To find out why the mushroom sheds are so leaky and to see some images please go to
http://davidknight5.wordpress.com/2009/ ... room-shed/
David Knight
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Our group meets on the first Sunday of the Month and if you are in or around the North East of England we'd love you to come visit. June 2009 saw us at the Flint Mill in the grounds of the Beamish Museum in County Durham where Peter Wood, Bill Oakes, Maurice Pyle, Peter Simpson and I had a go at a range of activities. Peter W and Bill had brought their portable blacksmithing equipment. Our day started with a demonstration of Peter's new chisel, shaped from an old car leaf spring. It worked really well on the spindle lathe! I brought along my new bowl horse to play with and a spalted birch bowl blank.
At the end of the day, Peter W had some straightened car springs to use as hook tool blanks, Bill had a half-finished adze shaped from a cheap mason's hammer, Peter S had a lovely alder spoon and I had something vaguely resembling the insides of a bowl. A productive day!
For more details and some images do visit http://davidknight5.wordpress.com/2009/ ... n-england/
David Knight
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The weather gods looked favourably on us for our Monthly APT meet, the first since the summer holidays. As I drove down the track to the Flint Mill, the sun shone in the blue sky. It was good to think the 52,000 Great North runners were going to have a good day to run the half marathon.
The cheery sight of the tarpaulin up and the kettle on the fire greeted me. Many thanks to Peter Wood who had arrived early to open up and set things up. Bill Oakes and Clive Pratt and Peter Simpson were also present and correct. Peter is a recent participant of the joint spooncarving and bowl turning course that Maurice and I ran in June. We had no specific theme for the day, so it was a chance for some serious tea and coffee drinking and good quality networking. We now have over thirty people who receive the details of our monthly meetings, so it’s really positive to think that we’ve a self sustaining group now.
It was also really good to welcome some new folk to the meeting. Piers Crawley and his wife Jill had recently been on Robin Wood’s spoon carving course in Edale, Derbyshire, and had come away inspired. A burn runs alongside the Flint Mill and is a rich source of alder trees. A couple of minutes slightly precariously leaning over the stream gave us some nice alder branches for spoon carving. A couple of alder saplings had also been uprooted by the high water levels during our wet and dreary summer and looked like tempting spoon blanks.
It was good to see Brian Pollard and Dick Atkinson drop in for a chat at various times during the morning. Both had family commitments so couldn’t stay.
So, as folk settled down to their various projects the sound of human industry prevailed. Clive was doing some good old fashioned polelathing inside the Flint Mill. Bill was testing out his new travisher on a seat base. Piers and Jill were using their newly developed spooncarving skills on the alder we had cut down. A particularly wiggly piece of alder had also caught my eye, so I embarked on a decidedly asymmetrical spoon as well. Peter W was diligently sharpening his tools and Peter S had brought a three quarters finished bowl to continue carving. He was enamoured by a Hans Karlsson adze and a dog leg gouge for smoothing the base of the bowl. I imagine that may be added to the Christmas present list!
Our final arrival was Nigel Goodfellow, another spoon carving enthusiast. You can see one of Nigel’s spoons here
;)
Nigel works for the Chaplaincy Service at the Royal Victoria Infirmary in Newcastle so having our meetings on a Sundays does prove a challenge for him. Nigel also settled down to some spoon carving, so the spooners were very much in the ascendancy today!
So with the warmth of the sun on our backs and the smell of wood smoke in our nostrils we broke for lunch and planned future meetings. On Sunday 2 November 2008 we’ll meet again at the Flint Mill with a theme of bowl carving. For our final meeting of the year on 7 December 2008 Bill Oakes will again host us at his workshop in the coal mining heartlands of County Durham. You can see from the blog entries below we had a great time last December and with a couple of forges going we can all become blacksmiths for the day and design the perfect green woodworking tool. For our first meeting on 4 January 2009 Clive Pratt has agreed to reprise the brilliant leather working workshop he ran for us back in February. We hope to find a warm indoor venue to protect us from the cold January winds!
;)
David's wiggly alder spoon, not quite finished.
David Knight
9 October 2008
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The rain poured down the track as I pulled into the Flintmill. No tarpaulin was erected outside and the hardy souls who had turned up on this most un-June-like day were to be found in the gloom of the Flintmill itself.
BIll Oakes, Maurice Pyle, Clive Pratt and Peter Wood were gathered around the kettle, but it was resting on no ordinary fire. The bellows and sparks gave it away. This was Bill's home made forge, very cleverly constructed from a old lorry brake drum, the hole in the middle filled in with some very light firebrick material and a T pipe and foot bellows providing the air. Maurice had provided a good supply of his Great North Forest charcoal (www.mpwoodsmith.co.uk/charcoal.html) and the glowing lumps soon had the kettle singing. Clive's pocket held a magical selection of fruit teas!
With the kettle's job done and mug's steaming we could get down to the main business of the day. Bill had kindly provided some metal rods for us to have a play at blacksmithing and he and Peter set off on the task of making a bowl turning hook whilst the rest of us took it in turns to pump the foot bellows. Good exercise for treadling legs!
The charcoal was raked around the rods until they were yellow hot before receiving several several bashes with the ball hammer on the wonderful anvil that Bill had brought along. Repeating this process several times produced a wide thin layer of metal at the end of the rod. A few judicious blows with the cold chisel shaped it ito something resembling a hook tool unrolled and it was then left to cool before an edge was put on by hand with files.
My own effort was to produce a spoon carving hook knife from a thinner rod of metal (recycled from a shop fitting to hang things on!). This was the first time I had tried any blacksmithing and I was pleasantly surprised at how a process so hot and noisy could develop a calm rhythm all of its own. The ease with which the hot metal became a malleable shapable material was also something of a revelation. I could get to enjoy this!
After lunch Bill used a pair of long-nosed pliers to gently shape his sharpened surface into the familiar questionmark shape of a bowl hook. After quenching it in oil to temper the metal he got down to the serious business of sharpening the hook.
In the meantime Maurice settled down at the pole lathe to turn an elegant handle for the hook tool. After an interesting debate into the three dimensional variables in producing a hook tool- bevels, width, curvature etc- the hook could be mounted on its handle.
Peter whipped out his cahin saw and within a couple of minutes had produced us a couple of bowl blanks to test the new tool. With blank attached to mandrel Maurice began shaping the outside of the blank with a gouge before the acid test with the new tool.
Bringing metal into contact with turning wood did seem to produce a quantity of shavings. After some minutes testing though the conclusion was that the hook was scraping more than cutting. Bill went away to spend some more time with his sharpening paste. I was well impressed though. From metal rod to functioning bowl-turning hook tool in four hours straight!
This was an inspiring day and a chance to learn some new skills and realise that simple blacksmithing and tool-making is within the grasp of the average bodger. I even went home with a couple of new proto-tools. Many thanks to Bill for his ingenuity in building the scratch forge and for use of tools and metal blanks, to Maurice for the charcoal and the use of the Flint Mill and to Clive and Peter for their good company.
David Knight
3 June 2008
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With the wind turbine at Harehope Quarry ecoproject whizzing around, two charges of firewood in the ceramic stove and the smell of fresh coffee in the kitchen it was easy for APT Northern England members to decide that the leather working workshop had more appeal than felling alder for an outdoor shelter at the Quarry’s green woodworking workshop.
The amazing array of tools and materials that Clive Pratt had brought in was an inspiration for all of us to have a go at making a tool sheath that was a little out of the ordinary.
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