I'm Tyred...

Not my favourite job, and you might well ask what I am doing struggling with landrover tyres when there's a perfectly good tyre centre down the road. My excuse is that I had an odd assortment of off road tyres, trailer tyres and puntures needing new innertubes. The really cold weather last winter seemed to cause a rash of slow punctures and some of the wheels needing anti-rusting and repainting which I've done over the summer in between other jobs. I have a large collection of spares that I've been using but I need to get the tyres back on whilst the weather is still warm and the rubber flexible.



In this case the tyre just needs a new tube. I already had a spare tube and it's not necessary to take the tyre off the wheel completely to replace the tube. The first job is to pop the tyre off the wheel rim, I have a tool for this handed down to me by Richard my landrover guru, but you can use wooden wedges.



Working around the tyre with a couple of levers the rubber is levered over the rim - I find it helps to stand on the tyre whilst doing the work.


You can then pull out the old tube and feed in the new one starting with locating the valve in the wheel.


Replacing the tyre is the reverse of taking it off. Isn't that what it says in the manual? Not quite. You might find you need 3 levers to get the tyre back on and it's not going to be easy unless you get the rubber well over the rim and down into the well of the wheel. Standing on the tyre is definitely needed, and some washing up liquid to lubricate the rubber and help it slide over the rim.

A fine collection of old rubber good for a few more miles this winter with any luck.

Fernhurst Furnace 2009 - Chestnut rails

Chestnut fencing, particularly Sussex post and rail is a part of the Wealden landscape but the coppice workers that harvest the timber and produce the raw materials tend to work so deep in the woods that their activities are almost hidden. As a name Haslemere is almost a misnomer, it should really be called Chestnutmere, especially on the West Sussex side but that's a bit of a mouthful really (this photo is of chestnut coppice cut earlier this year on Stanley common).



John Woolgar is a Chestnut Coppicer on the steep slopes (hangers) overlooking Fernhurst. John brought his new toy to the furnace, a smart new timber trailer with crane, loaded with fresh chestnut lengths to split into rails and fence posts. Certainly made short work of unloading and the shiny new tractor looks like its got real windows rather than holes in the metalwork like the last one.

Here John is using steel wedges and a sledge to split out the chestnut into posts.

The timber was good and straight and despite copious tea breaks, endless questions from visitors and annoying photographers John soon produced a pile of fence posts.


Here Terry, his assistant, is splitting the longer lengths with wedge and sledge to make up rails for the traditional post and rail fencing.


The rails are dressed with an axe to remove unwanted and stray pieces splitting out. For post and rail the fencer will normally shape the rail ends and mortice the posts on the job.


If you are in the Fernhurst area and want Chestnut posts and rails then you can call John Woolgar on 0777 4149595. Or drop in and see him if you can find him, he tells me he's cutting up behind Shulbrede priory this year. This load was straight off to a job.

Fernhurst Furnace 2009 - The Blacksmiths

From the Fernhurst Furnace weekend, I can't really miss out the blacksmiths, they are going 'hammers and tongs' all day long down by the furnace site and anchor the show for the visitors. We are lucky in this corner of West Sussex, Surrey and Hampshire that we have a number of thriving blacksmiths. Robert and Carol Smith organise the blacksmithing at the Weald & Downland smithy, Nick Murray and John Cooksley run the Old Kiln Forge at Tilford, Mick Stanton (Fraught Wrought) an edge tool maker at Normandy nr Guildford, and the village forges in Chiddingfold and Midhurst are still going. But it's a case of use them or lose them...

As a gear freak I admire the amount of kit that Robert manages to spirit to the site for the weekend. Anvils aren't light, well none of the blacksmithing equipment is light. The hand turned forge blower is great, without the background of a petrol motor you can hear more of the metal being worked and the sound is a part of the magic.



With the portable forges and hand wound blowers it's not really possible to work on complicated pieces as well as talk to visitors. In the same way as I make a lot of dibbers and spurtles on occasion here Nick is making a leaf key-ring. It might not be high art but it does give people and particularly children the ability to see something they can appreciate and take away being made. First he hammers out the shape of the leaf from the solid bar

Then he puts in the veins using a cold chisel.

The leaf is almost life-like.

To finish the key ring the leaf is quenched and then cut from the bar. The stalk is beaten into shape and then formed into a ring.



We very much liked his bottle lanterns. The forged candle holder and hanger are cunningly fitted into a bottle with the bottom ground off.



Much more complex is Nick's helmet. The helmet is constructed in quadrants with each part hammered to shape over a former before being riveted together. You can contact Nick Murray (07702 114881) and John Cooksley (07759 044858) at the Old Kiln Forge, nr Farnham, Surrey.

What we did on our holiday....Gower break

After a very calm week on the Gower I feel almost ready for the fray again. Although the weather was quite overcast most of the time there was hardly a breath of wind (very unusual) and the water was totally clear.

As was the visibility with Lundy Island in the middle of the channel unusually clear.

Even the islets of the edge of Lundy were visible. Normally being able to see Lundy clearly means its going to rain (and if you can't it's already raining) but this time the rain held off.



Walking in the Dunes behind Oxwich beach we followed a flock of young Goldfinches who were stocking up on seeds from the fast food flower stalks.

More by luck than by judgement I caught this one alighting on the stalk.

With the good weather beachcombing was in short supply, only broken fish crates and no rope at all.


Yes you guessed it. Whilst walking to Port Eynon to check on the ice cream quality, some vintage tractor spotting in the boat park just behind the beach, An impressive 10 vintage tractors arrayed with their boat trailers on Saturday, with the Massey's in the Red corner....


.,,,and the Fordsons in the blue corner. Hmmmm, who is saddest...... the owners who line up their tractors carefully in the boat park, or those who photograph them?

Whereas Oxwich beach only boasted this Leyland, but with imaginative rope storage.

Physically I am back, but mentally I am still standing on the rocks gazing out to sea (and failing to catch any fish). Normal service will be resumed as soon as possible.

Back Soon

I've been demonstrating with the Surrey and Sussex Coppice group at the Weald Woodfair for the last few days. I didn't have time to post all the craft articles from the Furnace show the previous week before it was time to leave for the Woodfair. Long shows are always very tiring and towards the end of the season it can become a struggle to get through the last few. I need some time to relax, so the posts will have to wait until I get back from the Gower peninsula in South Wales next week.

Will it be sunny like this ?

Or stormy like this?

Either way it won't matter to me and I should manage to get some beachcombing in. When I get back I will post more from the Furnace - blacksmiths, and chestnut post and rail as well as on the woodfair.

Fernhurst Furnace 2009 - The Bodgers

Wayne Batchelor, a fellow Sussex member of the Association of Polelathe Turners (APT) is a keen reenactor and on the Sunday was demonstrating with the Living History group. He brought his small bow lathe and was busy making drop spindles which is hard enough to do, let alone on a bow lathe.

He also had a fine colleciton of carved spoons with him

Somehow against my better judgement he persuaded me to have a go on the bow lathe. Each to their own, it's not my idea of fun - as the roles of hands and feet are slightly reversed from the polelathe - but then I have an old landrover to carry my stuff and there is no doubt the bow lathe is very compact. Working out how to brace the chisel one handed and prevent chattering on thin work like drop spindles I did not manage to master in 5 minutes.



Then back to my pitch in the woods. You could almost call me a bodger with a very small stack of chair legs.



But I spent some time bowl-turning when I could get away from the production of dibbers (still very popular even at this end of the season - clearly a recession buster) rounders bats and rolling pins.




Butser Ancient farm were demonstrating at the show and Fergus was smelting copper using a charcoal furnace and with a clay lining. Unfortunately the wooden pipe from his bellows (something like a tuyere on a forge) burnt through when the clay cracked. I had a go at making a replacement using a birch stool leg that was to hand,




The main effort was to drill through the end grain using my brace and bit, unfortunately the only bit of the right size I had with me was damaged so we had to work a little harder. Though a proper bodge job we got there in the end and the new pipe worked well, though I didn't manage to get free from my pitch to see it in action.

Fernhurst Furnace 2009 - The Chairmaker

Stephen Allberry makes fine handmade chairs and furniture from his home workshop in Rogate near Petersfield. His chairs really are handmade, he doesn't use any power tools. He's not too difficult to find, indeed you can't miss it, his polelathe is in his small front garden right on the A272 as you pass through the village.




Stephen brought a selection of chairs and stools to the show, the armchair at the back is primarily made from Hawthorn with cherry for the arms. The wood he uses is all local and quite often what would otherwise be waste from woodland management. You can see from these chairs that Stephen likes to let the natural shape of the wood work with the design, and the resulting chair is very comfortable, indeed almost too comfortable - if you sit in it you might not get up again in a hurry.



I was very interested in the method Stephen has developed to join the elm bark strips when weaving the seating of these post and rung chairs. We had to turn the chair upside down for a better look. I'm developing the strange habit of turning peoples chairs upside down for a closer look these days. The ends of the bark strips are joined in the same way as leather with a slot and key approach, which works whilst the bark is supple and once dried is rock solid. Much neater than using knots.



When I interrupted him he was working on a pair of back legs for another side chair using a very neat miniature spoke-shave.



Here you get a better appreciation for the size of the spoke shave as Stephen and Dave discuss it's merits.

You can find Stephen and his chairs on his website Fyning Unplugged.

Fernhurst Furnace 2009 - The Bowyer

If you thought Bowyers were sausages - then think again. The ancient craft of bow making is alive and well, or kicking at least judging by the talented bowyers that I have encountered in the last couple of months. At the Furnace this year Dave Mercer joined the woodland craft demonstrators and we were entranced by the depth of understanding of the wood and its properties that is encompassed in the process of bow making. Here Dave is just about to start work on an ash blank that has been stored for a couple of years before it can be used.




The sheer range of different bows was fascinating, not just the different types of wood that can be used but also the wide variations in design of the bows, some of which date back many thousands of years.


Dave demonstrates a lovely ash bow with a relatively low draw strength, so that even I could draw it (my apologies if my knowledge of technical terms for archery is inadequate).

These two ash bows that Dave was working on are both based upon archeological discoveries that are thousands of years old, one from the Somerset levels and one (I think I've remembered rightly) from a similar bog in Denmark. What interested me was the different ways in which the bow is designed to cope with the pull and how each bow is designed to bend in different ways.

Dave knows a thing or two about wood, especially yew, as he is also the Reserve Warden for Kingley Vale National Nature Reserve on the South Downs above Chichester. Kingley Vale includes an amazing yew forest, one of the finest in Western Europe, as well as 14 scheduled ancient monuments, so it's fitting that a Bowyer should manage it.


This graceful little bow turns out to be made from birch and is to an american indian design, and of course we couldn't resist having a go with it. Go on the birch!