Not carving but pole latheing

I have just had a fantastic day with the wonderful (Essex based) Robin Fawcett, in his beautiful woodland workspace. Robin is a man that has spent his life working with wood especially the pole lathe. In addition to being a great turner he is also a natural teacher.

So when the opportunity came to spend a day "bashing wood" with him I leapt at the chance.

I decided that I wanted to turn a bowl on the pole lathe, which Robin described later as

"This was fairly ambitious considering Mark hasn't done any turning yet and doesn't have a lathe."  

Robin is a master of the understatement!

The pole lathe is driven by pushing a footplate down with your leg and making the cut, the pole pulls the footplate up ready for the next push down, reversing the direction of the work. This means that the tool has to be pulled back on the return. 

Ie, push down, make cut, remove tool as the work spins backward, push down, replace tool and make another cut. This is a bit like rubbing your tummy and patting your head at the same time, luckily something that I can do.

The pleasure of using the pole lathe is the rythmic motion and sounds and the working closely with the wood using your own energy. That is when you get the hang of it, the novice will hear wood tearing noises and the chattering of the tool as it goes wrong. Robins patient instruction will see you through that though.

I think that we spent as much time laughing as turning

Amazingly after much axing to prepare the wood for the lathe and even

more turning, with interventions from Robin, I had made a birch wood bowl.

If anyone has an interest in working with green wood I can highly recommend Robins training courses.

http://treewright.co.uk/woodworking.php

Hand carved Cherry bowl

A kind local arborist felled a Cherry tree nearby and he dropped of a piece for me to carve. Cherry is a beautiful wood but can be frustrating to work because of its tendancy to split. This piece behaved well and allowed me to carve a bowl from it.

I started with an adze to remove a lot of wood and then I switched knives for the shaping, finished with sanding and then oiling.

A friend gave me a lump of willow so I thought I would use it to make a bowl.

Willow proved to be a strange wood to carve, water sprayed from it when it was hit with the axe and it scratches or dents when you just look at it.

The wood was also very light and felt weak so the bowl is a bit chunky :-)

I don't think that I will carve much willow but it was fun to sit in the woods and make the bowl :-)

The bowl is sixteen inches end to end.

Unupdate to the original post: The bowl is seasoning and the surface is getting tougher.