While I was at Elvaston Castle at the weekend I got to talking with Mark Constable of the Al Fresco forge. Mark was demonstrating lighting a fire using a flint and steel, making it look easier than lighting a match and at the same time explaining how it works. Pay attention now, here comes the science:
Turns out, iron is pyrophoric which means that it spontaneously ignites in the presence of air! Of course, it doesn’t normally do this while I’m working because the surface area of my axe is too small compared to it’s mass. To make it ignite you need to make tiny particles which then burn (actually they rust but it’s the same thing). Why weren’t we told this in school?
So the way to make tiny particle of iron is to knock them off a bigger lump using something hard like a piece of flint. Now iron on its own is too soft to chip off so the iron is hardened by mixing in carbon to make steel, heating up that lump and cooling it very quickly (still with me?). Now when you hit the hardened steel tiny flakes of hardened steel are chipped off into the air where they oxidise and burst into tiny flames. That’s a spark and, for me anyway, it’s even more magical now I know the science behind it.
Anyway, Mark & I then got talking and he explained how he’d wanted a trade where all the tools could be carried around in a small box. He studied to be a jewellry maker and discovered certain techniques (namely damascus and mokume gane) that led him to become a blacksmith. Several years into a successful career he suddenly thought ‘Hang on, what happened to the idea of the tiny tool box?’ Since then Mark’s scaled back, from a 5 tonne truck to a van, to a hatchback and now he’s considering making ‘Only stuff which fits in my pocket and that I can make in a day.’ This is something that definitely rings true for me with my own work as it’s all too easy to accumulate more and more tools in the aim to make the work faster, easier or accomplish more complicated projects. In the end though, I’ve always been most impressed by craftspeople who can make with the simplest tools and find that, by having fewer tools, not only do you become more expert in their use but the limitation becomes a source of inspiration in my making. As Mark poses on his website, if you could only have one tool which would it be?
I was so mesmerised by the sparks demo and our chat that I completely forgot to take any photos so I hope Mark won’t mind me using some of his.
Thankfully, I”m a hand tool worker and often use old tool because the skills I employ were most common in the pastand they’re very often better quality than modern tools. This means my tool box consists of an axe, drawknife, spokeshaves, brace and bits, knives and proper saws with teeth you can sharpen. To add to those I’ve sharpened and fettled up a wooden smoothing plane which is a pleasure to use, made a simple measuring stick for the rakes instead of my normal tape measure and built a bucksaw to cut the logs to length.
Driving down into Edale valley on friday lunchtime Christiane and I could see the giant marquee set up and our anticipation started to mount. We spotted a few friends straight away and the spoon talk started. I’d arrived early to meet up with 
The rest of the weekend was a bit of a blur. None of us had expected the demand for spoon courses with the queue stretching the length of the marquee and back so we all added extra sessions to try and get everyone into their chosen session. I was running a workshop called ‘Improve your spoons’, focusing on the design element of wooden spoons as well as demonstrating my carving process. It was a lot to fit into the 1½ hr sessions which inevitably overran and there was hardly time to take a breath but I was feeding off the buzz and enthusiasm which was everywhere.
A look behind the camera during the filming at Brantwood House when I was asked to teach John Craven to scythe for BBC tv’s Countryfile. I would have preferred to give John some instruction in advance but they wanted it ‘live’ for the programme and, with a bit of help, he got a few good strokes. This was all complicated by having to repeat the lesson for different camera angles, trying to remember what I’d said first time while John pretended to take his first cut again.
My one-day beginner’s scythe courses take place near Kendal in the Lake District where you will spend a day learning to how to use the scythe in a safe and efficient way. Courses cost £60 and include the use of my scythe kits which are available to buy on the day.
After teaching so many beginners to scythe this summer, it was great to see some of them back for my Improver’s course at the weekend. Like any skill, learning to scythe well takes time and practise and it helps to have someone check your progress. For this course I organised few different mowing situations to cover different skills.
We started in the orchard with a clean sward which was short but lying over from the weather. The mowing was deceptively tricky but gave me an opportunity to watch people and work with them on their ‘tai-chi’ style encouraging them to stand up straighter or make more use of their legs while mowing. In between mowing, I gave some help with sharpening and moved people on from the kneeling technique I teach to beginners. Being in the orchard also meant we could also do some trimming around the trees, mulching them at the same time without damaging the tree.
After lunch came my favourite part, a steep bank covered with tall weeds including hogweed, rosebay willowherb and raspberry canes. It’s the sort of thing that looks like awful work but with a scythe and good technique is actually fairly easy, efficient and lots of fun. Adjusting their grip on the scythe and explaining how to cut thicker material meant that the group could work through the weeds without hacking and risking damage to the blades.
Sunday started with a few of us spreading out the grass for hay before the peening course. This was the usual raucus affair with seven people hammering away to shape their blades. These days are important for me to teach good technique, give people the confidence to peen and take away the fear of damaging the blades. Ali and Ian had some damage to their blades so I took them through the process of filing out the nicks and using the flat anvil to peen out metal into the gap. Once peened, we sharpened the blades with a succession of whetstones before taking them back out to try on the meadow.
Just back from another weekend running a Learn to Scythe course. This week Christiane and I went to teach the folk of Sustainable Edale who want to mow their community orchard. It’s great that word of my scythe workshops had spread from down the road at Bradwell, where I ran a scything course earlier in the year and that my good mate 
After setting up the scythes we went off to see the orchard to be met by 4 acres of tall tough grasses including sedges and reeds. This kind of vegetation is not the place to first learn the tai-chi scythe movement so we spent the afternoon practising on some shorter, cleaner grass in the village. Then Christiane, Robin, Jojo and I went back over to the orchard in the evening to open up a swath through the grass which was shoulder high in places. With the job well done, we rewarded ourselves with an excellent homemade 
This week I got a call asking if I would teach John Craven to scythe for an episode of the BBC’s Countryfile programme. They were filming at Brantwood House and focussing on John Ruskin’s work in training and education. My recent “Learn to Mow with an Austrian Scythe” course tied in the training aspect with the gardens and also gave an excuse to get John to try out something new for the viewers.
Happily, the tv crew brought some southern weather with them and we had the first hot summer day for several weeks. The grass was getting on a bit but still had a last flush of flowers and cut sweetly for camera. Hopefully this will show the mowing as the efficient and pleasant work I promote and teach.
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