Surrey and Sussex Coppice Group Hands On Day 2009 at Fernhurst Furnance - Part II
Bear with me if you can, but there is more. There is a connection between our coppice group activities and the adjacent remains of the medieval North Park Iron Works and the furnace pond.
The furnace operated for over 150 years from the start of the 17th century through to around 1777 and through this period it would have needed charcoal to fuel it from an estimated 2500 acres of coppice woodland surrounding the site. Contrary to the urban myths, the woodland were not devoured by this need. The woodlands would have been very carefully managed as coppice with standards, and good coppicing would have been promoted to provide for the furnace over this period as well as satisfying local demand for fuel and timber together with London's ever increasing appetite for wood and wood products.
To find out more about the Fernhurst Furnace visit this link. The furnace has an open weekend during September which is well worth a visit if you live nearby.
The Hands On Day is intended for members to share information and try out different skills in a way we can't do when demonstrating at shows (and trying to earn a living) and also to encourage new members to take up or improve skills. I spent most of the morning setting up both of my transportable polelathes together with the shelter, but then had no time to use them as other tasks demanded my attention. But they seemed to be constantly in use through the day, though I have to apologise for only leaving out a selection of quite blunt chisels!
Pete displayed his exceptionally fine VW and demonstrated some excellent rake making as well. Wooden rakes are a pleasure to use in comparison with their modern metal and plastic contemporaries. Besides it's much easier to fix a tine on a wooden rake than on a plastic one!
Les demonstrated making a range of gate hurdles. In this part of the country the gate hurdles were used extensively as transportable sheepfolds, rather as wattle hurdles were in other parts of the country. There is a design for each county, and they are still in demand but more as garden installations than for sheep.
The tie a bundle race generated plenty of competition amongst the participants, particularly as Alex had the fastest time and I don't think Alan will be allowed to forget it anytime soon.
The afternoon started to get quite hot so a delivery of chocolate cake went down very well, especially since the home picked strawberries and raspberries had been ingeniously cooled with ice packs.
I don't think I've seen a cake disappear any quicker than it does at a coppice group show, and Robert ably demonstrates how it's done.
Turning to the noisy stuff, Roger Day showed us how to carve stunning shapes from the wood, and we liked his fan pack which blows air into the helmet.
Will Wallace made quick work of the oak logs with his Woodmizer mobile bandsaw mill.
I joined the noisy brigade and demonstrated my M7 Logosol chainsaw mill. The Stihl 660 saw I use was voted the noisiest on the field, being quite a lot louder than the Woodmizer. For this demonstration I modified the mill and reduced the logbed to handle logs as short as 4ft. A lot of time is used in rolling and manoeuvring the logs. So I've been experimenting with a new solution for lifting the logs onto the bed which worked extremely well thanks to my log loader on the back of the tractor.
For me the day flashed by and I struggled to finish milling up some ash planks (I have a use for these that will be revealed soon) before it was time for the hog roast and to finish off the cider.
Despite my warnings the polypin of cider was nearly empty come the morning. A final surprise was the late night music when the quiet night was interrupted by a rave in a field down the road, and a few bemused kids who apparently could not tell the difference between a field full of coppice group landrovers and a rave.
As we all faded slowly from the field leaving only the odd scatter of shavings to be placed on the fire I hope everyone else enjoyed the weekend as much as I did, many thanks to Robin and Carla for hosting the event and apologies to those who I photographed so poorly, as well as those I entirely failed to catch demonstrating.
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