Category: Books

Hello followers!!

On By Mike AbbottIn Books1 Comment

The family is still asleep and I found my blog login details a few days ago, so after a flurry of activity on Facebook, Steve Tomlin led me back to the blog. I looked at the stats and was amazed to see 3000 or so hits, considering I never do anything on here. I also see there are 5 of you who follow this. A big hello to you!!!

Just to update you 5 and anyone else who drops on here. Half my courses for 2012 are full and the other half are about half full, so don’t hang about if you want to spend a creative week at Brookhouse Wood.

Also my second book ‘Living Wood” is now sold out and I am working on a complete revision which will hopefully be out in Sept, incorporating some of the best from my first book “Green Woodwork’ also out of print.

Time to take Tamsin a cuppa then light the fire in my workshop at home for a session making chairs with my mate Hamish.

Walden

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I received my copy of  ‘Walden and other Writings’ the other day and a have just finished the introductory bit about Thoreau. One inspiring section talks about the common feeling that the more we have, the better the quality of our lives. Thoreau set out by living in his cabin, to find out how little one needs to live a satisfactory life – a very rough paraphrase.
I gain hope from the fate of Concorde (the aircraft). If we want to travel, we need a certain velocity. So the concensus is the faster the better. but one gets to a point (in this case, the speed of sound) and it becomes unproductive to go any faster. So despite mastering all the technology to achieve supersonic commercial air travel, it ain’t viable.
This can be applied to the home. Washing machines are great – especially in a family household – but that doesn’t mean that tumble dryers and dishwashers add to the quality of life.
We should all be encouraged to see where we draw our lines of what really adds to our lives and what just clutters it up and makes us have to work frantically to pay for it, using up lots of the Earth’s limited energy at the same time.

Tucked up indoors

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After the tarpaulin had been blown partly off the workshop roof a gang of us went to the woods and pulled it back in place and fixed the broken rafter rather than totally pack up the workshop for the winter. We’ll see if it survives until spring.

Springtime in the woods can be fabulous with energy abounding all around but winter is often best spent in a cosy house in front of a glowing log fire. Yesterday (with my wife’s permission) I brought my shaving horse into the house and spent three hours carving a spoon for my eldest daughter, using a branch cut from a cherry tree in the orchard where she spent the summer working. I flagrantly copied a beautiful spoon made by Barn-the-spoon, who was my assistant a few years ago and is now a full time spoon maker. It took me about 10 times longer to make and it still hasn’t got the elegance of his but it was still a delightful way to spend an afternoon.

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Winter finally arrives

On By Mike AbbottIn Going With The GrainLeave a comment

It’s over 3 months since I last wrote on my blog – not good! We had a wonderful summer in the woods which extended into October with a great 3-day course for Grounded Ecotherapy – a group from London. Looking back, one of the main highlights was the two beautiful full moons in September and October and how the kind summer weather just seemed to keep going.

Now I am prompted to write, having visited the woodland workshop to find the tarpaulin roof blown half away. In previous years a group of volunteers has helped me remove the large tarp and replace it with a smaller one just over the crucial bits in the middle of the workshop. Last winter (20010/11) we left the tarp up, and despite the frost and snow, everything survived OK. I am now contemplating whether I have been unlucky with it blowing off this week or whether I was very lucky that it survived last winter. I think probably the latter.

There’s lots of interesting stuff on TV and Radio4 at the moment. The bunch of British teenagers staying with the Amish was quite inspiring. In particular the lad from London who seemed to lead a pretty aimless life in a hostel at home, who struck up a really good relationship with their Amish host and within a few days really became involved in the constructive lifestyle and the hard work. On the radio this morning a family spent a week living a stone-age lifestyle in Denmark and as each day progressed, their children steadily warmed to the experience of basic, yet constructive living. It did remind me of a week on one of our courses only we have all the good aspects (open fires, baking bread, fulfilling activities, good company, simplicity) but manage to avoid nearly all the bad bits (uncomfortable clothing and bedding, wet footwear, no hot cuppas).

Over the last few decades we have become complacent about our wealthy western lifestyles and we need to return to a closer relationship with the basic aspects of our lives. We have to get away from investing money to enable us to buy what we want. We need to invest effort and enthusiasm, which delivers far more fulfilling rewards. I realise that my tarpaulin blowing down is telling me the same message. It has made me realise that the annual ceremony of packing up the workshop for the winter is a valuable part of the cycles of the year. We’ll get up there on Saturday and put the workshop to rest for the winter properly. Next spring will give us the occasion to rethink how it should be resurrected and nudge us to make all the little improvements that are needed.

 

Still learning

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Yesterday we finished another chair-making course and yet again, eight people ended up with some lovely chairs. We had to take the group photo before the seats were all finished, so that the early-birds could return home in time – Roger will weave the seat for his armchair rocker at leisure. We pushed forward Patrick’s advances in fitting the arms by fixing the chair to a bench, so we could use a sliding bevel for aligning the drilling angle into the rear legs. Regina’s spindle-back was completed with a ‘mixed media’ seat, using the new Danish cord for the warp and bark for the weft forming a diamond pattern, which completed the ‘wabi sabi’ look very sweetly. Next time, we’ll not use a tension stick, when forming the warp, so that the cord is tighter. We’ll also try 11 blocks of warp instead of 9. The tight weaves with Danish cord were hard work and I think it is better suited to simpler patterns with wider blocks, like the paper rush seat on Phil’s splendid tall lath-back on the end of the row.

End of first day blogging

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Hey – this is alright – not perfect but shows potential. I still haven’t worked out how to approve Clive’s comment – sorry, so may not be able to post any other comments – unless you tell me how.

The photo of Sigrid & Nick has to be clicked on to so you can see the full picture but I expect you know that.

If I can exercise the self-discipline, this blog might take the place of my course scrapbook.

I’ll try the camcorder next – oohh can’t wait!

Past bed-time. Goodnight.

Mike

Mike’s first solo post

On By Mike AbbottIn BooksLeave a comment

Treading very gingerly, here is the first thing I have put on this blog all by myself. Firstly thanks to Rob for getting the newsletter onto the blog – including the first paragraph which somehow got missed out. Secondly, thanks to Clive for the comments on here – it was great to have you around again after all that time.

We started back in with courses this Saturday after the 6 week horsefly break – still quite a few around but they should disappear again soon. We have a new deputy assistant called Sherene, who is steadily finding her feet out there and working very hard at keeping the place functioning as smoothly as it was with Jack and Leo. Of course Tom is still on fine form but realised today that he is now 2/3rds of the way through his time with me. Blackberries are now ripening, apples are ripening at home, so our first blackberry and apple crumble should happen any day now.

My next project is to work out how to add photos and then film to this blog.

For the 300+ of you who are wanting to keep abreast of developments in 21st Century green-wood chair-making having bought a copy of the new book!! ……

The first change is in bending back legs. We have now gone back to using the lever as described in Living Wood pages 162 & 182, rather than the rocker system described on p127 of GWG (Going with the Grain). Unless you have really big jaws on the sash-clamp, the jig tends to force its way out of the clamp, requiring extra clamps to prevent this – just a bit of a pain compared to the lever. I do like the new leg forming jig with the stronger bend and this works well with the lever – we grip the jig very tightly in the vice, so that we can remove the legs still gripped to the bending former and put the whole lot into the warm box to set – a bit of inspiration from Guy Mallinson on that one.

I have to say that I really like pages iv & v of GWG which locates every double page of the ‘how to’ section, so it’s dead quick to find whatever subject you want.
I’m going to see if I can upload this before we all fall asleep.

More to follow over the next few days,
Mike

Going with the Grain – Making Chairs in the 21st Century

On By Mike AbbottIn Books, Going With The Grain1 Comment

Going with the Grain – Making Chairs in the 21st Century
Ever since the surge of interest following the Mastercrafts programme broadcast in February 2010, things have been pretty hectic in the world of green wood chair-making. After a great run of courses last year, I settled down for the winter to complete the new book, which had been bubbling away for a few years. Despite having helped in making more than a couple of thousand chairs over the years, I found that while working quietly on my own, several innovations cropped up as the process evolved. This resulted in May with the publication of the 3rd book in the ‘Green wood trilogy’ entitled ‘Going with the Grain – Making Chairs in the 21st Century’. Due to a complication, which meant that it needed a new ISBN (the unique number for every book published) the book only became available in the mainstream book-sellers in July. We are delighted to say that it will also be distributed in the USA and Canada by Chelsea Green Publishing.

 This ground-breaking book takes a radical approach to working with unseasoned wood. Although it starts with the centuries old techniques of cleaving and shaving, it then incorporates modern technology such as tenon-cutters and cordless drills to enable anybody with basic hand skills and a few simple tools to transform a fresh log into a superb stool or chair. Because of its innovative approach, new tools and techniques are cropping up all the time, so to run alongside the new book is the new blog ‘goingwiththegrain.org’ in which we hope to keep abreast of any developments in green wood chair-making. For those who would like to see it all in action, the blog will contain short clips of film to bring it all to life.

 While all this has been going on, courses have been going very well at Brookhouse Wood, and this year’s main assistant Tom has fitted in very well making a great team with his fellow assistants Jack and Leo. All this activity has held up the announcement of the 2012 course programme, but at last it is available, and we suggest that if you are interested in a place on one of the courses, you book it as soon as possible, as there have been many enquiries over the last few months. You will find full details of the courses in the website www.living-wood.co.uk, which has been recently updated to reflect all this activity.

 If you haven’t yet discovered the delights of making green wood chairs, then I hope you will either purchase a book or come on a course sometime soon.

Mike Abbott