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My New Gallery! Woodturning on Display
At last, I have my woodturning on display. One of the advantages of a small-holding is out-houses and sheds. A big incentive to moving to where I live now is the space it offered me for the woodworking. The cottage is very small but I have enough sheds for workshop, storage space for wood (both ‘in the round’ and converted into planks) and even space left over for ‘all the things that will come in handy sometime’. One of these buildings (appropriately a wooden one) I have been converting into a little gallery. It means that I can now offer a much more appropriate setting for people to view the work than when they…
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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…