Background to wood and its history
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Spalted woods. Which wood to spalt?
Which wood to spalt? Beech is by far the easiest wood to spalt well. It almost always ends up with black line and distinctly different colours. This bowl shows only one area left with the wood in its natural state. All the rest has been affected by fungi. I don’t know how many different ones. It was at the very limit of having enough structural integrity to work. Even with the gauge straight off the grinder it was difficult not to get tear out on the end grain. This wood had been left outside in all weathers for a year and a few months. It was a large tree and…
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Spalted Wood. How wood spalts.
Spalted wood. Spalted wood is where fungus or more usually several different fungi have been introduced to the wood. This is most commonly after the tree has been felled but sometimes it is a fungus which has killed the tree so the timber has already been spalted. Spalted wood can be created deliberately or can occur by accident as I have found out several times over the years! Spalted wood can be created as easily as:- Leaving the freshly sawn wood out in the weather, popping it into a plastic bag or burying the wood in wood shavings. However, knowing when the wood will be spalted enough to work but…
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Turned Miniature Eisteddfod Chair
Having had the honour to be commissioned again to make a miniature chair for Cymdeithas Ceredigion‘s 2016 Eisteddfod I decided to put my all into making a turned miniature chair. Since turning is my main medium for working with wood it made sense to explore this method to make the chair. I’ve made chairs for Cymdeithas Ceredigion before, both a full size chair and two miniature chairs, however I used more traditional methods for these chairs. (The 2015 miniature chair, described here and here, was made out of Laburnum and the 2014 was made of Elm.) I had a prototype turned chair floating around the workshop which I’d made a…
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A Priceless Gift
I received a priceless gift a few years ago in a tale with many twists and turns. I was commissioned to make a chair to be given as a prize at a local Eisteddfod. Cymdeithas Ceredigion had been bequeathed money and the Cadair Goffa Pat Neill (Pat Neill memorial chair) was to be given for a poem in “cynghanedd” which is strict metre. (I’m afraid my knowledge of the complexities of poetry in any language is beyond me. The basics of Shakespeare’s iambic pentameter is the limit of my knowledge.) Working with wood, however, is another matter. And what an honour to be commissioned to make this chair. I immediately…
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Eisteddfod Chair
For several years now I have had the honour to be commissioned to make a chair for a local Eisteddfod. This is the first of the miniature chairs I made and the wood chosen was Elm. An eisteddfod is a cultural festival, a celebration of the arts and with competitions in all sorts of arts from poetry, literature, music, dance, performance… The original eisteddfod happened in 1176 in Cardigan only a few miles from me. It was held by Lord Rhys of Deheubarth at his castle. Major work has been happening there for a few years now, both archaeological and restorative, since Cardigan castle came into public ownership. (There is…
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Tale of an Ash Tree
My work often comes from trees where I know some of the story behind the wood. None more so than one particular Ash tree. There are so many different threads of different stories that I see when I look at a piece from this tree. Once upon a time an Ash seed rooted itself in just the wrong place, on a river bank where there was almost no soil and under a cliff so there was almost no sun either. For a hundred and fifty years and more the Ash tree grew tall and thin as she stretched to reach more light, developing a buttress on one side to hold…
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Marketing Woodturning
I have been woodturning for ten years now. In fact I even did a little before that, about fifteen years ago. However, most of this time I have also been a carer so not only was my time limited but also I never knew if I would have to drop everything else for a while if the person I was looking after needed more help. I therefore deliberately kept a low profile with the woodturning. I put my work into local shops and galleries and left them to sell on my behalf. I am grateful for this service. I do not begrudge shops their commission, I am a firm believer…
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Cankered Ash
Cankered Ash is a beautiful wood. Ash is so often beautiful anyway but Cankered Ash is wonderful. It has all the sorts of things I really enjoy with wood. It is unpredictable and moves after it has been turned – even if it is turned quite dry but especially if it is turned fresh. There must be a lot of stresses in it. It often has a particularly good colour and sheen to it, rich and deep. And, of course, it also has holes in it! Quite why they are appealing I don’t know but it isn’t only me. It seems that the more holes there are in a piece…
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Miniature chair
This miniature chair is made from Laburnum and commissioned by Cymdeithas Ceredigion to be given as a prize at their Eisteddfod. Deceptively simple but this chair was actually very tricky to make. The two sides had to match, the back had to be in proportion, the sapwood had to line up perfectly between them all and there could be no sapwood at the back of the seat or where the back and seat meet. I had sawn, planed and seasoned four to five times this amount of slices but these were the only four that would work together. They had been seasoning for a year as wood cut in this…
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Cadair Cymdeithas Ceredigion
Cymdeithas Ceredigion has honoured me over the last three years by asking me to make a chair to be awarded as a prize in their Eisteddfod. The first year was for a full sized chair. Last year and this year I was asked to make a miniature chair. This is the chair I made this year and a brief description which went with it along with the translation. Tresi Aur Ond ai dyna’r enw? Beth am Feillion Sbaen, Coed Sbaen, Bedwen Sbaen? Mae’r enwau ‘na i gyd wedi dod o ardal De Ceredigion. Chwedl glywais i oedd i’r pren ddod i mewn i Aberaeron yn y 1860au fel “balast” mewn…