Some sticks and carving.

Hi, thought it was time to update, hadn't realised it had been so long since I had posted. Well I have done some new sticks,two using using offcuts of Walnut, and they turned out pretty good. the one on the left is a full turned crook made with Walnut and a Hazel shaft, the one on the right is actually a heavy duty Hiking pole, the head is antler and Buffalo horn with a silver collar, again Hazel was used for the shaft and I put an Alpine ferrule on this one.










This one is a walking stick again made with an offcut of Walnut with a particularly nice grain.







I then decided to do some carving as I bought a nice set of Ashley Isles small carving chisels at Yandles Autumn show.
and I was keen to try them out, they were in fact very good and extremely sharp, and although I sharpen and hone all my own chisels, I was amazed to see that if you are not able to sharpen your own chisels then Ashley Isles will do it for you, you only have to pay postage!

I wanted to make something bold and modern so I made this Tealight holder,( yes I know it is big for one tealight but that was the idea).











The rope is threaded through twice and appears to be endless, the entire piece was then varnished twice with exterior grade varnish, the brass plate on the front has been peened to enhance it, then has a fine laquer over. So it could go outside.

Resin castings.

Aluminium (silver) Moon

Bronze Sun

Thought I would do some resin castings (used to be called cold cast bronzes). I haven't done any for ages so I had to go and get some supplies, such as Resin,metal powders,silicon for moulding etc. These I found have not gone up in price too much since I last made some bronzes some 20 years ago!

Brass Star

Bronze Green Man

Brass Green Man

I already had a couple of moulds that I made back then and I had a nice little wood carving of a Green Man, so I took a mould from the green man and then set about making the bronzes, well I say bronzes but I made some from brass and one from aluminium. They turned out well though I also had a couple of failures due to not measuring my catylyst properly!and boy do they get hot when you put too much cat in, they also bend out of shape because they go off too fast. The Sun,Moon and Star I made out of Plastillin (which is like plasticine that we all used as kids but it doesn,t dry out so quick and gives a smoother finish), then took the silicon moulds. The Greem man I moulded directly from the woodcarving.I have backed them with chamois glove leather (I buy offcuts from Dents the Glovemakers) and put brass hangers on the back, will hopefully sell them at my local craft shop. The best thing is that once you have taken a good quality silicon mould, if they sell you can produce more!

More of my older stuff, cos it's raining!

Pottery mask

Pottery mask front view

Another mask

these masks or helmets were
produced in stoneware, a couple of years ago. I got the idea from a magazine picture of an ancient antiquity that had been unearthed, it was flattened, but I thought I would make something that looked like what I thought the original would have looked like. They are about life sized and probably as heavy as a bronze one would have been!

Side view

Older work

well, whilst I was tidying up my workshop and studio, I came across some of my older work and thought that I would put it on the blog. It is funny how you forget some of the things you have produced even though you see them everyday!
 Some of the pottery pieces are created from extrusions,which I made the templates for and then just extruded the clay and created something from the resulting shapes.
 The millenium Green Man took ages because of all the life size acorns I had to produce to go around the outside! The two portraits are painted and Gilded on glass, Augusta also has the glass Frosted using an old Victorian method using bone glue to physically tear the glass off certain areas, doing it is a bit scary!
Then there are a couple of small pottery pieces and a couple of walking sticks, which I make quite a lot of, mostly with antler handles or a mixture of antler and buffalo horn/rams horn.

Millenium Green Man

Extrusion

Extrusion

Extrusions

Extrusions

Augusta, painted and Gilded Glass

Girl, Painted and Gilded Glass

Redwood clock

Joined Hearts

Walking Sticks

Black Forest Clock

Managed to set the blog up!

I am quite pleased that I have managed to set the blog up and it seems to work, well had a bit of help from my offspring! they have to be good for something.
I thought i would post a couple of pics of some of my recent work, as I have just come back from a lovely (bit wet) fortnight in Cornwall.

I have been doing some wood turning lately and also making bespoke mirrors with yew frames, the bowl in the pic is made from zebrano which as you can see has a very beautiful grain and colouring. the mirror is one of the first I did and is quite large, I am doing some smaller ones at the moment so will put those up soon.

posts to follow!