Keeping busy through the summer

June went by in a flash and I realised I hadn’t written anything here all month. It’s mowing season so a lot of my time at the moment is taken up with scythes – find out about it on Scytherspace, my mowing blog.
In between that though, there has been time for some making. At the start of the month I was hired by Charlie Whinney to make a set of his steam-bent chairs for Brantwood House. It was four very busy days working with table saw, thickness and a host of other power tools on dry wood – quite a change from my usual quiet chairmaking days on the shavehorse.

I’ve also been making some rakes, refining my techniques, making tools and researching designs ready for a wooden rake course I’m running in September. I’m hoping to visit a couple of museums later this week, on my way up to teach scything in Inverness, so I can measure the rakes in their collection and add a Scottish pattern to my repertoire.

And finally I got round to making a leather sheath for my firmer chisel. It’s a lovely socketed chisel but too big to go in the roll with the other chisels so now it can live safely in my tool box or on my belt and will hopefully become an everyday workhorse tool.