I had a brilliant weekend teaching spooncarving to students on the Coppice Association’s ‘Weekend in the Woods’. Six courses all taking place over the same weekend makes a fantastic atmosphere with lots of folk busily making and sharing ideas.
When I teach spoon carving, I want people to go home with more than just a spoon; my aim is that they learn techniques so they can continue carving after the course and have a better understanding of safe and effective use of the axe and knives. To this end we spent a lot of time practising different knife grips on lengths of hazel rod and building up muscle memory into the hands. I’m really careful to make sure everyone’s hands are in just the right position when they practise, sometimes just a slight change can make a big difference. I’ve learnt that a good guiding principle is ‘when you change to a new grip, check before you start cutting to see where everything is in relation to the knife’ which helps avoid accidents.
All this work is pretty intensive on the hands so I included a session on hand stretches and we joined Mike Carswell’s group for a warm up session with exercises specifically for the arms and hands.
As the weekend progresses we build up skills and make tent pegs and butter spreaders to learn the techniques of using the axe and straight knife first. By Sunday everyone is keen to start a spoon and with the skills they’ve built up, the work goes much easier. There were lots of questions about designing, using different woods and the order in which to work which I’ve learned my own answers to over the years of carving and by talking with other makers; it’s great to pass it on to a new set of students and hopefully I’ll see some of them at Spoonfest in August.
The NW Coppice Association are a lively bunch so with so many of us all gathered together on saturday night, there had to be some games after the day’s work. Events in the ‘Coppice Olympics’ including Egg & Wooden Spoon Hurdle race, Tape Measure Extension and Leaf Putting – something for the Bodger’s Ball in the future perhaps?
An important part of making the snath is getting the right rotation of the stem and aligning the handgrips with the blade. Draw an imaginary line through the two handgrips (or the place on the snath where your hand sits if there’s only a single grip) and note where this line crosses the scythe blade. There’s a ‘sweet spot’ on the blade about one third of the way along it’s length, measured from the heel. This is where the blade rides on the ground as it cuts and the handgrips should be in alignment with this point to direct your energy most effectively into the blade.
I’m fortunate that, through knowing Christiane Lechner, I can examine the snaths that Peter Vido made for her. In the top photo the camera was placed on the left-hand grip and you can see how the lower grip aligns with the sweet spot. On Rico’s snath, in the lower photo, the grip is rotated too far to the right.
The village of Bradwell in the Peak District is perhaps best known for it’s icecream. The Orchard Group, formed in 2009, hope that in the future there will be no end of fruit to go with the icecream! We have planted around 40 different varieties of fruit tree – many types of apple, and some pear, plum, gage and cherry. But scythers will not be surpised to learn what a handful our crop of grass is proving to be.
Last year members of the group brought scythes to some of our monthly work parties, cutting paths through the grass in June, and continuing in July and August. At the end of the year a local contractor was paid for some strimming so this year we are hoping to swell the ranks of scythers and improve our skills by hosting a mowing course. Recently we have been raking the orchard grass in preparation for the scythe course.
I had brought my kitchenware, chairs and fan birds and we arranged our marquee with polelathes, shavehorses signage designed to tempt people over to have a look and have a go. As I unpacked, I casually showed Gavin the toy helicopters I sometimes make. He was immediately taken by them and set me to making some more. Well, I pretty much spent the rest of the weekend carving ‘copters to try and keep up with Gavin’s amazing ability to sell them. Simple in a way; walk up to someone, offer to show them how it works and then wait for a break in their enjoyment to ask if they’d like to buy it to take home and continue the fun. By Sunday we had established the ‘Dalkeith Flying School’ and families, as well as buying a helicopter each for competitions, wanted their photo taken by the sign.
But hang on, I’m a craftsman and these are just gimmicks aren’t they; why am wasting my time on them? The simplest answer is that they gave a lot of pleasure to a lot of people and meant I went home with some cash in my pocket when other things weren’t selling. From a larger viewpoint I think that anything which engages the public with natural materials and the idea that they can make their own toys or whatever from local materials is a good thing.
In years to come thousands will claim to have been there but in truth a select bunch of six scythe folk turned up to Sprint Mill in Cumbria for International Peening Day. Huge numbers was never my objective and our group spent a really enjoyable and productive day together. Though it wasn’t a true teaching event I was of course happy to answer questions and help everyone out with their blades. There’s a lot to learn in peening; it’s a real skill which takes time, practice and timely advice to learn. It’s great to see people who’ve been on my ‘Learn to mow’ courses and are still mowing and I want them to continue enjoying it.
During the day we also took some time out to try a variety of push mowers, including a new Al-Ko 380HM Soft Touch Lawn Mower which 
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