Woodland walks and talks on wood

It’s been a productive week back here in the workshop. My schedule all week has been interspersed with people passing through now that the main Penrhyn Castle is open again. Outside, the snowdrops have vanished and clustered daffodils amass in fielded patches ablaze in bright canary yellow.

Part of my apprenticing work is to spend time in the woodland and talk about the wild store of sustainable forest and woodland. In awakening young craftsmen and women to a diminished British resource these walks are critical to understanding why we not only work with wood, but why we use proven joints, hand tools and hand tool techniques. Its here in the woodlands that we see and discover the root of living knots, crotch-grain figuration and reverse spiral grain in living, three-dimensional magnitude. As John and I walked amidst the trees, away from the constraints of the castle 

workshop, we talked tree. Three-dimensional beech tree and oaks in massive ancient growth are protected in the National Trust’s wooded acreage around the castle while further afield managed woodlands and forests around the world thankfully increase a population destined to supply our future need for real wood.