Rhaw

This is the vibe on our green woodwork sessions! You produce much better craft when you relax and enjoy the learning. Breathe, have fun, no such thing as mistakes. Approach every session with a beginners mind - open to everything and embracing the process! 😊

Another great Friday with our cohort. Today we nearly completed a ‘dumb head’ shavehorse build, as well as looking at core knife techniques and how to work cooperatively with the quirks of wood grain. 👍

Today the Green woodwork gang learnt how to use the shavehorse and drawknife to shape a spatula. We also rebuilt an old shavehorse now in working order again. A fresh day at Eagles Nest Mens Shed Swansea but everyone in fine fettle and loving the learning! 😉

A quick hour on the pole lathe for some spindle turning practice resulting in a wee Xmas tree and a little door k**b that we’ve needed for one of our doors. A piece of Cherry salvaged from the fire pile. 👍

Week 2 of our Green woodworking programme and we didn’t need the maul and froe today with big Dave around! Good cleaving sir !!😄 Swansea Lifelong Learning

Very big thanks to Richard who runs Cedarwood Tree services in Swansea for supporting our community woodwork project by donating some Ash for participants to work with. We also picked up some Ash, Oak and Rowan this week from Dominic Evans of Pren Henllys sawmill in Ammanford.

Our projects simply don’t happen unless we can access green wood. If you can help at all please do PM us.

We will always make you something nice or give you a space on a future course for any support given.

Cheers Rich and Dom👍🙏

Our new Woodcraft programme has begun, another full house on their way to woodwork wizardry. To kick off we looked at timber qualities and moved into sharpening. Session finished with an introduction to cleaving wood with a Froe. Welcome to all! 👍 Swansea Lifelong Learning

Loved working on this programme, a truly special experience ! 👌

Big thanks to Dominic Evans of Pren Henllys sawmill for sponsoring our Heritage Woodwork programme this year. Our woodwork scheme supports the community to learn traditional green woodworking skills and Welsh woodcraft.

Check out his fantastic business here and get in touch if like Dominic, you are able to support our community work 👍

https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61556228713662

The beautiful stool made by Trevor yesterday also gave him a solid foundation of core skills to to take his woodworking forward. I thought it might be interesting to outline just a few of the skills and techniques that Trevor covered yesterday:

- Timber selection and understanding / working with grain
- laying out stool design using a framing square
- drawing sight lines to guide the mortising
- using panel saw, Japanese rip saw, flush-cut saw
- setting up clamps and jigs to drill the mortises with the aid of a sliding bevel
- cleaving lengths with a froe, shaping legs with a side axe, then drawknife using the shavehorse
- setting up ‘bench dogs’ to hold I’m seat board in place for planing
- planing with a No 4 Smoothing plane, bevelling seat perimeter with a 102 block plane
- using a cabinet scraper for finishing the seat
- creating tenons using a rounding plane
- sharpening with a diamond stone and stropping
- cutting edges for the tenons
- use of a rasp in shaping the legs
- wedging mortise and tenon
- levelling the stool
- finishing techniques using wire wool / oils

Phew ! Not bad for a days work Trev! 👌

I had the absolute pleasure today of teaching Trefor Davies who runs The Rowan Tree market Garden in Gower. Trevor was keen to get into green woodwork and today made an absolute corker of a stool from Ash and Cherry. 😍

Private tuition is a great way to speed up your learning and more than anything else, have a great day woodworking. Get in touch if you’d like a similar experience, or wish to turn a bowl, spoon carve etc

By the way, Trefor is a seasoned actor and starred in Game of Thrones! 😳

Check out his amazing market garden business here:

http://www.therowantree.wales/index.html

In case you didn’t know, woodwork is good for you !😊

Nothing goes to waste in green woodwork. A scrap of Cherry from behind the lathe becomes a little ‘beehive’ honey twizzler. These are fun to make an me really help you hone your close-quarter knife skills. One for upcoming woodcraft course me thinks. 👍

A taster of what’s to come on our Heritage Woodcraft programme starting next week. We’ll spend one of our modules learning how to hand carve an array of spoons, including dinky little eaters like this one. 😊

😳 Once again, our course has sold out in record time ! Sorry if you were out of luck, but congrats to those of you who’ll be joining us on Sept 27th for thirty of weeks of woodcraft!!!! 👌