more bushcraft and a Ray Mears bushcraft knife

Whilst we went to Chopwell Woods to teach spooncarving we also learnt some bushcraft tricks. My favourite was learning to make fire with flint and steel, Eric Methven taught me and Ollie and Jojo too then gave us a flint and steel each to practice at home. Here is Ollie blowing his ember into life.


And Jojo.


This really is a magical thing, quite quick and easy to learn if you have the right tools and teacher and an instant connection with our ancestors from millennia past. It is really only a few hundred years since this was the standard way to light fire. The excitement when you blow your first ember into flame is great for kids of all ages...something everbody should try to do at least once.


One of our course members was the lucky owner of a genuine Ray Mears bushcraft knife. These are made by knife maker Alan Wood to Ray Mears design and sell on Ebay for £400-£500, sadly whilst they were designed as a knife to use for hard work they have become collectors items. I am not sure how Alan Wood feels about that. As a maker it gives me the greatest pleasure when I meet people who have enjoyed using my bowls for years in their daily lives, I would not want them to be cosseted.

Anyway Ken kindly let me have a go with his knife and I was very interested to see how it performed as a woodcarver. First impressions were good, it was far lighter than I imagined, I have only seen them in pictures and thought they looked too big and chunky. Sadly it was not as sharp as it needed to be to really judge its working abilities, I could have sharpened it for Ken but they only fetch the top prices if they are "as new and never sharpened". Rather a dilemma, do you sharpen it and use it as it was designed for and knock £100 off its value? Personally I enjoy using the Swedish and Finish knives that are mass produced and sell for £10.

Ray Mears style bushcraft spooncarving

We are just back from a very enjoyable weekend of spooncarving fun. We ran a carving course for the friends of Chopwell Wood bushcraft group near Newcastle. The site and the folk were perfect. We worked under a large parachute shelter with a nice fire to sit round.

Many folk can use knive pretty well and most of us get allong just learning by trial and error but for woodcarving it is possible to greatly increase our efficiency, speed and enjoyment by analising exactly how the knife is working and learning some new grips and cuts. Friday is a pretty intensive few hours running through these new cuts then Saturday and Sunday we can use the skills to make things. Here is Lizzy the Foresty Commision Ranger making tent pegs with the carving axe.
Eric and Ken concentrating hard, hollowing spoons with the hook knife.

Evenings sat round the campfire are always enjoyable.

And some finished spoons.


We realy enjoyed sharing our skills and had great fun, I'll do another post showing some of the things we learnt whilst there too.

Bowl finds a good home

I always love to see photos of my bowls and plates in use and to hear from folk that enjoy using them. A couple of weeks ago I had a visit at the workshop from a regular Blog corespondent "Miss Rika". When folk can see where the bowls are made and choose the one that feels right in the hand it seems to be extra special. We had a lovely time and I knew these bowls would be well used. Over on Rika's blog you can see the bowls first use raising dough for a loaf of bread, I copied the pictures here.





More details on Rika's blog here
http://anstruther.blogspot.com/2008/09/inaugural-rising-of-loaf-in-new-bowl.html

Copper boat nails

I started using traditional copper boat nails in my woodwork a couple of years ago, they make an incredibly strong fixing, look great and age beautifully. Since then the price of copper has gone up enormously resulting in the nails doubling in price. I use quite a lot of them when building a bridge and on benches so spent some time finding the maker rather than buying through retailers. They are made by an old traditional company J Reynolds in Birmingham and I only had to buy a few more than my usual order to have a batch specially made up. They arrived today and I am very pleased with them.

This is what they look like in a finished bridge.

My one concern about them is that copper is a high energy product that is in limited supply so I have been looking at alternatives such as rose head iron nails or stainless steel.

bridge wins CPRE design award

I just heard that the last bridge I built at Golden Clough, Edale has won a Campaign for Rural England design award. This is the 25th year of the awards which aim to "celebrate particularly fine examples of projects which make a positive contribution to the rural scene."

It is the second time I have won one of the awards the last one being my first bridge built in 2004. That time one of the runners up was the new Castleton Visitor centre which had a budget of hundreds of thousands of pounds. It is nice that these awards recognise the small detail changes in the landscape as well as large projects.

For a video of the Golden Clough bridge being built see my blog post of 25th May