Adventures in Analogue or How to eat pre-Stoneage.
In my former life, I was a very hands-on kind of professional. Being a craftsman (there is some debate about whether Landscaping/Horticulture is a craft, a trade or something else entirely, being that it is more akin to agriculture and farming but I choose to consider it a craft), I was well used to working with my hands, mostly in the soil or at the controls of some implement to variously control or destroy vegetation, while deafening and choking myself, or generally putting myself at unnecessary risk of disfigurement. Having moved on from that life and onto a much more digital, and some might say civilized existence (I wouldn't, but some might) it now seems necessary to seek out new ways to create with my hands. I gave up Landscaping for good reason and so heading out into the garden to go create doesn't appeal. Besides our garden is long since landscaped and needs relatively little maintenance.
While studying it became an imperative to find something outside of another screen to take my mind off things and family contacts lead me to a new outlet. Bevel Woodworking (www.bevelwoodworkingschool.com) school is based just outside of Fethard-on-Sea on the Hook Peninsula in County Wexford. Run by Tommy Kelly, a Master Craftsman and Cabinetmaker of immense skill, he has increasingly turned his business from one making bespoke and high-end furniture to a woodworking school. Tommy runs a number of different courses through the school, usually at weekends and all of them excellent. I have done four by now, if they were bad I wouldn't have been back!
So began my Adventure in Analogue. Woodcarving and woodworking are some of the hardest things I have done in recent years but there are few better ways to spend a day or weekend than working with your hands, on a large piece of timber, shaping it into something new. So far I have created two Wood Spirits (haggard old bearded faces carved from a whole log), built an Adirondack chair (a two-day course that leaves you with a rather large piece of furniture at the end), and carved a spoon from a block of wood.
The spoon takes a day to complete under Tommy's constant supervision and is pretty tricky. I came to do the spoon after having done two Wood Spirits, if it wasn't for that I don't think I would have had the control of the chisels or the understanding of how the wood "works" to not simply snap the bowl off the handle, or carve straight through it, turning my lovely spoon into a spork! You get a feel for the wood while doing the larger carving that you might not get starting out with the spoon. You learn a lot about the grain and working with the wood rather than against it. If your piece of wood has grain going in the opposite direction to what you need you'd better give up and do what it says, or you won't have a spoon for very long.
- You start with a block as thick as the end of the handle you can see in the image above. Onto this, you use a template to mark out the shape of the spoon in pencil.
- You then take a coping saw and, trying to stick to your lines, you cut away the sides around the bowl and down the handle.
- You then use a spokeshave to pear back the wood on the top of the bowl, tapering it back as you reach about two-thirds of the way down the handle.
- You then flip it over and do the same from the back of the bowl, pretty much as far down as you might like to achieve the shape you are after.
- You can then start shaving the underside of the bowl, working towards getting your nice curved shape, flipping it over again to work the inner side of the bowl using carving chisels.
- Rinse and repeat until you have your shape essentially.
In bullet points it sounds so quick and easy, it really isn't. It is by no means impossible, and Tommy is a great teacher, but you are doing very close up work, it has to be slow and careful, you have to think three moves ahead to see where you need to pear next, where needs to have some more removed and what do you need to keep to achieve the shape in your head.
The class started at around 9 on a Saturday morning and we were done by around 4. With a break or two and an hour or so for lunch. It is a very satisfying thing to do. While you are working you don't think about anything else. You can't really afford to because lack of concentration could mean a slip which could damage your work at the very least, and take a nice piece out of you at the very worst (the tools are viciously sharp but you trying working with blunt tools and see how much fun you have!). There is probably some kind of lesson in Mindfulness to be had from such intense concentration on one thing and one moment, and making sure your movements and actions are all in sync and under control.
Here are the aforementioned Wood Spirits.
It's hard to say if the Wood Spirits or the spoon were harder to do. They were very different experiences and there wasn't any time pressure on getting the spoon finished. A day's course for the spoon is more than enough time but the Wood Spirit is a lot more, and far heavier work. You start with a sawn log, bark and all. The log is cut down the back almost halfway in, as can be seen in the photo above. This is to ensure that, as it dries out, it doesn't crack into pieces. There is also a wooden block screwed to the back to allow you to clamp it to the workbench.
You start with shaving the bark off with a draw knife, then marking out your basic facial layout in pencil on the bare wood. You then work out your brow line and beard and work from there on carving out the eyes and nose and working on the other features. It is far harder to imagine the final product as you are working on the Spirit in comparison to the spoon. You have far more room to try things and invent a new face or add features. Consequently, though you also have a lot more to think about. You have to be able to think about the depth of your carving, how much you need to take to form the features. If you want a prominent nose, or simply to try and carve a more realistic, human nose, you need to take every other feature that much deeper to give you the material to work with. And none of this is easy, the wood, while reasonably dry, is hard and it takes a lot of effort to carve. (Tommy has since changed the wood he is using for the carving classes. At the time we used chestnut, I think he is now using Lime wood, a softer, soapier wood that is easier to carve and leaves a nicer finish, our OG carving was hardcore!)
It's heavy and amazingly tiring work, but the satisfaction at the end of the day is immense. I would love to do it again and step up what I've done, add more detail and try to do a better nose......noses are obviously an issue with me. I haven't been happy with any of the noses of my Spirits, they all look like beat up rugby players circa 1970, with flattened bridges and splayed tips. I'd also like to try for better eyes, with softer wood I think I might even manage an eyeball!
If you like rapid prototyping this isn't it, but if iterative design is your thing then I have a feeling I will be iterating on this thing for years until I am happy with it! I'd highly recommend anyone who fancies a break from screens and thinking too much, to try this out. Tommy is great, it's just 2 easy hours drive from Dublin, mostly on the M11, and it is incredibly rewarding.