sutton046

Taking the Joy of Wood to primary schools is always a delight. Sure, it is very busy, very noisy, and hard work for us - but for the kids it is a fantastic opportunity to have a go at creating with their hands. For many kids it is the first time they have used hand tools.  Block planes are great for kids and adults alike. Over 3 days, we would be working with 5 classes of Yr 6 & 7 students, each of about 28 kids. The classes had previously agreed on the projects they would be making, from the menu I had offered. Four of the classes would be making small stools, and one class would be making small framed whiteboards. It takes about 1.5 - 2 hours to set up the gear for a gig like this. We set up in the undercover area at the school. Lunchtime - however quite a few kids came in, keen to work on their stools. All the wood we were using had been rescued from the waste stream, with most of it coming from packing crates from the northern hemisphere. Some teaching of ...

While traditionally a shaving horse would be made from green wood gathered from a forest or wood somewhere, not all of us city dwellers have easy access to the right kind and size of trees for this purpose. However, we do have access to wonderful seasoned timbers from all around the world which arrive in our cities in the form of packing crates, dunnage, and pallets. What a resource to work with!  Packing for the picking. Off the verge and into the back of the ute. Nice pine from the USA. Earlier this year, I was needing to make up a few shaving horses for running workshops. So I started out by using some of the packing crate material I had collected which was in my timber racks. Two models: the English Bodger style and the fabricated Dumb Head style. There are many variations on shaving horses, though the most common styles would be the "Dumb Head" style, which has been around since at least the 14th century,  and the English Bodger's style which is a m...

Another successful program completed. Recently I'd had the privilege of facilitating another woodworking program at the Stirling Men's Shed, bringing together grandparents or parents and their grand kids or kids. The last one of these was conducted in 2013, where we made tables. This time we set out primarily to make chairs and stools. The nice change this time was this program also being open to women. The Stirling Men's Shed facilities are made available every second Saturday afternoon to the women's recreational woodworking group, "Women Working with Wood".    This opened up the possibility for the program to be both inter-generational and inter-gender! Unfortunately, I did not get many photos along the way - nor did I get pics of every pair or their completed projects, sadly. However, the few I did capture are shown amid the text below. Dermot and his Grandad Bert together made a stool to match some others they had at home. The Process. We started looki...

While picking up some nice WA Blackbutt timber recently from Derek Doak The Timber Bloke , I came away with a bonus - a big chunk of Camphor Laurel. Thanks, Derek! The two crotch sections about to be cut from the log. The crotch from the end of the log Derek would be able to use. The next crotch in was less useful to him to recover timber, as it was a bit complicated being a four way fork. I reckoned it would be worth seeing what I could recover from this big crotch, even if it was only spoon material! Big and VERY heavy - loaded by the forklift. Normally, for green woodworking, we want nice straight grained log sections. These are more likely to split evenly. This big piece of Camphor Laurel was anything but straight! It was going to be a gamble, and a bit of an adventure... I had to use levers to manoeuvre the stump off the back of the ute. THUMP!  Once off the back of the ute, the big chunk was sitting in my driveway. Totally unmovable, it was time to make it much smaller. ...

During my Green Woodworking adventures, I have been exploring woods suitable for use which are readily available here in Perth, Western Australia. While there is a long tradition of green wood crafts in Europe and North America going back over centuries, this is not the case here in Australia. Consequently there are very little green wood crafts being done here - except for a few crazies like me. I am eager to share the wonders of green woodworking with other West Australians, but we need some friendly timbers to work with. That knocks out most of the gnarly eucalypts which predominate our forests and bushlands! However, parks, gardens and back yards offer a whole world of exotic tree species to chose from, so I am on the hunt for timber which is readily available, which splits easily, and is not too hard and unfriendly. A prolific backyard exotic tree in the older parts of Perth is the Cape Lilac. This tree is also known in other parts of the world variously as Whit...