paul standley
31-10-2012, 10:32 AM
Welcome back...
I joined this forum back when Ashley first set it up and until March this year I was fairly active within the forum and those who remember my name from back then may well have wondered if I’d fallen off the edge of the world, fallen off my perch or was being entertained at her majesties displeasure…!
Well, the reality was that the beginning of my inactivity on the forum around Feb/March time coincided with the coppicing course in February when I became immersed in all aspects of woodlands and green woodworking, some related spin-off’s and my new best friends…!.
I had already, back in December, started to get into the mind-set of ‘Woodsman’ in anticipation that I’d get myself a furry Racoon hat and a buckskin jerkin and live happily ever after alone in the wilds of South East Wales (much to my wife’s amusement) so I started on that slippery slope of acquiring even more tools (We just love any excuse to go buy more tools with sharp edges don’t we…!). So anyway, I bought a very old ‘Spar’ Billhook with a broken tang and I dug out an old small axe head from the back of the garage and set about bring them back to life. You can see my old forum threads and pictures on these two little projects here…
http://www.naturalbushcraft.co.uk/forum/showthread.php?2517-Refurbishing-a-very-old-Spar-Hook-(billhook)-for-woodland-use
http://www.naturalbushcraft.co.uk/forum/showthread.php?2518-Re-handling-a-modified-side-axe
So, back to the bit where I’d bitten off more than I could chew and needed to skill-up pretty quickly.
The Coppicing course at the Green Wood centre ( http://smallwoods.org.uk/green-wood-centre/introduction/ ) was a 5 day hands-on residential course run by Larry Jones and organised in accordance with the OCN (Open College Network) and included a 2 part assessment which consisted of practical assessments and a review of a written mini-thesis. The residential bit sounds grand doesn’t it but actually, the Green Wood Centre have 3 or 4 no-frills (no light or heat) “wooden tents” resembling wooden pig huts on the side of their site that you can book for £5 a night and in mid-Feb it was dam cold, pretty frosty and one morning I woke up to snow on the ground around me so it was no spa hotel…!
Not to put too finer point on it. The course blew me away, it just was everything I wanted and more and we got to work in three different woodlands, one on a large country estate, one believe or not that was literally in between two housing estates in Telford town and one which was a small wood owned by the Tutor and which was, years ago called Harris Wood because it used to be owned by the Harris paint brush company and was a source of coppiced Sweet Chestnut that they used to make their paint brush handles from in the sixties. The course was good mix of theory and proper hands-on with hand coppicing tools and understanding the right tool for the job and how to look after them and use them was great and gave the extra bit beyond what would be normal common sense.
In particular, Larry Jones just loved his camp fires so getting a fire going in the woods each morning and getting a brew on whilst he took us through that days agenda just touched the spot and wouldn’t you know it, everybody turns into a survival bushcraft expert at these times and getting a fire going by committee in a wet woodland was a real sight to behold…if you’d watched it on telly you’d have said it could never happen in real life – well it did….!
After this course, and knowing I would be working in the wood with sharp tools, trees (albeit smallish ones) and on uneven ground, sometimes on my own, sometimes with my daughter I also decided to do a first responders outdoors first aid course and I’d recommend anyone who spends time out of doors whether bushcrafting, walking, camping or working to do a first aid course.
So hang on, aren’t we going a bit off piste here, what’s all of this got to do with green wood working ?.
For me it’s simple, as I came to realise early on in this quest, it is a jigsaw puzzle with several interlocking pieces and to be able to work green wood in a sympathetic and responsible way, one really needs to see the whole picture, where green wood comes from, how it got there, what types there are, what it can be used for, how it gets to you and how it is able to keep on coming (i.e. how we ensure its sustainability).
Understanding a little bit about practical woodland management & coppicing in general and about Hazel coppicing in particular just increased my desire to get my hands on some green wood and make shavings…!
I came off the coppicing course straight into my woodland and just felt immediately at home and in control and started coppicing that week and followed the felling plan I’d submitted to the Forestry Commission which until that point had been mainly based on theory. ….I love it when a plan comes together.
Because of the length of time it took to get FCW approval and the timing of the coppicing course, I only really had 3-4 weeks in which to get the first area of hazel cut before the end of the traditional winter cutting season.
It was a real rush but I had my daughter to help me because part of the bigger plan was for me to transfer my skills as I learnt them to my daughter (more about this later) and so we borrowed a couple of bow saws, a pruning saw each and my side axe and small billhook an we got stuck in and got it done and so there it was, a couple of tons of Hazel in all manner of shapes, sizes and lengths laid out neatly through the first cut section of the woodland along with seemingly endless piles of brash, the top trimmings and waste that we used to build habitat piles.
Oh, I had such plans, the stuff I was going to make with all of this hazel was nobody’s business, I was going to put B&Q’s garden section out of business overnight and no mistake, or so I thought…
Reality had also sank in at this point because coppicing an acre of 20-40 year old knarled Hazel coppice on a slope up a valley with hand tools alone in a short time had proved hard graft and I learned a lot in my wood during that hectic period. I realised for the first time then why people fall in love with chain saws but hey-ho, I was determined to stick to the traditional ways and anyway, the FCW agreement precluded me from using chain saws in the wood.
The feeling in that last week of coppicing when all of the felling and trimming was completed and the wood looked like a real ‘working wood’ from the old days was just amazing. I had got to fulfil stage 1 of a dream really, I had a 16 acre wood that I could put my own stamp on within reason and I was bringing together my bushcrafting experiences and my new woodland skills and sharing them with my daughter and my grandchildren, what more could one ask.
If you have kids you’ll be familiar with the plaintive cries from the back seat of “are we there yet” and so I hear you cry are we getting to the bit where we start with the green wood yet ? – follow me on part 3 of my journey to find out.
Paul.
I joined this forum back when Ashley first set it up and until March this year I was fairly active within the forum and those who remember my name from back then may well have wondered if I’d fallen off the edge of the world, fallen off my perch or was being entertained at her majesties displeasure…!
Well, the reality was that the beginning of my inactivity on the forum around Feb/March time coincided with the coppicing course in February when I became immersed in all aspects of woodlands and green woodworking, some related spin-off’s and my new best friends…!.
I had already, back in December, started to get into the mind-set of ‘Woodsman’ in anticipation that I’d get myself a furry Racoon hat and a buckskin jerkin and live happily ever after alone in the wilds of South East Wales (much to my wife’s amusement) so I started on that slippery slope of acquiring even more tools (We just love any excuse to go buy more tools with sharp edges don’t we…!). So anyway, I bought a very old ‘Spar’ Billhook with a broken tang and I dug out an old small axe head from the back of the garage and set about bring them back to life. You can see my old forum threads and pictures on these two little projects here…
http://www.naturalbushcraft.co.uk/forum/showthread.php?2517-Refurbishing-a-very-old-Spar-Hook-(billhook)-for-woodland-use
http://www.naturalbushcraft.co.uk/forum/showthread.php?2518-Re-handling-a-modified-side-axe
So, back to the bit where I’d bitten off more than I could chew and needed to skill-up pretty quickly.
The Coppicing course at the Green Wood centre ( http://smallwoods.org.uk/green-wood-centre/introduction/ ) was a 5 day hands-on residential course run by Larry Jones and organised in accordance with the OCN (Open College Network) and included a 2 part assessment which consisted of practical assessments and a review of a written mini-thesis. The residential bit sounds grand doesn’t it but actually, the Green Wood Centre have 3 or 4 no-frills (no light or heat) “wooden tents” resembling wooden pig huts on the side of their site that you can book for £5 a night and in mid-Feb it was dam cold, pretty frosty and one morning I woke up to snow on the ground around me so it was no spa hotel…!
Not to put too finer point on it. The course blew me away, it just was everything I wanted and more and we got to work in three different woodlands, one on a large country estate, one believe or not that was literally in between two housing estates in Telford town and one which was a small wood owned by the Tutor and which was, years ago called Harris Wood because it used to be owned by the Harris paint brush company and was a source of coppiced Sweet Chestnut that they used to make their paint brush handles from in the sixties. The course was good mix of theory and proper hands-on with hand coppicing tools and understanding the right tool for the job and how to look after them and use them was great and gave the extra bit beyond what would be normal common sense.
In particular, Larry Jones just loved his camp fires so getting a fire going in the woods each morning and getting a brew on whilst he took us through that days agenda just touched the spot and wouldn’t you know it, everybody turns into a survival bushcraft expert at these times and getting a fire going by committee in a wet woodland was a real sight to behold…if you’d watched it on telly you’d have said it could never happen in real life – well it did….!
After this course, and knowing I would be working in the wood with sharp tools, trees (albeit smallish ones) and on uneven ground, sometimes on my own, sometimes with my daughter I also decided to do a first responders outdoors first aid course and I’d recommend anyone who spends time out of doors whether bushcrafting, walking, camping or working to do a first aid course.
So hang on, aren’t we going a bit off piste here, what’s all of this got to do with green wood working ?.
For me it’s simple, as I came to realise early on in this quest, it is a jigsaw puzzle with several interlocking pieces and to be able to work green wood in a sympathetic and responsible way, one really needs to see the whole picture, where green wood comes from, how it got there, what types there are, what it can be used for, how it gets to you and how it is able to keep on coming (i.e. how we ensure its sustainability).
Understanding a little bit about practical woodland management & coppicing in general and about Hazel coppicing in particular just increased my desire to get my hands on some green wood and make shavings…!
I came off the coppicing course straight into my woodland and just felt immediately at home and in control and started coppicing that week and followed the felling plan I’d submitted to the Forestry Commission which until that point had been mainly based on theory. ….I love it when a plan comes together.
Because of the length of time it took to get FCW approval and the timing of the coppicing course, I only really had 3-4 weeks in which to get the first area of hazel cut before the end of the traditional winter cutting season.
It was a real rush but I had my daughter to help me because part of the bigger plan was for me to transfer my skills as I learnt them to my daughter (more about this later) and so we borrowed a couple of bow saws, a pruning saw each and my side axe and small billhook an we got stuck in and got it done and so there it was, a couple of tons of Hazel in all manner of shapes, sizes and lengths laid out neatly through the first cut section of the woodland along with seemingly endless piles of brash, the top trimmings and waste that we used to build habitat piles.
Oh, I had such plans, the stuff I was going to make with all of this hazel was nobody’s business, I was going to put B&Q’s garden section out of business overnight and no mistake, or so I thought…
Reality had also sank in at this point because coppicing an acre of 20-40 year old knarled Hazel coppice on a slope up a valley with hand tools alone in a short time had proved hard graft and I learned a lot in my wood during that hectic period. I realised for the first time then why people fall in love with chain saws but hey-ho, I was determined to stick to the traditional ways and anyway, the FCW agreement precluded me from using chain saws in the wood.
The feeling in that last week of coppicing when all of the felling and trimming was completed and the wood looked like a real ‘working wood’ from the old days was just amazing. I had got to fulfil stage 1 of a dream really, I had a 16 acre wood that I could put my own stamp on within reason and I was bringing together my bushcrafting experiences and my new woodland skills and sharing them with my daughter and my grandchildren, what more could one ask.
If you have kids you’ll be familiar with the plaintive cries from the back seat of “are we there yet” and so I hear you cry are we getting to the bit where we start with the green wood yet ? – follow me on part 3 of my journey to find out.
Paul.