Background to wood and its history
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Commissions 1
Commissions offer a different challenge to my everyday work. I love to have different commissions. Sometimes I am given commissions to turn bowls from wood that someone’s home and that is always a pleasure as it has so much personal meaning to the people involved. Wood always has a history but if that history is linked to the people who are able to keep the wood and possibly even pass it down through the generations that is so special. It is also through being given commissions to turn something from people’s own wood that I have come across some of the most beautiful wood I have had the pleasure to…
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Milling Wood Problems.
Milling wood for furniture or wood turning is an interesting experience. The bark of a tree can hid many secrets. Obviously becoming more experienced means I can see subtle clues but there is not always anything showing on the bark after many years or decades. Sometimes milling wood and lifting up the plank reveals the most beautiful figuring that wasn’t expected. Then the excitement grows with each cut. Sometimes there can be disappointments – a nasty area where a dead branch has spoiled otherwise good wood or a rotten area, even a whole section that is hollow. One old Sycamore had a pink area in the middle that was very…
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My Milling Band Saw
I have two different types of saws that I use for converting tree trunks into planks, a milling attachment for a powerful chainsaw and this large band saw. Hopefully I shall make some videos in the future showing them working. For very large trunks, or if they are somewhere other than home I use the milling chainsaw which I’ll describe in another blog. If the wood is small enough and at home I have the band-saw. This was originally designed for sawing metal but has been adapted now to saw wood. Most milling band-saws do the moving through the wood and are portable, which has its advantages. With this one…
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The History of the Tree in the Wood.
The history of the tree is in each piece of wood but it can not always be easily read. One of the easiest stories to read is when a tree has been cut across the grain. Because the wood has to shrink as it dries (a living tree is about 60% water and this will come down to 10% or below for a centrally heated house) when it is cut like this it inevitably cracks. When it is planked along the grain it can move in different ways so does not necessarily crack. This circle of wood is 31″ diameter at the narrowest point and over 3′ at the widest…
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Yew Trees
Yew trees are beautiful and I love working with Yew wood. Yew wood is one of the most interesting and beautiful woods, highly sought after by wood turners and furniture makers. It has a creamy coloured sapwood with much darker orange brown heartwood creating a striking contrast. The patterns created by the Yew tree as it grows tend to be very varied and ‘wild’. Yew trees also do not tend to grow smooth and round but undulating in and out. This means that if I can make things from yew that retain the natural edge this adds an interesting feature to the piece. However, yew also tends to surface crack…
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Laburnum in Ceredigion
Laburnum hedges turn great swathes of this area yellow in May. Some roads become golden tunnels. Field after field are surrounded by branches dripping with Golden Chains. I don’t know that it is true but the story that I was told when I was young growing up in this area is that the Laburnum came here in the 1860s from Spain. It was used as ballast and was then used as cheap fencing posts. It took root. There are many hedges where the Laburnum trees are about 9′ (3m) apart which is just the right distance for fencing. Ceredigion was one of the last areas to be enclosed (the process…