The Village Carpenter

I'm not sure I have any typical days. They all seem to be different, I suppose typical in the fact I'm working wood always, doing the odd jobs around this place that keep it running, and running about after my family and feeding them. 

Tuesday was a good example of this and I had to reflect how I've become that image of a village carpenter, the little jobs coming to me and slotting into my schedule somehow. Friends popping by with a chair to fix or footstool to help make. 

One job was for a plinth, to commemorate a lady who had lived for 94 years. I planed some oak and carved a simple inscription on to it (some dates blanked out to keep it a little private), not a huge job, but one that takes time to set up and complete. 

As the rain hammered against my workshop, I listened to a book as I carved and thought about this lady I didn't know. I wondered if she'd been part of her community like me. An hour before I'd been in the post office, queuing to post some last minute Christmas orders to customers. In there I'd known four people, and met two more I knew as I left, This village has pulled my roots down and grounded me here. 

That night we had tea at a friends (after I'd taken my eldest daughter to a hospital appointment), I work for them a few times a month, but there isn't many weeks in the year where we don't eat with these friends, friends so close they become like family. With childcare shared and swapped, where the school doesn't even question one of us picking up the other's child. Journeys to home filled with laugher and silly jokes shared over a long time. 

The next day I had a farmer bring me some oak for something he wanted making. Brought in a stock box smelling strongly of sheep, the layers of dust on the wood so deep I'd never question the fact he says the oak has been milled 10 years and left drying in his barn. My brother has even done some tree work for him in the past, I could be working on the same tree as him, separated by a decade or more.

But the wood is little good, the using of the oak has cost me more in time. ripping out all the worm and splits. But I wonder if it's having the wood from his land actually used that's more important than the money saving of using it. I hope it is with the effort going into it, as I brush the brown dust from my jacket and hope I have enough from it to finish it before Christmas for him. 

I'm never quite sure what I expected my life to be when I decided I wanted to be a carpenter, but this is more. Its not easy, I work hard and long hours and I could make far more money just being a "normal" carpenter on site somewhere, But this is more. 

Adjustable Birch Ply Shelving Units

The start of this week has been taken up with this little commission of making a couple of shelving units. The house is quite modern so we took the approach of using birch ply with the bare edge showing. 

They wanted them adjustable so a series of 5mm holes for shelf pins was drilled every 32mm.

It's made for a very minimalist set of shelves that work well in this modern house. Or at least I think it does...

Last Push For Christmas

 So I'm in the last push for Christmas. The weekend was spent solely in the workshop, making up as much stock as I could. Assembling baskets that I made the parts for earlier in the week and then making a batch of my gooseberry scoops. 

The gooseberry scoops have sold well this winter, I guess they make a good unusual present to buy a gardener, I'm certainly glad to have their sales, and I hope it brings a few smiles on Christmas morning.

What's the most unusual gift you've been given? One where it took you a while to work out what it was? 

Carved Birdfeeder - Crocodiles Head!

 So a bit of a random project - this is another one for Woodcarving magazine - a carved birdfeeder. It's pretty obvious what my inspiration was for this one, the little birds that go and clean the teeth of crocodiles. 

It made for a really fun project, one I really enjoyed making. I got my carving disc out for the angle grinder - I had really forgotten how good that thing is! 

Cutting My Thumb

 You know it’s bad when it doesn’t bleed or hurt straight away. And as I looked down at this one it did neither, it just gaped at me. I swore. I moved it back and forward, I couldn’t see a tendon, but I knew it must have been close because it was so deep into the pad of my thumb. I grabbed the first aid kit I keep by the door of the workshop and made my way over to the house where I knew I wouldn’t get blood on the wood for a customer.

By the time I’d got to the house I couldn’t drink the blood down fast enough as I sucked on my thumb. I laid out the first aid kit on the table and set to cutting up a dressing to fit the end of my digit. I ran my damaged hand under the tap, trying to make sure it was clean.

Then using a combination of my teeth and my left hand I managed to get a dressing on. Tight. I then had to decide if I was going to go and wait at A&E or not.

Having an accident when you work alone is always going to be more dangerous. I’m lucky in the fact I have some good neighbours and a friend I work with sometimes who lives close by, but something like this really does make you think.

You kick yourself at first. Something so simple and it could have been so much worse. And it could have been avoided. 

It reminded me of when I was traveling at 19, I was in a bar in a tiny little town called Rapid City in Canada and got talking to some of the locals and the one asked what I did. I proudly told them I was a carpenter’s apprentice. He asked to see my hands, I held them up to him “try and keep them like that” he said, he tipped his hat to me and raised his glass in a toast, it was only then that I noticed the end of his thumb was shorter than the other.

And I’d nearly joined that club. I’d been doing a little carving commission, and was cutting up some little pieces of sycamore to make fridge magnets. Trying to save time, I had just left my usual blade in the bandsaw and was just making lots of small cuts to make the corners. As I was doing it, I knew it wasn’t cutting quite right, but then I thought I’d change the blade when I had time, and adjust the guides, this job was a bit tight as it was.

I pushed too hard and the wood split, my thumb followed and went into the blade. I drew my hand back quickly, but I knew it was bad. But I also knew it could have been worse. Like that old guy in the Canadian bar 20 years ago, I could have easily lost the end of my thumb that day, and really, I’m quite attached to my thumb.

A lot of workshop accidents aren’t really freak accidents, often they’re something that could be foreseen, or a shortcut taken so often it become normal, maintenance that should of happened but you were too busy making a living. This was no exception to that rule, the bandsaw is often seen as one of the safer bench tools, but it still bites when you’re not treating it right.

Luckily, I healed like Wolverine, the flesh knitting back together in days, the skin only taking a few weeks to heal completely, but another scar added to my already abused hands, but then I guess they are hands that tell a story of 20 plus years working with wood.

I’d like it if I could stop any more chapters being read through my hands though. So, I now try to sort anything I see when I see it, even if it will break the flow of work, if it means a safer environment for me to work alone in. Never put off until tomorrow what you can do today.