I'm back

Hello!

Yep, been a while hasn't it?! Alas, I have returned to work and can no longer dedicate all my working hours to wood and garden stuff but, as I stupidly didn't take out one of those self-paying mortgages, the money is rather welcome.

The latest edition of Living Woods magazine arrived today and would you believe it... my frankenstein's monster of a shaving horse is featured on pages 18/19. I haven't had time to read the issue cover to cover just yet as I have been inundated with literally one email about my new found fame, but it looks great!

So what have I been up to since my last post? Driving to work, working and driving home from work mostly. But in the spare time I've been trying to work on some small pieces. I picked up a really beautiful piece of yew and have been trying to turn it into interesting little pieces of jewellery. Going quite well as it holds a shine amazingly! I also worked some freshly felled sweet chestnut. Man, what a pain that was. Stained my draw knife and scorp due to it's acidity and then promptly split terribly as it dried. Am I annoyed by this?? Not at all. It is yet another wood that I now have a little experience working and there is simply no substitute for experience. I picked up a few ash and oak logs recently which I am very excited about working. The old man is also going to provide me with some more yew and a bit of holly soon too. Who needs Christmas eh...?

The End of a Journey

Well, back to the real world in a few days. Both good and bad. Good that I get paid again. Bad that I'll have less time to nurture my new skills. Good that I'll, once again, have a short term purpose. Bad (and good) that I have identified an alternative purpose that is hard to penetrate. Whatever. We all have to pay our mortgages, that much is inevitable. We just have to enjoy ourselves as much as possible while doing it. And hopefully be able to plan for the future too. The best thing is that I have not one single regret. My brief time away from work has enabled me to learn skills that, had I been working full time, would have taken me two years of weekly evening classes to gather. Much more than that though. I got to:
- spend quality time with the important people in my life (Mo, Si, Tom, Mr & Mrs P senior, Stew and most of all Mrs P).
- develop all sort of recipes, most notably my hand made bread recipe. Best organic ingredients sourced from France and UK.
- make great new friends, mentors and future colleagues
- perform some vital renovations to my flat
- learn a s##t load about me

Some pics:

Some of my tools

Wood pieces (some unfinished!)

My bread

This is, however, just the beginning!

A new beginning...

Shaving Horse

So I picked up some logs from my tree surgeon's yard last week. I already had all the tools to get from whole logs to pieces of log (i.e. a log splitter, a sledge hammer and an axe) but getting from rough log sections to workable pieces requires a shaving horse. A shaving horse is simply a bench on which you sit and a cramp to hold wood still while you shape it with a drawknife and spokeshave. There are several websites giving plans and directions such as http://www.greenwoodworking.com/shorse.htm However, in Living Woods Magazine (http://britishwoodworking.com/Living%20Woods.html), Nick Gibbs published instructions to build Mike Abbott's new style horse. To keep costs down, the brief I had set myself was to use up as much of the old wood I had lying around rather than buying in a load of 4x2 as in the magazine. Using a combination of old fence posts from my veranda and random pieces of hard and softwood I threw together my horse in a few hours.
He is a little rickety so I have started refering to him as my shaving donkey, he doesn't have a name yet.

So what advice would I give to people who want to make their own shaving horse? Firstly, there is no substitute for thick wood. You simply can't get the strength when using thinner pieces. Secondly, don't under estimate the strength of your legs. I used a piece of 14mm dowel as my pivot and it snapped immediately. I'm currently using an old piece of copper pipe until I can come up with an alternative. Finally, don't expect it to be perfect first time. My top board, or head, is a little too high. My seat is 50cm from the ground - a comfortable sitting height - and my top board is a further 45 cm from the seat. This creates a slightly unnatural movement and should probably have been nearer 30 cm from the seat as one's arms are stronger nearer your waist than up by your shoulders.

Now to get working on some logs...