Green Woodworking

Through our meetup group, Rob organised a Green Woodworking workshop with Toby from the Green Wood Work Shop! After a bunch of emails, we finally found ourselves wandering through the Purbeck woods trying to find the place, only 40 mins late we could hear the banter and see the smoke rising from the charcoal burners. We were greeted by Toby and his dog, and a couple of the guys that made it, some as far away as South Africa! (I jest, he lived nearer London!)

Fortunately being late wasn’t that much a problem, I quickly followed what the other guys had started and found myself introduced to wooden mallets, lumps of wood (turns out it was Ash) and hand axes, some heavier than others! We had a few options of what we could make, from rounders bats, garden dibbers, to spatulas.

Some images from the day:

The space

The rather rudimental work holder / lathe

The axes had flat faces on one side, and chamfers on the other, this helped them bite into the wood. Some had both sides sharpened, some had short handles, some had long.

Some rolling pins, a dibber and spatula, some having aged better than others.

Forget what this is called – but it makes the stock as smooth / round as possible before heading to the lathe.

Using a gouge to make a mark for the poppet to be located. I thought the poppet (work holder screw thing’ was a funny name, but we still say, ‘pop it in’ – don’t we?