how to make home made paint

I started playing with eco paints many years ago and tried various limewashes, milk paints etc. The recipe which I use now we learned whilst I was teaching at the National Hancrafts school in Sweden, it is quick and very easy to make, cheap quick drying, smells nice and when fully cured washable. It is a linseed oil emulsion paint.

You will need

1 whole egg
linseed oil, I prefer raw cold pressed.
water
jam jar with tight fitting lid.

I am making this batch to paint some wooden bowls I carved a few weeks ago but it is equally good for walls or windows and doors.

So here are my ingredients


First crack your egg into the jar put the lid on and shake it really well. Using half the shell as a measure add two egg volumes of oil (4 half shells) swirl the jar as you pour in the oil to help it mix.


Then put the lid on and shake really well.


Now add 3 egg volumes (6 half shells) of water, swirling to mix then put lid on and shake. You can use more or less water to make your paint thinner or thicker as ypou wish depending on the absorbency of the substrate. This is now the basic paint without pigment. It can be used to seal woodware for use and I will treat the inside of my bowl with it, this paint mix is also great for sealing dusty lime wash.


Now I am going to add pigment, this is a ground earth pigment "ultramarinbla" that we bought in Sweden, anyone who has traveled there will have seen houses painted with it. In the UK many art supply places will sell ground pigments also eco paint supply places such as the centre for alternative technology, auro is a brand I have used. You can also gather your own pigment, most fine soft stones can be ground up and used, I collect an orange mineral oxide that oozes out of the shale beds near my home for a nice orange, and also grind the shale for black, they need sieving, drying and grinding before adding the powder to the paint.


These pigments are very concentrated though and a small amount goes a long way. Lime can be added too if you want more pastel tones.


Now slap it on just as if it were commercially bought paint.



in 20 minutes it is touch dry, less on absorbent substrates.


So that is the good part. Now the drawbacks. Although it is touch dry quickly it is still very soft and can easily be scraped off with a fingernail. It takes a while for the oil to cure, just like a proper old oil painting. How long depends on the oil, it can be a week or two or up to two months before it becomes really hard. Boiled linseed is faster because it has heavy metal driers added, I prefer to wait.

When dry it is quite hard wearing, I have a breakfast bowl painted with this paint that I have washed every day for six years and the paint is still good. It ages beautifully, where a hard modern paint eventually fails by chipping and peeling these soft old paints simply wear through on the highlights where they are rubbed which looks nice.

The paint will not keep long, maybe a week in the fridge. It will not give you a totally flat even colour, the sort of thing we are used to with canned paints these days, it will be a little more variable, I think this is a benefit but some would think otherwise. It is important to make enough to do a whole wall in one go, you don't want to run out and have to mix a bit to match. The one egg quantity would easily do both sides of a door with some to spare.

One of the nicest jobs I did with this paint was using it as a glaze over a white limewash, I mixed it fairly thin with locally collected ochre pigment and sponged it over the limewash, it gave a lovely textured feel. It dries neither matt nor gloss, if you want gloss after it is dry give it a thin coat of pure linseed over the top though that will take a while to dry.

The need for a traditional crafts organisation

For many years I have felt we need an organisation to support traditional crafts in the UK. I have lobbied and campaigned in the hopes of getting a government organisation but finally realised that it will be better if it comes from the craftspeople ourselves.

The last few weeks I have been in correspondence with many folk in the traditional craft world and we hope to create an organisation that can help preserve and promote some of our wonderful heritage of craft skills.

Today I met with Brian Crossly of the Basketmakers Association to discuss the way forward and together we visited the last sieve or riddle maker hand weaving garden riddles.

Here is Brian on the right and Mike Turnock the sieve maker on the left. Mike buys in 4" slabs of beech and saws them into thin strips that are steam bent to make the sieve rims.

Cutting wire mesh to fit a rim.

and making another hoop to hold the mesh in place. The anvil is an old axle from the 19th century Dove Holes Tramway.

Fitting the sieve together if everything is cut correctly it is a tight fit.


Next Mike showed us how he weaves specialists riddles. First drilling the holes, note how the holes are not evenly spaced around the rim in order to get even wire spacing inside.

The drill bit is a cut down masonry nail, Mike prefers to use this as by pushing it in different distances he can make holes to suit different thicknesses of wire without changing the bit.


Starting to weave. By using a special "crook" Mike lifts one wire and lowers the next.

Then threads the wire through.


He then pulls it tight, cuts it off, bends it down, turns the point in and hammers it into the side wall.


Mike makes sieves and riddles in all sorts of sizes and some specialist ones. The one he is holding here is for shrimp and the pile in the background for grading cockles.

Mike is 63. He works very hard and can make a living at his trade. He can not afford to work part time because of the workshop overheads and he can't afford to take anyone on. He says he will work past 65 but how long this trade will carry on for is uncertain.

turning a nest of bowls

Nicola has finished the video of me turning the nest of bowls yesterday. I hope it is a fitting tribute to George Lailey, "the last bowlturner"

George Lailey died 50 years ago today

George Lailey was "the Last Bowlturner"


He made wooden bowls on a foot powered lathe the same way they had been made in medieval times. He died 50 years ago today aged 89.

He forged all his own turning tools which are kept with his lathe at the Museum of English Rural Life at Reading. He could turn nests of bowls, one cut inside the other and get 4 bowls out of one block of wood. 30 years after his death I saw those tools, learned to forge copies of them and then to turn bowls.

For about 10 years I was the only pole lathe bowlturner. After demonstrating and showing lots of people how it is done there are now plenty of people who can turn a few bowls and the craft is safe for the future.

I spent today turning a very special big nest of bowls as a kind of tribute. I don't do many big nests any more but it was really a very good experience. Nicola did a video which we will put on youtube.


and this is alongside one of Lailey's bowls


This nest will take about 2 months to dry before being oiled and finished, then it will go in the gallery on the website. I think I shall make one of these every year on the 15th of December, quite a limited edition.

Edit Nicola finished a video of making the bowls

another traditional Sheffield craft

Well not green wood tools but I visited this place on Thursday along with knifemaker Grace Horne and it was great.


Eric Grinding


Ian glasing, that is using a hard felt buffing wheel with abrasive


Cliff working his magic on a nearly finished pair


Notice the slope on the hammer head so it comes down flat on the stiddy with his wrist at a comfortable angle.


Nice old hammers with handles worn thin with use. How many years do they take to wear out like that? "Oh they are not old I have worn through loads over the years"


To be fair I don't think either Grace or I had much interest in scissors before yesterday but these guys enthusiasm was infectious, looking through old catalogs at the weird and wonderful stuff they used to make doesn't sound that interesting but really it was fascinating.


Packing area, have you noticed yet that they are all grinning all the time.


and a few samples

carving a wooden bowl

After a days work turning bowls carving one can be quiet a free experience. I am no longer tied to circular forms. In Sweden I have seen many beautiful old bowls carved in the shapes of birds, there is a similar tradition in the Native peoples of the North West Coast of the US. Anyway last night I carved this duck bowl, inspired by a gorgeous one we saw several years ago at Saterglantan, Swedens National Folk Craft school.

I carved it out of alder. The original was painted with a gorgeous earth pigment blue paint with orange bill, I might do the same for a very Swedish feel and then we will be using it to serve salad or bread at home.

I think at some stage I would like to teach bowl carving courses though it is so much easier for beginners to start with spoons and build up the skills needed. When we have enough folk that have done our spoon courses hopefully some will want to come back and carve bowls.

Sheffield knife makers

Yesterday I visited some wonderful old Sheffield knife makers with a group of folk from the British Blades forum. Nicola has spent quite a bit of time recording these folk on film but for me it was great to see the old skills alongside some very up to date production. First we went to Taylors Eye Witness Works where they make kitchen knives and folding knives.


Big machines like this stamp the blades out


Using dies like this


Here are a pile of stamped blades

and after grinding on a computer controled machine they come out like this.


just need handles on and they are ready to go.


We had really gone to meet Russel who makes their folding knives.





Then went on to see Brian the grinder. A lovely warm hard working northern chap who caries on a trade pretty much as it was done 200 years ago.



Finally we went on to see Trevor Abblett who also makes folding knives though I have not sorted those photos yet.
A fascinating day out.

adzes

This tool is called an adze, it is just like an axe but the cutting edge is at 90 degrees to the handle. Adzes come either with straight blades for creating flat surfaces or curved ones for hollowing. This is a very old one I bought in Romania in 1998 and works excedingly well. I use it every time I make a plate to hollow a little of the wood before I start turning. Curved adzes are very hard to come by in the UK but straight ones are quite common. I have a few old rusty straight ones and really need one with quite a deep hollow for hollowing the gutters I want to make for my new barn. So taday I spent the morning in the forge.

Begining to take shape

And this is the curve I was trying to achieve.


And after finishing forging. The next stages are; anealing, to make it as soft as possible, grinding, to refine the edge shape, hardening then tempering.


I had never understood why hand forged adzes were so much more expensive than axes when they look fairly similar. I had not realised the complexities of creating those two even curves in two planes and if either curve is just not perfect the tool will not work properly. I hope mine works OK.

Swedish woodworking

This week I had a visit from Anders Theodorson our Swedish friend who we have stayed with several times when visiting the Swedish National craft school at Saterglantan. He works for the Swedish company Clas Ohlson and was over for the opening of their first store in the UK. It was nice that he was able to spend 2 days with us.

Anders first heard of my work after seeing a magazine article (in an American woodworking magazine) showing me building a pole lathe in at a symposium in Germany. He went on to build a lathe and start turning bowls. We have spent quite some time together since and he is now a very competent bowl turner so it was fun for both of us to have him play on my lathe at home. Here are some pictures of him turning a porringer.

Hollowing the inside. It was cold.

And the bowl as it came off the lathe.

Some skilled axe work to carve the handles.


And in the evening we had some time to carve spoons and shrink pots.