A great day today teaching Sam Robinson on a one-to-one workshop at Sprint Mill. Sam is a current apprentice on the Bill Hogarth Apprenticeship scheme, now in his second year. We’d been talking about various crafts a couple of weeks ago and he asked me to run a course to learn how I carve bowls and improve his technique.
We started by looking at some of my carved bowls and discussing the design elements involved, importance of balancing the bowl by knowing which areas needed to be left thicker and where it could be carved finer. Sam was also keen to see some of my spoons and the finish I achieve solely through carving and which he’s aspiring to.
Sam had brought along some birch logs which were really fresh and ideal for the project. Once cleaved in half with a froe we began immediately with marking out guidelines for the bowl and axing out a twist in the wood. I always start by establishing a flat surface for the base of the bowl. This makes it sit stably on the bench and acts as a reference surface for marking out the height and measuring the depth as you carve. Flattening the top surface at this stage is a lot of work that will then be carved away when hollowing.
These one-to-one courses are great fun to do as I can fit the content exactly to the student’s skills and learning goals. It also gives me chance to put in lots more information and ‘tricks of the trade’ that there wouldn’t be time for with a group. A quality final product comes from well thought-out design and I showed Sam some tips on marking out for the bowl shape before we got onto the adzing. From our previous conversation I knew was an area where I could really improve Sam’s technique and his efficiency in hollowing the bowl. Sure enough, after a short demonstration, the chips were flying and the bowl started to take shape. Working with an adze is fun and exciting; like the axe it can swiftly remove large amounts of wood but can equally, in skilled hands, work extremely accurately. When I’m carving, I like to work right up to the line and leave a smooth surface with the adze, so there’s only the refining work to be done.
Before that though, we flattened the top surface of the bowl then remarked our shape and did a little more work with the adze before moving on to using gouges and knives. I had brought a selection of tools that I have used over the years for carving bowls, explaining their pros and cons. I demonstrated how I push the wide gouge through the wood using my body weight and hand positions to add power which then leads to controlled cutting and a smooth finish. Sam is well used to working with tools of course and a quick learner so he quickly picked it up and before long had a bowl full of beautiful shavings. As well as the gouges, we used a selection of hook knives including one long-handled knife designed especially for bowl carving, cutting across the grain to smooth the bottom of the bowl.
The other area that Sam wanted help with was in defining the outer surface of the bowl. He had picked out one of my spoons he especially liked as inspiration for his design and I explained how the same principles of wall thickness applied to both the bowl of a spoon and a large bowl. With a combination of axe, gouge and knife he worked on defining the shape, learning for himself along the way the importance of the initial design stages and the challenges of marrying the sides, ends and handles together.
At the end of the day Sam took away a really well-made, good looking bowl but more importantly the practical skills in using the adze and finishing tools. He was already planning his next bowl as he left.
One-to-one sessions can be catered to your own goals but could include
- Spoon carving and design
- Hay rake making
- Learn to carve fan birds
- Make and use a shavehorse
- Steam bending wood
- Axe and knife techniques for various projects
A day with me in the workshop costs £150 including materials and use of my tools. Or share with a friend for £250.
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Later this week I’m teaching a 1-to-1 course on green wood bowl carving for Sam Robinson, one of the Bill Hogarth Coppice apprentices. It’s something I really enjoy doing, partly because it uses such a simple tool kit, my hollowing adze and large hook knife being principal among them. Sam has done a little carving already and is looking for some tuition to improve his efficiency with the tools and final finish. I also want to spend time with him focusing on design and the overall balance and shape of his bowls.
On Sunday I organised a group of volunteers, the NW scythe ‘gang’, to do some coppicing in Edward & Romola Acland’s woods. It’s a 2 acre hazel with standards woodland that Edward & Romola have been working for about 20 years. When they bought it, it was overstood and hadn’t been worked for around 30 years. Since then they’ve brought it back to a beautiful example of coppice almost entirely using hand tools. This was a chance for us to see a well-managed and productive woodland and learn about the many products that are cut from each hazel stool including hedging stakes, bean poles, pea sticks, garden stakes and of course firewood.
The inner side of this bark is much darker than of the spring bark so I started to wonder if this is ‘winter bark’. In countries with a tradition of working with birch bark, bark is harvested in the dormant season for the darker coloured layer inside. This is scraped away to reveal the lighter bark underneath and make patterns and designs on the finished work, like these baskets by 
The first stage of sharpening a scythe is to peen the blade, drawing out the edge to thin it and give the right bevel angle. When you start out, the peening jig designed and made by Schroeckenfux along with Peter Vido is a good way to go; it’s quick to learn, relatively foolproof (but not without some care and attention) and will give consistent results. As your mowing progresses though you’ll start to see the limitations of the jig and want to learn to peen your scythe freehand with hammer and anvil. This will enable you to achieve a finer edge, different bevels for different vegetation and more control over the whole process.
When I started out peening, I cleaned up and handled an old carpenters hammer which served me well but wasn’t quite heavy enough. About a year ago I was visiting Gerhard Wagner in Austria and he explained that the hammer should be heavy enough to do the work simply from the force of letting it fall rather than actively ‘hitting’ the blade and suggested using hammer with a head weight of around 600g. There were a few other factors I wanted and, after a lot of searching I finally bought my new peening hammer earlier this year.
Made by Britool and sold as a riveting hammer, it has a nicely designed head with a rectangular cross-section at the flat face. It also has a cross-peen face and weighs in at 650g so ideal for peening. When it arrived I used some wet and dry paper to soften the sharp bevels at the edges of the flat face and shortened the handle so it’s now just 160mm long. To maintain accuracy and consistency in your peening it helps to tuck the elbow of your hammer hand into your side, restricting it’s movement. A longer handle prevents you doing this as it catches on your thigh and since you’re only using the hammer’s own weight, the extra leverage of a long handle isn’t necessary.
I’ve just been sent the dates for this year’s International Haymaking Festival in Transylvania. The fourth festival will take place on 19-26 August 2012 in Gyimes, Transylvania. 
If you need more convincing that the area is special and that mowing is for everyone, in May HRH Prince Charles visited the project and had a go with a scythe. It turns out he’s been visiting the area for years and likes it so much that he has a home out there.
