• About Wales,  Background to wood and its history,  wood craft,  wood turning

    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…

  • Background to wood and its history,  wood craft,  wood turning

    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…