One final trip to Dorset. A last few finishing touches. There's a fair bit of Devon oak gone into restoring this screen. Then there's the internal windowsills. The ledge doors with rosehead nails. New treads for the stairs. And various other bits and pieces. The whole house is much more in keeping now for a grade 2* 16th century building. Just what it deserves. A pleasure to work on. More of the same please ..read more

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  Happy days ..read more

 Some people call it Devon, some call it Exeter, whatever......it's my favourite carving style. For me, it goes from 1480-ish through to 1700-ish. Tudors and Stuarts from Henry and Henry, through to William and Mary. She died of smallpox in 1694, he in 1702, after a fall from his horse. For all the harm they caused and all the good they failed to do, a lot of the carving in Devon's churches survived. 550 years, 22 generations and here am I trying to connect with those carvers of Devon, by carving what they carved. It's a lot of hard graft, for which they may have been paid very little ..read more

 Just getting down to the ground on this one took forever. Then the fun carving started ..read more

  The original of this is at the other end of Devon from where I live. I first saw the carving on someone else's photograph, and set about carving it from that. After carving the main parts of it, I realised I could not see the details on their photo. So there was nothing for it, but to make the pilgrimage. In fact, I went twice; the first time the place was locked! This one (from the same place) is a little shallower than the original, but the original of the top carving is much deeper at 19mm 3/4" and much bigger. I thought I was struggling to make the different layers look 3D; now I ..read more

First one-to-one student today. Julian came on a long way, learning to carve a flower and much else. The sun rises late here, in the valley, and it was a chilly night, but I soon had the workshop toasty with the woodburner. Mr. Crow sits waiting for the first rays to come over the hill.   Burner on. Focusing on carving today, so we'll need it. Julian's pleased with his work. And so am I. Happy carving Julian ..read more

It's been a year of heavy oak work, some lighter oak work and some oak carving. Now is time for some bread and butter work; a run of sash window repair. Shhhh, don't tell anyone I can fix sash windows! This poor old thing has seen some action; opening out from above a butterwalk, looking down Totnes Fore St. past the market square. It's the top sash, with the bottom/meeting rail to the right. The meeting rail, unsurprisingly being only 1" thick, is rotten. It's been repaired before and definitely needs replacing. The pegs that held it to the stiles, however, are as good as they were 150+ year ..read more

 ....and dried up all the rain. So Jon, the riven oak joiner, got out his froe again.... I've mainly been hunkering inside while the storms raged, so hats off to all the brave souls who came to my Open Workshop. The gazebo survived; even though it's screwed down to the concrete; it still nearly went into kite mode in the gales the other day. So, good to get out in the sunshine and do some actual riving. Some rail and stile stock for the next cupboard, and some small panel stuff for beginner's carving courses running soon.  Cleaving off the sap. Still, that hunkering down inside ..read more

It's been an eventful week. Lots of visitors and some special ones from Estonia. Meelis Kihulane is a heritage woodworker from Estonia specialising in bentwood items. He has been in England this week, seeking out other woodfolk who are trying to keep traditional handcrafts alive. He and his friends did me the honour of visiting on Tuesday, which was a pleasure. We discussed many things, and he invited me to come to Estonia. I believe he played a part in the re-publishing of: Of course, I asked him to sign my copy.   Ever since reading the book, I have been intrigued with all the tradit ..read more