Having spent the week before the half term break on the plot with the students on the short course, this week was devoted to green woodwork.
One of the trees I had practiced my felling on was a Douglas fir. When I cleared around its base I discovered a balk of timber at its base. Further investigation revealed that a large tree had blown down but some of its roots had remained intact and still in the ground. All built one of its branches had died and broken off but the one which survived had grown on and become ‘my’ tree. Martin and Nick got quite excited when they realised what I had found and cleared the rest of the trunk. It was perfect for making the seats of shavehorses, which is our next woodworking project.
So on Wednesday morning, whilst the others finished the last sawhorse under construction Martin, Andrew and I set off to start cutting the trunk into lengths. It was my first time using the two-handed saw. The thinner top section was to be in 5’6” lengths to be suitable for fence posts if this was the best use of them. We were debating how best to measure this as we had forgotten to take a tape measure with us. When I said that I was 5’6” tall there was much teasing about making me lie down next to the trunk! Luckily for me I was spared the mud and cold as a thin pole was found on one of the cut piles and held against me before being cut to my height!
We had found lengths of wood to use as levers and brought some A frames but in the event as we reduced its weight the trunk gradually sprang off the ground hinging on the remaining roots.
Once we reached the more substantial sections we began cutting lengths for shavehorses. By this time the others had joined us and whilst turns were taken on the saw the rest of us practiced splitting some logs, which had already been cut from another fallen fir.
One of the trees I had practiced my felling on was a Douglas fir. When I cleared around its base I discovered a balk of timber at its base. Further investigation revealed that a large tree had blown down but some of its roots had remained intact and still in the ground. All built one of its branches had died and broken off but the one which survived had grown on and become ‘my’ tree. Martin and Nick got quite excited when they realised what I had found and cleared the rest of the trunk. It was perfect for making the seats of shavehorses, which is our next woodworking project.
So on Wednesday morning, whilst the others finished the last sawhorse under construction Martin, Andrew and I set off to start cutting the trunk into lengths. It was my first time using the two-handed saw. The thinner top section was to be in 5’6” lengths to be suitable for fence posts if this was the best use of them. We were debating how best to measure this as we had forgotten to take a tape measure with us. When I said that I was 5’6” tall there was much teasing about making me lie down next to the trunk! Luckily for me I was spared the mud and cold as a thin pole was found on one of the cut piles and held against me before being cut to my height!
We had found lengths of wood to use as levers and brought some A frames but in the event as we reduced its weight the trunk gradually sprang off the ground hinging on the remaining roots.
Once we reached the more substantial sections we began cutting lengths for shavehorses. By this time the others had joined us and whilst turns were taken on the saw the rest of us practiced splitting some logs, which had already been cut from another fallen fir.
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| Starting the log splitting |
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| Driving in the splitting axe |
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| Split complete |
When 3 lengths were ready for the seats we split them in half and then again parallel to the first split so that we had 6 rough thick planks and 6 ‘bark bits’ similar to the ones I remember getting from a woodyard as fuel some years ago. This process took a lot longer to do than to write! We used froes, axes, wedges (both metal and wood) beetles with a lot of puff, much debate about how best to proceed and quite a bit of sweat but luckily no blood or tears!
Having carried the planks to the clearing around the shelter on Thursday morning Nick, Barbara and Martin gave us the good news that we were now expected to choose one for ourselves, decide which would be the top surface and smooth it ‘enough to be comfortable to suit on and not get splinters in your bum’. For which exercise we would use an axe with a final tidying up from the drawknife. That was some daunting prospect! I have struggled to get the hang of using an axe for shaping. I can now hit ‘with conviction’ (as Martin puts it) but accuracy?..... I tend to end up with a random scattering of nice deep cuts which are not very helpful. However whilst teaching, advice and encouragement are freely available rescuing is not on offer here.
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| The finished shavehorse bench |
And by the end of the morning my plank was relatively smooth and flat with only a couple of gouges too deep to pare out. I told myself that if necessary I could put a cushion over those – yes a cushion in the workshop – I know – girly!.
Then in the afternoon I was back on more familiar territory making legs. We each chose a log from the selection provided, cut it to length (more practice on the 2 handed saw) and split it into 4 quarters. I was lucky. My ash log split cleanly and sweetly but David’s and Andrews’s had twists and knots which were invisible from the outside but made the job hard work. Then the tenons had to be shaped. It was then I noticed how much I had learnt. When I first made tenons I did all the work with a drawknife; then I started to try to do some shaping with the axe but quickly gave up; this time I was choosing to axe until the job was nearly done. And I got them made quickly. Practice has made me more confident and improved my ‘eye’ for the shape. Since we are making these shavehorses for ourselves we labelled our components with our initials in charcoal before leaving to avoid confusion.
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