Char cloth.

I have had an interesting few weeks travelling to events and shows and have met up with friends old and new.

Kevin Endicott, Me and John Fenna at the Outdoor Trade show.

At the moment I am working my way through a small hill of outstanding jobs. 

 I managed to get out and about in the good weather we have recently experienced. 

A friend of mine has been staying with us here in Devon.

Haily is from Holland and she is a keen horse woman and bushcrafter, she is visiting this part of the country to have a look at some locally bred Rocky Mountain horses.

If all goes well one of the stallions will be transported over to Germany to add some new blood to the stock out there.

Sarah and I have been showing her our beautiful countryside.

We spent some time traversing the ridge at Hameldown.

Hameldown is a long ridge that stands above the small village of Widecombe at a hight of  532 m.

Along the ridge you can find three good sized burial mounds, Broad Burrow, Two Burrows and Single Burrow.

The wind of the moor certainly blew the cobwebs out.

I have run out of char cloth, so Haily and I decided to rip up a pair of old Levi jeans and make some more.

I assembled some equipment useful for the job.

A sealable tin with a small hole punched in the lid, some plugs to seal the hole with, leather gloves, flint and steel to test the resultant char cloth and a pair of pliers so I can handle the hot tin.

Now, I know I wrote a blog about char cloth last winter, but I would like to share with you some of the mistakes I made this time round. 

I used two tins in the open fire for the burn .

Haily and I rolled tight strips of denim and placed the rolled strips in a sealed tin with a small hole punched in the lid.

As normal the combusted gas started to issue from the hole.

The tin on the left looks like a proper char, no flame. 

However, the tin on the right started to flame out, the seal was poor, air was entering the tin and we believed the cloth would be burned rather than charred.

As usual, when the smoke had stopped and petered out, I removed both tins from the fire and pegged the holes to keep the air out and suffocate any further combustion.
After about fifteen minutes I popped the lid from the tin that had flamed out.
I quite expected the tin to be full of carbon.
We were very surprised that the burn had worked and the char cloth seemed sound.
The char cloth was still warm to the touch, so I put it next to me on the wooden floor to cool whilst we had a look at the other (normal) tin.
Whilst I was popping the lid off, Haily pointed out that the first roll, the one sat on the wooden floor, had ignited.
I quickly put the roll back in the tin with a peg in the hole to stop any further combustion.
We learned quite a lot of useful things on this burn. Next time I will leave the tin for a long long time before opening it !!!
It seems that even though the roll was only warm to the touch on the outside, it must have been Harry Redders (RED HOT) in the middle.

After all the excitement, we closed both tins, sealed with pegs and went and cooked some lunch.

The char cloth cooled properly,
no great harm done.

Later during the week I spent some time in the forest with Mark and his brother Jon.
Here Mark is showing his brother how to light a fire using a bow drill.

Success !

 
The fire is lit and the Chef can get down to the business of cooking a chicken curry for seven hungry campers.

And one clown !!!!

After a little preparation the curry was in the Dutch oven ready to go.
An hour and a half later and supper was served.

I spent a comfy night in my hammock

Whilst Jon kipped in an Endicott Polish Laavu

That night our first Autumn storm arrived, the following day was dark, windy and very very wet.

Kevin Endicott had supplied a very big Swedish tarp for the camp, we put it up over the fire and cooked breakfast.

A few days later Haily and I thought the Chanterelle may have made an appearance, so we went to have a rummage about. The little blighter's were hiding under the leaf litter, we managed to flush them out though, by crouching down and using long staves to gently disturb the leaf litter.

Seemed to work.....

Sarah, Haily and I will be living off Chanterell, bread and eggs for the next couple of days I think.
Fab !

At the moment I am waiting for some technical information from Chris Grant.
We have finalised the MaChris bushcraft knife and Chris will be batch producing them soon.
And I am pleased to say that Nic Westermanns Axe and hook knife combination suits me down to the ground.
I have now reached a happy place where my three main edge tools are supplied by craftsmen here in the British Isles.
I will be running a new blog about these superb edge tools and makers soon.
Enjoy... J

Jobs for today...

1. Make sure I have emptied all the Chanterelle from the side pouches of my Bergen.

2. Brush the Chanterelle gently to remove any woodland deposits.

3. Gently fry Chanterelle in butter with a pinch of salt and eat with home made bread and scrambled eggs.

4. Carve new handle for the Lee Stoffer ring scorp and evaluate new axe hand made by Nic Westermann.

5. Finish Snow Goose for Sean.

6. IT'S CHANTERELLE SEASON !!!!!!!!!!!!

Enjoy...J

Spoon carving at the Westonbirt National Arboretum...

Well.

There you go.

This is what happens when two fellas take a biggish tent and some axes and stumps into a wet field at Treefest, national arboretum Westonbirt, and carve things.

Sean Hellman and I win best in show.

Best what in show ? 

I'll leave that to your own imagination.

Whilst at Treefest I met up with my mate Darren from Morgans wood.

He is a clever old stick who can make all manor of wooden objects and furniture for both house and garden. 

Both Sean and Darren use all manor of tooling for there work.

And I am always struck when watching craftsmen process wood using tools that I personally have no skill with, as you know, I limit myself to three edge tools for my Kuksa and Spoon carving.

Imagine my excitement when I watched a demonstration from Steve Woodley.

He, like me, uses an axe as a prime tool for his work.

But way up at the other end of the scale...

Here he is cleaning of bark from a selected timber length with a Swedish draw knife.

And toshing in the log dogs that will keep the log firmly attached to the horses.

Steve spends his time travelling the world teaching and demonstrating his skills, I bet some of my friends in the United States would love to hire him for demonstrations and classes.

Steve marks out a top line with a chalked line.

And then chops 'V' cuts along the log.

Here you can see him using a two lugged bearded broad axe.

A design that hails from the seventh century.

Most of Steve's historic axes are made by Gransfors .

Once he has finished chopping out with the bearded axe he swaps axes and starts in with a Swedish broad axe. 

From memory the axe he uses is double bevelled with a canted handle that allows plenty of room for his hands between the helve and the work.

It's hard work and I needed a sit down...

Well, that's two faces finished.

Steve finishes the faces with a axe from Transylvania.

This is one of his favourite axes, unfortunately it has a small crack appearing at the tight right angle of the beard.

I will give him Chris Grants contact details and see if they can get it sorted. 

As you can see, it's a big old broad side axe.

Job done...

Who needs a mill....

Or a plane, when you can have a Steve ?

Steve regularly travels abroad to pass on his skills at many organised country fairs and shows, why not give him a shout ?

Steve Woodley can be contacted via his web site at... Hand Crafted Timber

His work is included in a reconstructed Anglo-Saxon building at Weststow

Enjoy...

J.