One of my recent projects has been to make some some leather stamps out of scrap pieces of metal. I'd made one or two in the past, but decided it would be nice to make a few more for a project I was working on. I decided to use some old files as the metal as i have lots knocking around that would give me a few different shapes to begin with and if I wanted to i could harden them so they can be used with wood or metal. The first job was to cut them down to length a suitable length. This is really easy when you're using old files as the metal is hard and brittle, so I just secured it in a vice ..read more

When teaching courses in spoon carving we always try to inspire students to carry on the craft once the course is over. Spoon carving is a great introduction to traditional handcraft (I think it was Barn 'the spoon' Carder that referred to it as the 'gateway drug to green woodworking') because it only requires a few tools and the raw materials are easily available.So, to help them on their spoon carving journey we always take some time to recommend the tools they need to get started. Recommending a straight knife is a no-brainer. The Mora 120 and 106 are fantastic knives and are really che ..read more

I’m currently preparing a course making post and rung stools inspired by Mike Abbott’s book Going With the Grain. These stools are delightful and a great introduction to riving and shaving green wood as well as greenwood joinery. I’m trying to condense it down to a one day course, but I think that might be a bit ambitious. One of the problems here is that the rungs would ideally be dried out overnight before doing the joinery. This means that the mortice in the, still green, legs will shrink slightly as they dry creating a very tight joint with the dried out tenons. If the rungs are not dry e ..read more