I was about to write "sometimes", but "often", actually often, when lifting a big rock a under a pile of rotting wood, I find some nice people. One major sign that identifies them nice people is that they have no idea how to make themselves visible. It's not that they hide or that they fear the Big Scary World...
Wood and bricks seems very hard and sturdy. But very few things don't become fluid when you apply time. Well, time and gravity in this case. For convenience of use, lots of old houses have had a tie beam cut through, or a groud cill chopped to let a door in. In this case, it's one of those ground ties...
Winter's appropriate for crafts. But it either got to be big enough to have a proper scaffholding all around the worksite, or to be small enough to be able to sit in front of the fire. Chopping bloc, small axe, froe, auger and bits of wood. I fit in the second category at the moment and frankly, I've worked...
This village carpenter feeling comes from the book with the same name, written before 1937 by Walter Rose. He tells the story of his grandad's and dad's carpentry business, describes his childhood in the workshop with many people working around and at the clients. One of my big pleasures, is the interactions with the client. Especially the client...
And lots of other names. I'm doing thousands of them at the moment and my wrists hurt. They've been traditionally used all over the world for hundreds, probably thousands of years and since there's plenty of overgrown sweet chestnut coppices around here, some of us keep'em going.
Last week, Travis came to the woods for a two days hewing course. He trains at the Weald and Downlands Living Museum on the building conservation MSc. He obtained a grant from Heritage craft to develop new skills.
Here we are, it'll go in Chichester, with nice people, for a woodland camping (website). I've got a very naïve and intense satisfaction with that project. It feels like I can express something building that and it looks like it is relatively comprehensible. Thanks Tom, Sarah, Ivan.
One tricky thing I have been bad at dealing with, are the dovetails between the tie beams and the wall plates. The curves and bends on my timbers made the chalk lining-up very important, I should have centered the lines where the dovetails are. The difference in thickeness of the timber is also a slight problem for the esthetics....
Again, Wilderness Woods, down in East Sussex, has been a source of beautiful display of a functionning community. A week worth of work with furiously motivated volunteers. I've been paid with silliness and politically incorrect humour, and it was worth it.
I don't know where it'll end up. The goal is to build a waterproof cabin, entirely out of the wood of the forest next to my cottage, with handtools only.