Time to get mekin'!

The wood fair I mentioned in the previous blog was a great day out. Despite the rain we stayed all day and took in all that was on show. We stopped and spoke to many people who were involved in a variety of practices including charcoal 'cooking', spar making, basket weaving, logging with horses and a few framers and chair bodgers. Unfortunately there wasn't a pole lathe on show, though I take that as a sign to get practicing and get on the APT & GW demonstrator list.

Fineshade woods is in the heart of Rockingham Forest; an enormous managed woodland in Northamptonshire which is home to a colony of reintroduced Red Kites, one of which allowed me a quick photo.

Fineshade could also be a good source of timber for future projects!

I've had a discussion of late on the Bodgers.org forum about what makes a good froe and whether I should continue with my home made froe, or invest £70 in a Swedish Gransfors model. After reading other people's suggestions I came to the conclusion that I should stick with the one I've got and try a different approach to cleaving. The current froe is quite heavy duty and so I realised that the problem may not be in the froe itself, but the object I was using to drive it into the wood. So last night I spent half an hour with the axe carving a beetle from Eucalyptus, which is ideal as it's tough as old boots and not much good for anything else!




Now the froe is much more effective; it just needed a bigger whalloper!

Wood fuel fair.

This Saturday I hope to attend the National Wood Fuel Fair (Byline: 'Kindling your enthusiasm'). Questionable puns aside it looks to be an interesting day and I hope to see and learn some useful information to keep us warm for next winter. I am particularly interested in charcoal making and have already started filtering the charcoal from the ashes of our wood burner to use on the BBQ over the summer.

It seems we have made it through the particularly cold winter with a great deal of wood left to spare. Our gas consumption over the whole period has averaged just £20 per month, which has been further helped by installing new high grade windows throughout the house. Once I've gotten round to laying out all the loft insulation that's waiting to be laid, we should be even more energy efficient.

More info about the wood fuel fair can be found here: http://www.forestry.gov.uk/woodfuelfair

I'll try and include some photos after the event.

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.

Wood, wood glorious wood!

It's been three weeks since my last entry, mainly due to lack of anything interesting to write about, until the last couple of days when everything become busy again. I have finally finished work for a whole month, which I intend to make the most of. The first interesting event has been the felling and thinning of the spinney behind our house by a friendly group of council arborists who were only to glad to let me have as much wood as I could carry.

Some sycamore logs awaiting splitting...

Tools for splitting. Interestingly these were all bought at car boot sales for pennies. However they are excellent for splitting large logs with a minimum of effort.

This large piece of pine makes an excellent chopping block. It enables one to work without bending down and allows the use of an axe without the sharp edge coming into contact with the ground.

These are some ash poles I managed to obtain which I intend to use on the pole lathe once it's up and running.

A nice pile of logs, split, drying and mostly ready to burn.

This is one of the metal centres inserted into the pole lathe poppets. The point was made by steadily grinding on an electric grindstone. Each poppets contains a centre and it's important that they are both centred. The second one I made needed regrinding as the point was initially made off centre.

The left hand poppet has the nut recessed into the wooden poppet as the rod is moveable, allowing it to be tightened against the workpiece by means of a handle on the other end of the rod, as in the following image:

That's it for now. I just have to attach the legs, which have already been cut and shaped, and it should be ready to use.

All the best!

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...