being further enhanced by one of our cats which insists on digging and shitting in amongst the vegetables. One would assume this will add to the soil as fertiliser although some more investigation needs to be carried out to determine any harmful effects of defacus gatus.

Odd jobs.

Taking advantage of a short spell of good weather, I managed to spend some time putting together the poppets for the pole lathe, which as you can see is nearing completion. The triangular pieces which hold the poppet of the bed will also be used inverted as supports for the tool rest, and once the metal studding is fitted, and the treadle is assembled the lathe will be ready for it's first spin.

The poppets are held in place by wedges which fit snugly into a tapered hole on the poppet. Altogether the project has been very simple to build, even for someone with such limited woodworking experience as myself. The only other issue is the building and fitting of legs, which at present are not essential. However, if I wish to take it outdoors it'll need something to stand on.

Second task for the weekend was making a new handle for the froe. Making tools for the pole lathe seems to be a constant chicken and egg situation, where the things you need to make are made by the things you need...ad infinitum. Here you can see an ash log split four ways. I used a curved piece so that the finished froe handle leans away from the moving mallet and so lessens the chances of bashing one's knuckles. You can also see the 'mallet' of an oak log until a real mallet, or 'maul' has been fashioned.

Job number three was cleaning out the shed where I intend to do some work. The broken window has resulted in a damp environment, but hopefully it should dry out soon enough once that's fixed properly. In the photo you can see a selection of elm (or possibly scots pine) logs which I came across while walking on Sunday. I'm not sure if they're suitable for turning; if not they'll make good firewood.

That's it for now. Back soon....

The joy of skips

Last week I went into work as usual and arrived to find some workmen refurbishing an empty office in the same building. They were busy tearing the place apart so that a new company could move in and had an enormous skip parked out front into which they were throwing large pieces of carpet.


Ever the opportunist I approached one of the demolition men and asked if I could have a piece of carpet, to which he replied I could take my pick of the bits.


Later that same day I nipped out in the car to heave the enormous roll, which had been left outside work for me, into the car and took it home.

Having worked in the trade, I didn’t forget to slip the guys a ‘drink’ (of a tenner) I managed to carpet our lounge for virtually nothing and get rid of the identikit laminate floor in the process. The fitting wasn’t difficult, but very tiring, having to force and squeeze and stretch the carpet to fit, releasing a barrage of curses and expletives.

Here’s a during and after of the fitting, note the exhausted look! It always amazes me the amount of quality materials that end up being skipped without a thought of an alternative use for them. I never miss an opportunity to pick something out of the ‘rubbish’, much to the consternation of Julia, who usually sees the benefit in the end.


The wood project is going well too. The pole lathe is ready to be assembled and I’ve managed to obtain a few decent lengths of ash and oak logs ready for turning. The only impediment is limited space in which to work.



Until next time...

Horsing around...

Since the last blog entry I have finally gotten around to finishing off the shaving horse. Ladies and gentlemen, fabricated completely from scavenged scrapwood, I present to you Dobbin the shave horse!

Dobbin's legs started off lame, but a couple of lengths of M10 studding managed to sort them out. As you can see from the image, it's all the colours of the rainbow, but I'm not too worried about that as long as it functions well enough.


In putting together tooling for my woodworking project I had spent a long time looking through eBay for a decent second hand froe. What's a froe I hear you ask? Well, in short a froe is a wood cleaving tool that allows the user to split logs with some degree of precision so that they can be used in chair making, fencing, or for whatever purpose you desire. Normally a decent one will fetch upwards of £40. However, given the simplicity of the design I realised I could fabricate one for much less than that. A quick google search for home-made froes confirmed my idea and literally half an hour later I had secured a fair of van leaf springs to convert into a froe.

This is one of a pair of Vauxhall combi van leaf springs I managed to secure for just a tenner! As you can see they're quite heavy duty, but that won't be a problem once they're cut down to size.

The first step was to cut the useful part from the end of the spring, and with the angle grinder, one can put a edge on the blade to make splitting easier. There's no need for it to be super sharp as, like a splitting axe, the tool is for driving, not shaving. I ground both sides so that the finished edge formed a 'v' shape so that when it was driven through a log it would go straight through, whereas a bevel on one edge only would cause it push unequally through the wood and cleave in a non uniform fashion.

As can be seen, the springs have a rubber bushing located in each end. This needs to be removed as this is where the handle will be fitted. The best way to remove it is by placing the whole thing in a fire for a few hours. Luckily for me, last night was Guy Fawkes night so the air was full of acrid smoke, so a bit of burning rubber from my wood burner wasn't going to be noticed by the neighbours.

Next morning, I removed the ashes and cooled blade from the fire and was left with this...

...which after a clean up and fitting with a handle looks thus:







The handle shown in the picture is part of a Eucalyptus tree I felled a few weeks ago. I used it partly as it's the only timber I have lying around at the moment, and partly because it's tough as old boots and hard as nails! I turned the handle on my electric lathe. I know this is supposed to be a pole lathe project. However, the pole lathe is still yet to be assembled!One step at a time shall be my motto from here on...

One more thing is the garden. Throwing down a bag of grass seed did the trick after all, as a few days later we have a luscious lawn. Compare this picture with the one taken just a few weeks ago in a previous entry to see the difference.

That's it for now, I'm off to cut the timbers for the pole lathe. Until the next time...

A day in the garden

Taking advantage of a work free day I was out this morning clearing space for the raised beds I intend to use to start some food cultivation. Being fortunate enough to be surrounded by trees, it's easy to forget sometimes that we are on a large estate and not in the middle of the countryside.

With most people out at work the only sound was the wind blowing the autumnally dry leaves off the trees, and in the warm morning sun I set to work clearing the ground for the planters. I was fortunate to have been given the remnants of my father's old pine kitchen ceiling, which provided a good material for the sides of the planters. All the other wood came from offcuts and pieces spared from the wood burner.

The image shows the topsoil I have accumulated ready to fil the planters. Being underneath overhanging trees, there is a layer of rich, crumbly soil which is easy to work and should be full of nutrients.

The first step once the ground was clear was to hammer in the corner pegs, which I cut the bases to a point to make driving easier.

As you can see, I treated them beforehand in an attempt to preserve the wood, although I was reluctant to treat the main timbers for fear of contaminating the soil and eventually the food.

Once these were in the sides were screwed on and some soil thrown in to create....

...a finished planter. Not bad, but my time was slowed down by working in a restricted space and having to move rocks and stones to work in. Now I only have to build two more!

The next stage will be to get a load of old tyres to plant the potatoes in. I used to work as a gardener for a famous architect on his country estate of 200 acres. One of the tasks I enjoyed most was the produce growing which kept me and the head gardener in food year round. The architect on the other hand didn't know one end of a spud from the other and would only use the food garden as an interesting stop on his tour of the estate.

Our garden is much less grand however, and measures just 20m x 6m (about 70 ft x 20 ft). Here you can see Tower the cat contemplating the jungle that existed before...

.... the blank canvas I have created by clearing the weeds over the last few weeks. What slowed me down particularly was the previous owners decision to concrete half the garden meaning that I had to remove over five tonnes of concrete and brick before hitting soil.

In the photo you can just make out the woods behind the house which should be a useful source of ash trees for my next project. Watch this space.

Having read a few other blogs of a similar theme lately I have decided to make this blog one of positivity, and as such a whinge-free zone. That doesn't mean I'll avoid being opinionated and passionate; quite the opposite, but rather I intend to focus on the opportunity and not the challenge.

Out in the wider world, I happened to drive past the Ratcliffe power station this weekend, where protesters were attempting to enter the site and shut down the unit, which is claimed to be the most polluting coal fired station in the UK. My admiration for their effort in taking direct action is immense, however I fear they will find themselves, as so many other protesters, facing anti terrorism laws, bent to suit the needs of whichever 'enemy' is at the gate.

Until the next time...

Day one... mission statement

About me: My name is Richard Day and my life has just been turned upside-down.

No single event is behind this, but rather it’s the culmination of several events which have amassed to force me to re-evaluate the life I am living and the life I would like to live.

Two weeks ago my son, Miles, was born. My wife Julia and I are ecstatic and after the initial shock and readjustment we are starting to consider how we are going to bring up our child (and most probably, children).

The second event to throw me into disarray was a film I was fortunate enough to be invited to view yesterday. The Age of Stupid, with Pete Postlethwaite, seemed to come out of no-where and hit me between the eyes. The current trend for all things fore-tellingly apocalyptic and doom laden can tend to provoke a general feeling of helplessness and ineffectiveness against such massive odds, but the individual stories of struggle and hope encapsulated in the film have spurred me into action.

Lastly, turning thirty-four a week ago today made me realise that to achieve the life I want has to start with positive steps in that direction (my apologies if all this sounds like vacuous psychobabble, however I hope to get to the point soon enough).

Briefly, we live in an ex council house on a council estate in Leicester. For the last five years my wife and I have lived in the sunny south of Spain, where we were generally unhappy and desperate to leave. Now we have been back a year and have started to live.

You can never wait to start living.

We found ourselves in an ex council house as we had limited funds and no recent UK work history to verify our good nature. Being in a recession meant Mr Halifax and Mr Barclays were keeping a much tighter grip on the purse strings. However, a loan of £60,000 was agreed and four months ago we moved in.

Okay, I’ll come to the point: this blog is my decision to chart my way through the paradigm I feel that is starting to take hold. I aim to describe, reflect and chart my path through un-chartered territory. Is it possible to live energy (and nutritionally?) free, from the confines of a normal family home? There are plenty of people out there with allotments and small-holdings doing just this, but can we do it with just our 20m x 6m garden? So far I have been fairly successful with the energy situation, being able to heat the house from scavenged firewood and timber from the woods behind our home, but can we do that with food as well? I hope to include advice and open dialogue on the way that we can achieve this in the hope of inspiring others in similar situations to do the same.

In The Age of Stupid, Pete Postlethwaite asks, “why didn't we stop climate change while we had the chance?” I aim to do what I can, not least for Miles, aged two weeks and three days.