Woodworking Hobbies

I do woodworking, mostly with hand tools. I like making furniture, just small items such as coffee tables, using traditional joints, such as mortise and tenons, dovetails, housings. I also do some spoon carving, and have recently started volunteering at the Stanwick Lakes Big Bronze Age Boat Build.

Oak Coffee Table

Made with mortice and tenon joints. The top was laminated from several pieces and attached with wooden turn buttons to allow the wood to move if it needs to.

TV Stand in Ash

Ash is a lovely wood, but really tough. I had to get all my tools extra sharp, and it was still hard work.

Chessboard

Rustic Stool

This was made on a weekend course at Stanwick Lakes using ash felled from the woodlands for the legs and a slab of ash which I think was bought in for the top.

Spoons

I went to Spoonfest in August 2022 and learned how to carve spoons using an axe and some knives.

This was a great event held on a farm in Edale. Over a hundred people with their tents, ranging from complete beginners like me to really proficient carvers.

I did several classes, including ‘Mindful Whittling’ with Barn the Spoon himself!

Bronze Age Boat Building

Stanwick Lakes is an archeological site in Northampton with a visitor centre, children’s, playgrounds and some experimental archeology projects.

I’m volunteering on the project to make a canoe from a tree trunk in the same way that bronze age inhabitants of the site would have done 4000 years ago.

We are using bronze tools forged in the same way they would have been ‘back in the day’ to gradually hack out the insides of this log to make a working canoe. When it is finished the walls will be about 1/2 inch (12mm) thick – we hope!

Here I am flattening a board to use for the transom at the back of the boat. The wood was split off from the main log using wedges, and now I’m trying to make it flat and all the same thickness. Unfortunately wood planes have not been invented yet, so I’m having to do the whole thing with a bronze chisel.

Transom board close to fitting it's groove. — Transom board close to fitting it’s groove.

Here making a paddle (basically a big spoon) from some Ash felled from the woods a few weeks earlier. Not using authentic tools for this, but still with traditional (non-electric) thechniques.

Splitting planks from a tree recently felled.

Using a paddle I made myself, we went on a trip around the lake. Two hulls lashed together to make a catamaran, it was really stable, but only about 10cm above the waterline. Luckily it was a calm day! Predictably, I arrived a bit late and all the bronze age costumes had gone by then.

A fantastic experience which has left me with a huge respect for what our ancestors were able to do.