Love your work

A mixed gaggle of geese  and boxes in oak and pine and mahogany enrich my life.

Here are some of the projects soon to follow. I have made some of these for years and soon you will be making them too. In the last project online (below right) we made the Wall Clock from pine. I designed this clock a decade ago and have sold so many of them I cannot recall the number. In pine it looks lovely, simple I think. Its a clock designed for training people to work wood with hand tools with. The colour and the grain are simple and submissive and the wood works so wonderfully with hand tools that it makes an ideal and common starter wood throughout my different series. Additionally, well-chosen pine is both quite beautiful and absorbing, tolerant and quietly expressive. Sometimes I paint it because I want colour and not grain. I like the way it paints too. Rarely would I stain pine because it looks artificial, but sometimes I stain or dye to have the wood blend into the surroundings in which it might otherwise stand out too much. My workshop for instance.

Pine boxes and clocks please me

This past month I made these things. They are an extension of pieces I have designed specifically to develop your skills over the next few weeks and months. By the end of one year you will be able to tackle all kinds of boxes ranging from this chisel tray to a complex tool chest like this. In between there are other boxes with hinged lids, fall-fronts, and sliding closures. We will soon build tables to develop a range of pieces including dining tables, coffee tables and of course our now famous chairside table. Then, at some point within this range, we will add a drawer or two to the aprons, like this. Within each progressive phase, we will include concepts of design from a designer craftsman’s perspective. That way, construction and methods behind construction become integral from a working knowledge and more readily transposed into visually distinctive pieces.

 

A new chisel box – oak, mahogany and a set of Sorby boxwood handled chisels

My thoughts develop as I teach you. Thinking a few weeks and months ahead, I make many of the pieces and often make them several times over. With the clock we are making in the online series, I wanted to add one or two made from hardwood, with a couple of variations. Corbels and cornices can be used in other ways on other pieces too. They are valuable extras to have in your repertoire of skills and knowledge.

The clocks are all finished

I like the way they look now. All laying on the bench together with different colours, grain configurations and subtle hues. They will grace someone’s home in the future.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As the geese feed amongst the sheep in the fields below the New Legacy Workshops here in Wales, I think of the future of working wood and woodworking and I am convinced all the more that we can provide conservation for our craft through the work we are involved in. I love hearing from you all and, please, continue to feel free to make suggestions for how we can improve what we do.

 

 

 

 

This is my view from one side of the Penrhyn Castle Workshops this morning…

 

…and the other.