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For more on Polelathe turning, greenwood working, the Lynchmere Commons and so on......




.........The latest posts are now on my Woodlandantics Worpress site

http://woodlandantics.wordpress.com

Latest articles on new wordpress site

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Woodland Antics is now on Wordpress http://woodlandantics.wordpress.com/

I will be maintaining this site as an archive for a while yet - but the new site has more pages. better links and its easier to make comments.

Teaching Greenwood Work - Merrist Wood College

Hopefully you've all found my new site at http://woodlandantics.wordpress.com which has all the latest articles and extra pages with my showlist for the season and a growing gallery of greenwood products. This site will become an archive for a while while I figure out what to do with all the old articles on here. I will continue to bring posts over for a while yet - but do visit the new site and let me know what you think.

Yesterday I was invited to do some polelathe teaching at Merrist Wood College, near Guildford. Getting there reminded me just why I like working in the woods and why I gave up travelling to work in an office as I jousted with the Surrey commuter traffic. The landrover I use for hauling my polelathes around is 50 this year and neither of us enjoy rush hour much,

Brian, who runs the countryside workshop and the countryside management courses at Merrist Wood built his first two pole lathes many years ago (maybe 15 years or more) so the two lathes I took along are mere babes in comparison. We managed to keep people working on cleaving and shaving whilst 4 were on the lathes.

As always it is a hectic full up day as Brian and I try to get each student to try all the skills of cleaving, shaving and turning on the lathe as well as coming away with some form of item that they have chosen to make. The students had a wide range of things they wanted to make all of which added to the day. Arthur (at least I think that was the name – apologies if I got it wrong) succeeded in making a turned spoon by cleaving the turned blank (shown above) and then hollowing the bowl, not bad for a first attempt which turned out very well in the end.

There is always one, and Luke decided to try for making a baseball bat the hard way. A little bit to my surprise it turned ok, but I think he would have needed another few days to finish the job.

Honey drizzlers were popular and Catherine was one of the group that got the hang of the polelathe very swiftly.

I very much liked the tactile shape of the wood and the curve of the head (once we decided it was the head). Well done to all of the group, Mark with his kitchen towel holder, Chris with his excellent priest (fisherman’s club), Chris (again) and his charcoal burners stool, Sally (honey drizzler) and any others I have forgotten – but Catherine’s honey drizzler was the most impressive of a very good group . Very talented and I reckon I could have sold it with no problem. Go on Catherine build a pole lathe – you know you want to! Instructions for one type of lathe here. The instructions for Mike Abbot’s polelathe 2000 are in his second book living woods, or join the Association of Pole lathe Turners (APT) and greenwood workers and come along to the bodgers ball (in may) to find out more.

Beams, trunks and green men

First published on http://woodlandantics.wordpress.com where I will post the latest articles. I will continue to update this site as and when for a while yet.

On our recent visit to the Norfolk coast we stayed enroute in the Breckland village of Thompson. Alison has family connections there so we explored around and about poking into corners that she had not been to for a while. The church is impressive, mainly because it’s quite original inside and not prettied up like most. I expect I should have been admiring the ecclesiastical features but I was entranced by the roof beams in plain view

The green men in the stonework. There are 3 one appears to have oak leaves, one ash-like and one might be maple/sycamore.

and most of all the old chests at the back of the church. This one seems to have a solid piece of tree for a lid

Whilst this one looks as if it might bave been hewn from a single butt of a tree. It has outlasted the metalwork fashioned to restrain it,

with fantastic grain and patterns in the ancient wood. I couldn’t help wondering how long these chests have been here and all of the history that they have witnessed, for hundreds of years growing as trees and then for even more hundreds of years after being felled to be filled with yet more history.

I think you might have to call this a trunk rather than a chest?

Legs and wordpress site update

First posted on http://woodlandantics.wordpress.com

I’ve made chair legs before, but normally for competitions or demonstrations, so this is the first time I’ve tried to make 4 legs the same for a chair. The pressure is on.

I've updated some of the pages on the wordpress site which behaves more like a website than a blog. I’ve added some content to the greenwood products page and also there is now a page with examples of the turned treen, tools and garden products.

You can find the greenwood products page by clicking on the tab above the woodlandantics blog header, and here is a link to the turned treen page within in

http://woodlandantics.wordpress.com/test-page/turned-treen-tools-and-garden-products/

I will shortly be updating the show list page with my current list of dates for the season suddenly seems to be approaching at full speed.

I will keep updating this site for a little while longer, but the articles will be behind those at http://woodlandantics.wordpress.com

Heavy Metal Face Lift - Landrover Style

first posted at http://woodlandantics.wordpress.com follow the link for the latest posts.

The snow has now virtually all gone to be replaced with heavy rain, but looking on the bright side some enforced work in the shed has allowed me to make unexpected progress with getting the SWB landrover back on the road again. I always think that the headloghts in the centre panel give the old landrovers much more character (though less light on the road it must be said) and this one needed a face lift badly.

The bottom rail was almost gone entirely and although it’s not an MOT failure it’s good to get it back in a position with a new rail welded on the bottom where it will last for another 45 years.

The rest of the front is a bit further behind, but with another couple of days of heavy rain it should all be back together again. Watching the paint dry has been a real problem as in the low temperatures it hasn’t. I was able to hang the centre panel over the stove but don’t have that option with the chassis. So another couple of days with higher temperatures could make quite a difference to the appearance.

Auntie Gertie's Chair

Posted first on http://woodlandantics.wordpress.com

Sometime ago I was asked to look at repairing an old chair with a loose back. Not being the highest priority I didn’t get around to it immediately and its been kicking around the house waiting for me. It’s a very small cottage so it’s hard for me to ignore things forever however much I try and finally curiousity got the better of me and I had a good look at the chair.

That’s when I noticed that it showed signs of being hand made of greenwood. There is a distinct oval shape to the legs, hard to see but you can feel it, where the wood has dried since the legs were turned. There are a few digs in the finish, where the chisel has dug into the wood surfaceas it’s turned.

And there are flats on the beads and swellings where the blank was not quite wide enough, though these have been turned to the inside of the chair so they don’t spoil the finish.

One of the flats clearly shows the cambium of the wood – so the leg has been made by cleaving and turning greenwood.

Although the chair is rough and ready I really like it’s proportions and simplicity. The rough finish appeals to me as well, all a part of the craft as these chairs were functional above all rather than art. I’ve not succeeded in finding out much about it, with faint hopes of tracing who made it. As far as I know it came down from Norfolk where it belonged to Alison’s great aunt Gertie. The normal response to ‘do you know anything about Auntie Gertie’s chair?’ is ‘Yes, it belonged to Auntie Gertie’. I haven’t got around to repairing it yet but I am making a copy of it starting with the legs.

Shed State - Two Degrees and getting Warmer

First posted on http://woodlandantics.wordpress.com

After days of temperatures below or around freezing in the shed it’s finally getting a bit warmer – all of 2 degrees C today and balmy temperatures upto 8 degrees are forecast for the weekend, along with heavy rain. All of which finally got me back on the lathe today. Yes that is a set of chair legs on the crate – more of that soon.

Slowly getting used to the wordpress site. Overall it’s easier to use but I haven’t managed to get the font and character size the same as it used to be on blogspot. Somehow a photo dropped off the frozen trough and load of logs post and I’ve only just noticed it -so here’s a purely gratuitous one.

On no, S'no joke all over again!

First published on http://woodlandantics.wordpress.com on Wednesday

In the throws of working on wordpress I've failed to copy the posts across to this site, but I should catch up later today when I back get from working in the shed. So this post is a little behind the times as the thaw has set in with heavy rain all this morning. Amazing how quickly things have changed, from a warm wet November, when it seemed that we'd have a mild winter, though the big freeze of mid December and early January and now the thaw. It seems hard to remember that we were snowed in only a few days ago.

Oh no it happened all over again yesterday, with another 3 inches of snow falling on still frozen ground, but this time with no gritting or ploughing of the roads. It was very noticeable this time that there was a lot less patience with the confitions and with other drivers. A predictable chaos ensued as lots of people thought they could handle the conditions, only to discover otherwise.

Conditions on the road to Liphook were chaotic for a while with cars failing to get up the hill and cars sliding downwards at the same time. I made the mistake of going to gawp and watch the entertainment but got pulled into traffic direction on the hill for 3 hours whilst we pulled cars out with a tractor. That’ll teach me.

But after a couple of hours it all went strangely quiet as folks either got to their destination or realised they would not get there and turned back.

The first signs of a thaw arrived though, and the icicles over the side of the house, just above the logstore made getting logs a bit too dangerous until I knocked them off. The longest icicle was about 4ft.

Now we’re just waiting for the snow to go as the temperature slowly rises and it’s even started raining today. It’s been fiun and very different while it’s been so cold, but the thaw is not so much fun – back to the woods before too long as there is a lot to do now.

Frozen troughs and a load of logs

First posted on http://woodlandantics.wordpress.com

Everything seems to take longer in the Big Freeze and there are unanticipated jobs to do as well. The shetland cattle that graze the Lynchmere Commons during the summer are on the adjacent meadows for the winter and during this weather they are fed hay harvested from the meadows in the summer. But in the persistent low temperatures the water feed to the troughs has frozen solid.

For the last few days I’ve been moving water to them in containers to help out the grazier. Today temperatures rose enough that I managed to unfreeze the feed using a blowtorch, so that will make things a bit easier for a while

At the same time I managed to get into the woods for the first time in a week and move a load of logs that I’d prepared before the current snow hit us.

Not a big load, but enough for the depth of snow and the slope back up the hill out of the woods. But what should have taken an hour or two took the best part of the day.

Got a new leg

Also posted on http://woodlandantics.wordpress.com

Despite the big freeze I’ve made some progress on the repairs to my shortwheel base landrover.

The work started by stripping off the wing over the affected chassis leg. One of the good things about these old vehicles is the aluminium bodywork which is bolted so removing and replacing major items of bodywork can be quite easy – the more often you do it, the easier it gets.

The old chassis leg had cracked above the axle. Replacing the complete leg is not a normal operating procedure and to do it right we’ll need the replacement to be aligned perfectly or else the spring will not sit properly. To help this we constructed an angle iron jig across the front of the chassis so we can align the front of the replacement accurately. The rear is aligned by measurements. All done before we cut off the old leg.

The replacement chassis leg from the donor vehicle is fitted in 2 sections, first the rear spring hanger (bottom right of the image) and then the main leg is eased into position with a bottle jack to align it at front and rear before welding.

The replacement leg fitted, welded and with the spring, axle and wheel reattached. I’ve never attempted anything as complicated as this before and at times I really thought it would have been better to go for a new chassis. But thanks to my friend Richard it’s turned out really well. That’s the good news.

We also repaired the chassis on the other front leg which was much less corroded and then short test drive. This happened just before New Year, hence the relatively small amount of snow on the ground.

The bad news is that, as always, I found a bit more work that needs doing. The front panel is badly corroded and in need of repair before it collapses and the radiator needs replacement. Despite having just been upgraded to 50% antifreeze the waterpump chose this moment to spring a leak. So a new water pump whilst we are at it. But with temperatures only just recovering from a steady minus 3 C in the shed it will be a while before I can get this work completed.

Snow and Blogs

With the snow still on the ground I have a little time to do computer work today. Of course it should be my tax return, but instead I’m getting to grips with WordPress which seems much more advanced and useful than the current google blogspot site.

Here’s the view from the kitchen window with the bluetit's fighting it out for Alison's homemade fatballs.

I am just starting to build the new site and I intend to keep posts on both for a while as I get the hang of it. If it works out I will switch to wordpress eventually.

The new site is http://woodlandantics.wordpress.com not much there today, but it should start to build in the next few days unless the weather suddenly turns balmy or I get a sudden urge to do my tax return.

It looks as if it will allow me to put up photo galleries of my work and other pages as well as the blog posts - now I just need to put in the hard work.

Snow on Lynchmere

Some snowy photos from around Lynchmere this week..........



The old wooden bus shelter (no buses sheltering here for a few days now).....



Fairly unsuitable for cars as well......



This hay meadow also looks good in white......



Not much sign of anyone using the post box at the moment either.....



St Peter's church - even the church services have been cancelled.....



Now is that signpost measuring distance or is it time to get there in hours?



The old ash tree close to the barn looks good in all seasons, but especially in winter when it's shape is accentuated.



all this marching through the snow taking photos is quite tiring, not to mention cold as the temperature remains stubbornly below zero all day, so it's good to get back home....




....stoke up the stove and keep the snow at bay!