Wishing everyone a Merry Christmas and a Happy, Healthy and enjoyable 2018.
Year: 2017
Blacksmith experience days’ pictures
After my earlier post about blacksmith experience days as gifts for Christmas, A couple of people have asked me about the pieces people have made.
First is the hanging basket bracket.
These two were made by Patrick and his daughter Charlotte.
I use this design to help people who want to learn a number of techniques, but don’t have a specific item they want to make.
The important thing to remember is that the day is yours. If you have something specific you would like to make then, before the day, I will help to develop your idea into something you can make in a day on the forge.
Some of the other things made include:
Christmas present, blacksmithing or beekeeping experience days
If you are looking for the ideal Christmas present, blacksmithing or beekeeping experience days might be just what you are looking for. I can supply you with a pdf gift card to print and give to the lucky person, with the date for the ‘day’ to be set later.
I have held a few experience days over the year and wanted to share a few pictures.
Whether you are interested in finding out more about beekeeping or blacksmithing, I can tailor make a day for you.
In a day designed around what you want to achieve and learn, a beekeeping experience day will involve opening up hives and gaining an understanding of how the hive lives and thrives.
Meanwhile, on a blacksmithing experience day, I first work with you before the day to understand what you would like to make on my outdoor forge.
I then work on your idea to make it something you can make, with a little help from me when needed. Alternatively, you can make a hanging basket bracket incorporating a number of blacksmithing techniques, to learn more about the art.
On the day itself you will learn key forge techniques and make something to take away and treasure.
“Thank you for such an amazing day!”
“We both had a great day and my wife is very impressed that we managed to produce such beautiful work – all of which was thanks to your excellent coaching. You made great use of our time and I’m still amazed that we managed to do quite so much in a few short hours.” – Patrick
“Thanks so much for sharing your knowledge and patience with us.” – Karen and Graham
“Wow what an amazing candle holder Dan made..I was gobsmacked….I absolutely loved it…thank you, Dan had an amazing time and hasn’t stopped talking about it….” – Leonie
“Thanks so much for making Henry’s day so enjoyable yesterday. He had a truly fabulous time and loved every minute of it. I am amazed and delighted at the sculpture he made in the time he had – his DT teacher was equally impressed. I think we have started something here! If you ever hear of any trainee opportunities, please let us know. He was still smiling at 3.30am when I woke him to go on his school trip to France.” – Rachel
Please contact me if you have any questions about my experience days, or if I can help create the perfect christmas or birthday present.
Wood carved tray
It has been a busy weekend. Over the last few months I have been working, on and off, on an oak tray. It will eventually take the glass fern sheet I previously blogged about.
This is where I was up to before the weekend began.
The rope edging was prepared as a cylindrical shape and I had a piece of nylon rope to copy.
The oak is hard and difficult to carve, but it should give a wonderful deep colour and grain.
The picture below shows the tray after about 22 hours of carving. The most difficult bit is getting the strands in the right place as they move around a bend. The piece of rope was invaluable in seeing what actually happens to the strands as the rope bends and moves.
The section at the top of the tray is closest to being finished and that to the right little more than the initial outline marked.
There is still much to do.
Time to grow
Life has been a little busy over the last few weeks. The vegetables and fruit have been growing faster than we can eat, freeze, store or make jam from.
We are particularly pleased with the tomatoes. Having lost all of our 30 plus plants to tomato blight last year, this year we spent some time researching blight resistant varieties.
We picked 10 of the best and haven’t had a problem with any. We have grown them in a variety of places from a polytunnel to a greenhouse and out in the open.
Remembering just how much rain we have suffered this summer, it is amazing that they have shown not a single sign of blight. The results speak for themselves…N0w must go, I have a couple of buckets of runner beans in need of picking.
Glass fusing with ferns: the main job
Having tried out a few different techniques for glass fusing with ferns, and finalising the best, I have now moved on to the main reason for all this, the insert for the oak tray I am currently carving.
I started with 3 ferns coated with green glass powder.
These were fused to a sheet of clear glass.
With the carbon residue from the ferns themselves removed, this left the glass powder behind, reflecting the fern shape and form.
Next the sheet was turned upside down and a sheet of opaque white glass put on top, as the background.
This meant that what was to become the top surface was against the kiln plate. The reason I did it this was around was to give the top surface a textured finish to match the fern feel. The glossy, shiny top surface of the glass in then on the bottom and hidden.
The result is below:
I have tried to show the silk surface texture in this picture.
All I need to do now is complete the oak tray which this will be inserted into.
Glass fusing with ferns: the results
We had mixed results from the glass fusing with ferns.
Good news is that two of the techniques worked really well, the other 7 didn’t.
Without going into too much detail, unsuprisingly ferns by themselves turn to ash at glass melting temperatures. This can be used to create interesting fossil type effects as on 3 above, but at the risk of also creating large bubbles if you don’t use slow temperature ramps. If the fern is delicate then, as on sample 2 above, it is likely to completely disappear.
The key appears to be use glass powder stuck to the fern, as on 1 and 8 above, with a 2 stage process to reduce bubbles, as on 8.
8 is therefore my method of choice to produce a fern in glass. Using this methodology, next comes the large piece I need for the oak carved tray I am making. I just have to hope that the method scales up.
Glass fusing with plant material
Even since we saw some glass fusing with plant material I have wanted to have a go.
Time, the garden, and the bees have conspired to thwart our attempts to find the couple of hours needed to try it out, but, with the nasty weather over the last few days, we decided that today was the day.
A little online research brought up about 4 different techniques to cope with the basic problem that, at 800 degrees, the temperature required to melt the glass, all plant material will have turned to carbon.
This picture shows the 9 different test pieces, all slightly different, to determine the process that works best for us for different leaf types.
Come back in a couple of days to see the results.
In the meantime keep your fingers crossed.
Long hive update; not forgetting food
It has been a while since I last posted. The garden is in full swing and harvesting the soft fruit (blackberries, blueberries, redcurrants, blackcurrants, gooseberries) has been my priority. it has truly been a bounty this year ad we haven’t even started on the apples and plums.
Squashes and courgettes are also getting underway and the garlic needs digging up, so you get my point, food comes first.
Having said that, the bees have also been busy. We have completed the first extraction of the year and the bees in the long hive are doing well.
Here is one of the long hive frames, as seen during a recent beekeeping experience day. They are pulling out the comb to fit the V shaped hive and have built up 6 frames already. I’ll try to post some more detailed pictures soon, but that’s it for now.
Blacksmith experience day
I recently held a blacksmith experience day for my youngest ever pupil.
It was a part of his school work experience programme.
He made a sculpture incorporating a number of core blacksmithing techniques, and a special addition of his own, a worm.
It was a first for me, a forged worm. I think we were both pleased with how it all came out.
His Design Technology teacher was reportedly also impressed with his work for the day.
Alongside the forge work, he also took the opportunity to ask lots of questions about becoming a blacksmith and took away lots of information about courses and qualifications.
He was a pleasure to teach.
Long Hive swarm collection
Following on from my earlier post about the making of our long hive, it now has inhabitants.
I collected a swarm the other day. It was a fairly simple collection, hanging at head height in a tree. I knocked them into my skep and then waited whilst the stragglers and scout bees made their way back to the colony.
There will always be a few left behind, but, providing you are prepared to be patient and you have the queen in the skep, the others will follow.
Here you can see them in the skep and then after being knocked into the hive.
They quickly took to their new home and within a few hours had begun to draw out the small bits of wax foundation into comb.
With any luck they will have time this year to pull the comb out sufficiently to give them space to put honey for their winter store. This will set them up for a strong 2018, when we might get some cut comb honey from them.
Blacksmithing project: compost bag holder
I was recently asked to help a friend out with a frame to both hold a compost bag and to give a frame to lean on whilst digging into the bag.
The result is here.
Nothing too complicated, a large diameter ring for the base, 3 vertical rods and a smaller diameter ring at the top. This gives it extra stability.
It’s the second one I have made, this one from 12mm steel to give it extra strength when leant on.
Nunti Bo
Further to the Nunti I made, I was also asked to make another Nunti Bo, this time for Juan in Spain.
I made one a few months ago for Garry.
It is made from a Japanese Redwood Bo (shaft) with a forged steel end, finished simply with beeswax polish from our own bees.
This is apparently based on a fisherman’s spear and now used in Okinawan martial arts.
I am no martial arts expert, but I understand that it is composed of a Bo (the wooden shaft) with a Manji Sai mounted on one end.
Blacksmithing handheld Nunti
Following on from the Nunti Bo I made a few months ago, I was asked to make 2 handheld Nunti. I think they are also sometimes referred to as Sai.
These are used in the Japanese martial art discipline from Okinawa.
I really enjoyed making these. I worked with Garry to work put the size and weight to give them a good balance. They have a lovely feel and weight and I am very pleased with how they have come out.
You can see the stages of manufacture below.
They are finished with simple beeswax polish from our own bees.
Long hive beekeeping
Perhaps one of the oldest methods of keeping bees is top bar Long Hive Beekeeping. Popular in Africa, largely due to the low cost of hive manufacture, it is now becoming popular in Europe as a bee and environmentally friendly method of beekeeping.
A few weeks ago Mrs Bee found some online plans and so I set to work. A trip to B&Q later and I had a sheet of plywood ready to make into a hive. Leaping forward, this is how it finished up.
And this is how I got there:
This shows the inside of the hive.
The frames are very different to those in a conventional hive, in that they are simple top bars.
A small piece of wax sheet is added to give the bees a subtle hint as to where we would like them to build comb.
And that’s about it. All I need now are some bees, oh and some warm weather..
2 years and (not) counting
It’s that time again. Time to mark the second anniversary of leaving e2v.
I marked the anniversary of my last day last year. This time I have slipped by a few days. it doesn’t seem quite so important this year.
Much has happened since I left. e2v has recently been sold to an American company and is now Teledyne e2v. Whilst there have been immediate cuts in management (the CEO and my old boss have left), Teledyne has a history of investment in aquisitions. So I have hopes that e2v will go forward and thrive, with new backing and access to US markets.
From my perspective, I am doing more talks, with new social history talks added, and am enjoying expanding my blacksmithing and beekeeping activities.
This year I marked the anniversary by visiting Harwich. Mrs Bee was on a painting day, so I acted as driver and took the opportunity to visit some old haunts (literally).
Mot of the interesting museums around Harwich were closed, but what I really wanted to do was go and see the pier at Walton on the Naze. To be honest their web site sort of lines you up for the place, a little tired in places, but honest and clearly providing loads of fun for the visitors I saw.
In my formative years I attended Moulsham Church Sunday School. My memories are not of excessive religious teachings, but of fun and games. So that’s a big tick in the box for them.
One of my overriding memories is of the annual summer trip to Walton on the Naze, which included a visit to the pier and jelly and ice cream on the way home. The highlight for me was the ghost train, especially the bits where the train crashed through doors, swung out into the open air and then back through more doors into the dark, all at about 50 foot in the air and 50 miles an hour.
I wandered down the pier with some trepidation. Never go back they say, it will only ever lead to disappointment. Memories came back as I walked down the centre of the pier. It really hadn’t changed much. The first areas to the left and right were full of slot and games machines, much updated from the one armed bandits of 40 years ago.
Then, there it was, the ghost train.
I couldn’t believe it was still there. It has changed of course. The bits where you swung out into the open were boxed in as windows, probably Health and Safety said that it was too dangerous. But the doors were still there, enclosed, it was still basically the same ride.
But. horror of horrors. It was 11:30 and it was closed. with my parking ticket running out at 12:20 (never had that problem as a 10 year old), it opened at 12, just enough time I calculated. I checked that I was allowed to ride and, after a visual assessment of my weight, I was given the nod. 3 tickets, or £1:80 later, I was on board.
It was great, not as fast as I remember and the boxed in bits that swung out in the open had been lowered from 50 foot up to a modest 6 foot (or just possibly they had always been only 6 foot up, but I don’t think so).
But it was great. It was the ghost train of 40 years ago. I did video the ride, but am having trouble loading it. You can see a better attempt here.
I was 10 for about 3 minutes, then I had to get back to the car park before I got a ticket.
Carved wooden chain: finished
Here is the finished carved wooden chain.
It didn’t take much more work to clean off the links.
The biggest job as always was the sanding, working through 80 grit, down to 320, to achieve a really smooth finish.
You can’t see it very well here, but there is some interesting spalting in the beech, which runs through the first links, giving it a mottled effect.
The finish is our own beeswax polish.
My next project is a tray to take some tiles we bought in South Africa. But for now the garden calls. There are seeds to plant and a new hedge to lay.
Carved wooden chain: part 2
We resume work on my wooden chain with the difficult process of freeing up the individual elements.
In the first picture above you can see the hook end with most of the material removed. All that is left is the tricky bit, removing the wood in the tight gap joining the hook to the next link. The first part to remove is here in the second picture, and easy to get at. The third picture shows the result of another hour’s work, nibbling away at the wood between links and freeing them up. For the first time we have completely separate pieces of wood, linked together.
It now becomes a somewhat repetitive task, working along the links, freeing them from each other. At this point they are far from finished. A lot of work still needs to be done to even up the chain shapes.
This is the point where I leave it for now. All the links are free, but in need of a few more days work to finish them off. Time I don’t have right now as I have work to do to prepare for a blacksmith experience day this weekend.
I can also explain the first question posed, about making a single piece of wood longer than you started. The links as drawn on the original piece needed gaps between them to allow a chisel in. By the time the links are thinned out and finished off they will stretch out further and so the chain will still be make from a single piece, but will be longer than the original block it is made from.
Carved wooden chain: part 1
How do you make a piece of wood longer? It is a question I was asked the other day, and the answer is simple, you make it into a carved wooden chain. Stick with me and you will see how.
It is an exercise I haven’t tried before and so I began it during a wood carving weekend with the help of a very good teacher.
As with many things I do, I wanted it to be big. This meant starting off with a piece of spalted beech about 10cm square and 60 cm long. This is a close grained hard wood, difficult to carve but with a lovely finish when done. What I wanted to produce was a 4 link chain, started with a simple loop and finished with a hook.
The process begins by cutting the wood into a cross shape. If you think about looking at a chain end on, with the links at right angles to each other, then you will see the shape needed.
The next stage is to mark out the chain pieces as they cross each other. The most important thing at this point is to make sure that you have left enough space between the drawn links to get a chisel in between. This allows you to cut out the wood to free the links from each other. Hopefully the above pictures help explain.
Now comes the easiest part. Cutting away the waste material. Providing you can see the final chain outline in your mind, and have drawn it clearly, then it is a simple process to cut away the waste. Hopefully you can see the chain shape appearing.
At this point you have to start clearing out the material from within the loops of the chain shape. The first bits can be drilled out.
After that it is back to the chisels. The most difficult part is removing the wood from inside the loops, taking care whilst shaping one area to not remove wood needed by a neighbouring link.
Part 2 to follow soon
Bronze sculpture repair
I had an interesting challenge recently, a bronze sculpture repair.
Above is the finished repaired bronze lion. However, its foot started like this.
Not only is it broken, it has also been repaired with some epoxy resin, so needed careful cleaning back to the original bronze first.
Following the pictures below, the next stage in the repair was to drill out the two sides of the break to take a strengthening pin.
The two pieces were then glued with a specialist gel super glue. As you can see in the second picture, this left a gap.
The final stage was to fill the gap. This was done with a special metal filler, with added acrylic paint mixed to match the bronze. For anyone interested, this was a mix of gold, black and burnt umber.
You can still see the repair if you look carefully but, having shown it to someone who didn’t know what I had done, they couldn’t see where it had been repaired.
A good result and a happy lion owner.
Beeswax polish
Prompted by a conversation in my comments box, I thought I would explain more about beeswax polish.
The polish I make is made from just 2 ingredients, pure beeswax and pure turpentine. There are a couple of stages in the manufacturing process to ensure the final polish is smooth and creamy, but then these are my secrets.
Natural turpentine comes from distilled tree sap. This carries the beeswax and feeds the wood. The result is that the beeswax works deep into the wood and gives it a deep sheen, rather than a surface buff.
There are cheap versions of beeswax polish out there, but be aware and check the ingredients, as many add cheaper ingredients to bulk up the product.
They can substitute some of the beeswax for cheaper waxes (eg 50% beeswax, 50% cheap wax) and they will use artificial turpentine. This is a man made solvent, often white spirit based. The problem here is that instead of feeding the wood and helping to take the wax down into the wood, giving it a deep sheen, it evaporates quickly. This means that the wax is left sitting on the surface and so is harder to rub in. The artificial solvent also pulls the natural oils out of the wood, actually drying it out, the opposite of what you want.
Putting it simply. If you care for your furniture enough to want to use beeswax polish, then do make sure it is the real genuine product, not a cheap substitute.
I don’t make much, so it isn’t generally listed in my shop, but I do have it available for £4:50 a tin (approx 80g) plus postage of £3:50. I can also add it in with honey sales to share the postage. Send me a message if you are interested.
The 12 days of Christmas: elephant carving day 12
Before you know it we have reached twelfth night and the completion of my charging elephant.
Reality of course is that it has actually taken me about 9 months of on and off work to complete.
The final finishing element has been the tusks. They are made from antler, sourced from a National Trust deer park, where they take the naturally shed antlers and sell them to a walking stick maker. I had the tips of a couple of the antler spurs, too small for use by the stick maker.
The 12 days of Christmas: elephant carving day 11
Finishing off the feet requires toes and toe nails.
Who knew the variation in numbers of visible toe nails elephants have?
From literally hours research I have concluded that African elephants have four toenails on the front feet and three on the back. This compares to Asian elephants, which have five on on the front and four on the back.
The 12 days of Christmas: elephant carving day 10
I am now at the finishing off stage.
It can take as long to finish off all those edges and surfaces as it takes to carve the elephant to this point.
Carving a solid 3 dimensional piece has its added difficulties. By definition, at some point you will be carving with, against, and across the grain. It is across the grain that needs the sharpest of chisels if a clean finish is to be achieved.
On my elephant the cross grain is at the rear and you can see where the grain has opened up where my chisel was not razor sharp. I had to resharpen the chisels and recut across this entire area to achieve the smooth finish I wanted.
The 12 days of Christmas: elephant carving day 9
Back to the elephant’s rear end today.
The stance I am going for is that of an elephant ready to charge.
This means that it is standing with its back legs pushed forward, its head at a slight angle to its body, so that it presents a large mass, and finally ears flared wide, again to show the largest mass to the opponent.
The 12 days of Christmas: elephant carving day 8
Day 8 and the New Year is upon us.
It is time to separate the elephant from its base. This gives me access to his belly and to the whole of the legs.
