So a chance arose to attend a Green Woodworking Course in Purbeck. So I invited my Dad along and patiently awaited the date to roll around. Due to the long drive down from Scotland I drove down 2 days earlier and stopped in a Britstop on the first night near Gloucester then in the morning jumped back onto the M5 and stopped at the new Gloucester services for a shower and freshen up before heading down to Exeter to pick my Dad up for the train station.
With my Dad picked up we made it half way to Purbeck and found a lovely Britstop pub to stop the night at to leave only a short journey in the morning. Waking the next day we were greeted with some nice weather although a bit breezy but we were to be in the woods so it would not affect us.
We followed the directions to Corfe castle and turned left under the viaduct and followed the road until we saw the sign for the Green Wood Workshop. It was a lovely walk up the track into the woods to see the setup that we would be spending the day in.
Once there and introductions made we set right off into a demo from Toby into what we would be doing that day. To start we had an introduction into the type of wood that would be best to work with and how to split the wood into a workable size. Then a Froe was to be used to split the wood this tool seemed to make it look like the wood was just falling apart.
The Side Axe was the next tool this was to quickly take material from the wood and start getting a more rounded profile ready for the next step.
We then move onto a Shave Horse and using a Draw Knife to take the would into an almost completely round profile this stage is very rewarding as it is easy to remove material and you can really see the progress you are making.
The last step was taking your material to the pole lathe which you operated by foot, having done wood turning on a lathe with hard woods this was a massive shock in how easy it was to take material off and how much control you could have.
All in all we had a great day and I produced myself a little mallet for using with chisels, my dad made a garden dibber and a rolling pin. We also asked for an insight into making wooden furniture and how best to make the joints so a lot of good information was taken from this course which we can now go and use on wood that would have otherwise been thrown away or burnt. Also as a little bonus we had a visitor at lunch time.
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