Hans and Fransisco applying wych elm bark to their chairs, surrounded by spring flowers.

James helped Ian weave his seat using kambaa (a plaited palm cord from Tanzania) to match the chair he had made on a course a few years ago.

James helping Ian to finish the kambaa seat on his high lath-back chair

Phil decided on another variation of the woven Irish pattern that we have been developing over the last two years, as described in one of my earlier blogs.

Phil’s seat with Danish cord in a woven Irish pattern.

JoJo completed yet another variant of the woven Irish pattern based on Beth’s seat from September 2012, which in turn was inspired by Emma’s woven stool from 2009.

The seat woven by JoJo based on a pattern of Beth’s in September 2012, which in turn was based on a stool woven by Emma about 4 years ago

Aly joined us for the day to replace the seat on a chair she had made a few years ago. When they were all finished, they undertook the obligatory ‘end of course’ pose on the verandah, with the Malvern Hills in the distance, still visible before the leaves emerge.

The produce from the first chair-making course of 2013

I think the miserable winter must have put people off the idea of a week in the woods, so we only had four bookings on this course but it gave me the opportunity to train up this year’s assistants. Stephen has returned as the main assistant, having worked with Barn as an assistant in 2009. Johnny, James and JoJo will be taking it in turns to work alongside Stephen in guiding this year’s students through their chair-making courses.

Stephen carefully sighting Hans as he locates where to drill into his chair legs

Yesterday the sun shone non-stop from the dawn chorus until sunset, so having made all the parts for the chairs during the first two and a half days, we moved some benches onto the field at the edge of the woods to start assembling the chairs.

James helping Ian assemble his side panel

We were also able to use the magnificent dining table built last year by Owen, Steve and the other volunteers. As well as using it at lunchtime, it also serves well as a woodwork bench with a view across the valley to the Malvern Hills in the distance.

Hans cutting a mortice while JoJo and Fransisco squeeze together a chair frame

By lunchtime our simple solar water heater had warmed 7 gallons of water to just the right temperature for a shower.

Fransisco replacing one of the water containers back into the solar heater after his shower

The next two courses are about fully booked but we still have places for the course from June 10th to 15th. After the dry cold March and the showers in late April, I fully expect a blazing June, so book a course place soon and you will hopefully be able to spend a creative week,  basking in the Herefordshire countryside.

Johnny Walshe has just posted a video he made while he took part in our Development Week at Brookhouse wood exactly a year ago. The sun was shining, the soil seemed too dry then but it crumbled beautifully under the horse drawn plough. Tom and Owen (Dillon & Thomas – I still think this is a brilliant band name) were in full voice, singing and playing around the fire, while others just gently mooched around the workshop.

Owen, Jack and the other assistants helped us get through the wettest summer ever with their energy, song and laughter but the Mayan prediction of the end of the world edged ever nearer. Little malfunctions started to happen – my chainsaw packed up in August, my car in November and all the time, news of ash dieback hung over us like the Grim Reaper. Two days after the courses finished in September, I helped my 92-year old father move into a nearby care home and by Christmas he was about settled there. We took a few day-trips, had some slap-up lunches together and took time to catch up on each other’s lives.

Eventually in January I had four good weeks tucked away in our cosy new cruck barn, frenziedly working on the new version of Living Wood (which I had enthusiastically announced on this blog way back in July). Then in February my father caught a chest infection and on 22^nd he died – peacefully in his bed. ‘He’d had a good innings’ everybody says but it was heartbreaking to be with him for the last few weeks as he steadily lost the will to live. Surely there must be better ways to finish a life. Since then funerals, probates and sifting through his belongings have taken over from the new book. One consolation has been that I have felt spring has been holding its breath, encouraging me to sort out the unforeseen administration involved in the death of a parent.

So Johnny’s video reminds me that spring is aptly named – the coiled spring of the pole-lathe pole is quietly lifting the treadle back, ready for the next empowering downward stroke. The bluebells will eventually emerge and life will return to the woods with firewood being sawn, split and stacked. A steady stream of enthusiastic visitors will arrive to make more beautiful chairs in our amazing sylvan paradise and Living Wood 4^th edition will be launched this summer, with its vibrant new cover and a new crop of photos taken at Brookhouse Wood over the last seven years.

The cover for Living Wood 4th edition

This is exactly the topic that I have been banging on about for the last 35 years and it seems to be sinking in.

Call it co-incidence or collective unconscious but this morning I got up early to write the Introduction for my new book. Here it is, hopefully along with some photos from the woods where I spend my summers feeling very good. Also a link to see a pole-lathe in action.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Cj_LBZkJh0&feature=context-cha

The rhythm of life!

I first discovered the pole-lathe in 1976 in a wonderful book entitled ‘Woodland Crafts of Britain’ by Herbert Edlin. Intrigued by the idea and wanting to work with wood but having very little money, I cobbled one together and the pole-lathe steadily crept into my life. For twenty years it was the mainstay of my career and ever since that first tentative treadle, I have struggled to put my finger on what it is that makes the pole lathe such a magical machine. Now I think I have finally nailed it!

Life is rhythm, rhythm is life.

Everything that is, was created in ‘The Big Bang’ or ‘The Seven Days of Creation’ or ‘Whatever’. I believe we can never comprehend how it all came about but here it is, and we have to live with it.

Life is ruled by one overriding law, expressed in different ways by different people:

What goes up, must come down

To each and every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction

The concept of Yin and yang

The only certainty in life is change

There ain’t no happy times without no pain – Paul Brady

And nothing exemplifies this law better than the rhythm of the pole-lathe..

• The start of the downstroke requires a huge input of effort during which very little happens. Is it really going to be worth it?

• It then picks up speed and you bring the chisel into contact with the soft, succulent wood and the long smooth shavings start to glide. This is the moment to live for.

• Then the stroke comes to an end, the action stops but all that creative energy is captured in the spring of the pole. Not death, just dormancy.

• You have to let go, relax your pressure on the treadle and leave it to the pole to bring you back for the next episode. If you don’t let go, everything grinds to a halt.

Do you recognise this rhythm?

It is the rhythm of life – the heartbeat – day and night – the seasons – sex and drugs and rock-and-roll!

It’s still pretty time-consuming, so here’s two of the best seats plus a couple of pics of the latest technological development – the tenon sheaver – a prototype made by Ray Iles a couple of months ago. You then put the rail in the horse and ‘sheave’ back along it to remove any shoulders. We’ll give it a proper run for its money on courses in 2013.

putting a tenon onto the end of a chair rung

As last winter was drawing to a close, I received a phone call from a TV researcher asking if I would be interested in taking part in a TV programme, Tales from the Wild Wood. As part of a woodland restoration project, they were going to fell an ash tree, which they wanted to convert into furniture. Of course I told them I was the man for the job and I could bring a shaving horse with a few simple tools and convert it on the spot to make the parts for a chair. I posted them a copy of my chair-making book, Going with the Grain and looked forward to taking part in the project. A few days later we spoke again and they had already decided that the tree would be planked in a sawmill, and they wouldn’t require my input. Ce est la vie!

I must somehow have been tuned into the current zeitgeist and spent a fair chunk of the summer, (when not running courses) in building a shed in the garden centred around two splendid ash crucks and a load of milled Western red cedar. Last week, we spent a day fixing all the cladding, so as a farewell to the summer, I spent Halloween morning preparing kindling wood out of the last remains of the cedar planks. A potential candidate for ‘George Clarke’s Amazing Spaces’ had we known, the cruck room has already been used as accommodation for at least six friends and family over the last few months as well as being a superb location for my after-lunch 20-minute nap (uninterrupted by phone calls from India asking to speak to Mr aBott). 

Instead of indulging in trick or treat, I spent Halloween evening ferrying Dougal back from his break-dance class, an hour or so before collecting Nettie from helping out with the Class 7 Halloween disco. I rushed back in time to catch 20 minutes of ‘Tales from the Wild Wood’ (8.30 on BBC4) but had missed the felling of the ash tree. However I was in time to see three respected woodworkers selecting their required logs, which were by now lying on the woodland floor. When I saw furniture-maker David Colwell describing the ideal log for his elegant and efficient steam-bent chairs, I didn’t feel so bad that I had missed out on the chance of another ’10 minutes of fame’. (It is exactly three years since I took part in the filming of Monty Don’s Mastercrafts, which brought in a great deal of custom for my courses). I was also astonished by John with his large-scale turnery, who says he has to buy most of his ash from abroad. I shared in Ralph’s disbelief at Rob Penn’s ignorance of the value of a chunk of burr, which could have been made into some beautiful bowls instead of being chopped for firewood. Still, life is all about learning, and Rob is taking it all on board and sharing it readily with anyone who may be watching the programme. It does however seem a shame that, as with Kevin McCloud’s shed building, the opportunity had been missed to show some really informative AND visually entertaining green wood skills. Never mind – it will happen another time.

Anyway, a few days ago we hooked up to Airband high speed wireless broadband, which has been received with great delight by Tamsin and Dougal, both astonished by the up-and download speeds. Today I hope to use i-player to see Rob felling his ash tree, wondering if in ten years time this will prove to be a valuable piece of archive footage of the days when ash trees abounded freely in British woodlands before the devastation of Chalara dieback. Or will this latest plague turn out to be yet another media frenzy, this time probably whipped up  by the apparent destruction of 90% of Denmark’s ash trees by the disease. Only time will tell. From a purely selfish point of view, if this were to happen in Britain, there should still be enough good ash to enable 400 more chairs to be made over my 5 remaining years of chair-making courses. As somebody pointed out, this scare might have the positive effect of increasing the public’s awareness of this wonderful resource which is so much taken for granted by modern society. Always look on the bight side, eh!

Having three hours ago completed my summer programme of green wood courses I am now unleashed to spend the forthcoming winter completing the 4^th edition of my book Living Wood. In the first 3 editions the strap-line was ‘From Buying a Woodland to Making a Chair’ but for the 4^th edition we have changed it to ‘60 years of Playing in the Woods’ and Kevin’s totally amateurish and naïve approach to his cabin encapsulates perfectly my own lifetime of building and playing in woodland dens.

Together with my inspiring wife Tamsin, and two groups of willing volunteers we too have spent a chunk of 2012 building a shed out of timber harvested from the local woodlands.

Ben Law’s Grand Design programme in which he built a woodland house, was ground-breaking in showing that it is possible for a team of skilled craftsmen to build a beautiful house with very little expense. What Kevin’s latest programme shows is that a bunch  of piss-heads can also gain that same sense of fulfillment by aiming for a far more attainable goal – to build a modest structure straight from a tree.

I hope Kevin’s new series takes lots of people one step nearer to giving it a go – be it a shed, a bed, a chair, a hay-rake or a spoon – and of course buying a copy of Living Wood to help them on their way.

Today I plan to continue the interior walls since filling the front walls with insulation board after Owen did such a great job fitting the French doors – yet again ‘a square peg in a round hole’ springs to mind. We hope to have the electrics completed in the next few weeks so that Tamsin can use the room to display her beautiful stained-glass during Herefordshire Art Week, 8-16th Sept, which is rapidly approaching.

For the remaining courses this year we have just one place available from 28th August to 2nd September, when we should be harvesting blackberries from the edge of the woods and apples from our garden, so expect a few delicious crumbles and pies baked in the woodland oven.

You can also find 3 new films that have just been uploaded onto you Tube which give a flavour of what you might expect on a course – more to follow this winter.

You Tube films

Chair-making – cleaving an ash log

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=As_U9-b10GM&feature=plcp

Chair-making – the final squeeze

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JsvRJIquuXE&feature=plcp