Making the Jackie Collins Woman of the Year award for Jacqueline Gold, the boss of Ann Summers

Each year, for the last three years, I've been honoured to be asked to carve this award. It is presented annually by the cancer charity Penny Brohn UK to a woman who is particularly inspiring: not only because of their professional or charity work but also because they have spoken publicly about their fight with cancer.

The recipient in 2018 was Jacqueline Gold, who is the chief executive of Ann Summers. This company sell lingerie and other items to spice up people's love lives, from shops in town centres all over the UK. 

Each award is specially designed for the person who will receive it and this year's was no exception. The charity contacted Ms Gold's Personal Assistant, who told them what things she likes, then that information was relayed to me and informed the first design ideas. 

I used some Lawson Cypress timber (known as Port Orford cedar in the US) from Bristol, as the charity's headquarters are just up the road from the place where the tree grew.

I find that this wood is often easier to carve using power tools than hand tools. No matter how sharp the gouges or chisels, the timber will tear a bit whereas cutting discs and abrasives fitted to power tools give a good finish quickly.

The final design was a rabbit, which was inspired by one of Ann Summers' most famous products. I feel that that the sculpture echoes it in a subtle and fun way. The serene-looking bunny has certainly been a hit at the workshops around my studio and apparently among the staff at Penny Brohn UK. I hope that Jacquline Gold likes it too.

There is a box in the back of the rabbit, suitable for holding small items such as keys, change or batteries. The lid is held on using rare earth magnets and has a really satisfying 'thunk' noise when it closes!

Here's a photo of Jacqueline Gold receiving her award:

Photo credit: Andre Regini

Carving a kestrel and a nuthatch for 'Woodland Arts'

'Woodland Arts' was a small, two day exhibition held on a piece of woodland next to the Clifton Suspension Bridge in Bristol during October 2017. I was invited by the organisers to show some work in it. I like the opportunity to create work for exhibitions, as it allows ideas to be explored that may not have been suited to previous commissions.

I hadn't carved a bird sculpture for a long time, so decided to make a nuthatch. I'd thought of carving one before as I think that they are particularly elegant birds and also interesting, as they are the only British bird that regularly moves headfirst down tree trunks as well as up them. 

There were a lot of offcuts of European larch around my workshop, produced by other businesses there. This wood is durable outdoors and has beautiful ring markings, but is quite tricky to carve with hand tools. I find abrasive discs, burrs and wheels work more efficiently on it, usually mounted on angle grinders.

The action of the discs also gave the sculptures a smoother, more abstract feel that I like a lot. I did consider painting the carvings, but the smoothness seemed to suit a finishing oil better.

After carving in some simple detailing, I fitted a beak and eyes made from small offcuts of greenheart timber. This wood is a piece of Bristol's maritime history. The greenheart was given to me by furniture maker Jim Sharples and was originally part of a tree trunk fitted to the top of the nineteenth century North Junction lock gates. These gates formed the connection between Bristol's harbour and the Avon Gorge, from which ships headed out to sea. When the gates were replaced a few years ago, Jim was asked to make a bench to go next to the Mshed museum in Bristol and had some trimmings left over, which he kindly gave to me. The dark wood was perfect to depict a small bird's beady eyes.

After several coats of finishing oil, I mounted a picture hanger on the back of the sculpture, so that the piece could be hung with its beak pointing down - as a real nuthatch moves down a tree. These timbers are durable outdoors, so the sculpture could end up hung on a real tree. I particularly like the grain pattern that loops like contours around the head.

After making the nuthatch, I fancied making another bird. So I looked for another suitable bit of larch...

This piece was to become a falcon. Until I had started roughing out the block, cutting away chunks with a bandsaw, I wan't completely sure if it would be a merlin or a kestrel. 

Eventually I decided on a kestrel as, like the nuthatch, it lives in that area. The body was also shaped using angle grinders fitted with mini arbortech blades or abrasive discs. Again, I really liked the slightly abstracted form and the contour lines winding around the finished body, especially at the bottom of the belly.

As well as greenheart wood, this sculpture uses a piece of  pale-coloured hornbeam wood in the beak. It originally came from a tree that  grew in the grounds of Southmead hospital in Bristol, which had to be removed during building work. The kestrel looks like it has been to hospital itself in this photo, taken when the glue holding the eyes in was still drying.

I was very happy with this sculpture too and it got a lot of attention at the exhibition.

 

The show had a good mix of work, including a picture by Lord Bath. He owns Longleat house and was the patron of the show. I won't show an image of his picture here though, as this blog has people of all ages reading it! Thanks to Jasmine who curated the show and Topper, who organised it, for asking me to be part of Woodland Arts.

One-handed woodcarving - a few thoughts about tools and techniques that could help people with the use of one hand only

Recently, someone contacted me with a very interesting question. This person had suffered a stroke a year ago and was now confined to a wheelchair, having also lost the use of their left hand. They were previously right-handed. 

The question was simple: did I think that a person with the use of only one hand could carve?

I sent a reply and, after some thought, realised that it may also be of interest to others who are temporarily or permanently in a similar situation. Although I currently have the use of both hands, I have experienced periods when injury has brought such considerations to mind.

The answer that I emailed back is reproduced in this post, with some alterations, extra images and information:

Can someone with the use of only one hand carve? My answer is a very definite yes!

I'd say that the question might be: what would you like to carve and which tools and techniques will enable you to do it?

Some techniques could be more difficult (such as using a gouge and mallet) but many tools are traditionally used one-handed anyway. Carvers in many parts of the world (including Africa and the North-West Pacific Coast of the US and Canada) have been creating huge, stunning pieces such as totem poles for many centuries by using adzes swung with one hand to do much of the work. Two types of adze used by First Nations carvers in Canada are shown here, to the right and also above the stone tool.

Adzes require a bit of practise to wield accurately and can be quite hard work to carve with for long periods of time if you aren't used to using one. However, they are fundamental tools for carvers all over the world and were also a vital piece of kit for most carvers and other woodworkers in Europe for many centuries.

Reciprocating (aka power) carvers are available that can be used one-handed. They are a bit like an electric bread knife that a gouge or chisel blade fits into the end of, which then moves back and forth very quickly to enable easy cutting. 

Image from: http://www.woodworkersinstitute.com/wood-carving/kit-tools/power-tools/power-carvers/bosch-pse-180e/

I have one made by Bosch and I believe that Wecheer, Axminster and Proxxon also make them. They would be very useful for large and medium sized carvings. Blades made by Flexcut can be used with some of them by utilising adapters - some people find the range of Flexcut blades a bit more delicate and useful for carving with. If these tools are of interest to you, I'd really recommend buying an anti-vibration glove at the same time, as the vibrations when using these power carvers can be quite strong and could lead to 'white finger' nerve damage over time. 

For smaller scale work, I'd investigate rotary tools such as a Dremel or Foredom tools. They are like small drills that can be fitted with various shapes of cutter, including diamond ones for working on metal and stone. They can also be fitted with long, flexible shafts to enable more delicate handling of the cutters. 

As with any power carving tool, buy eye protection and ear defenders at the same time if you don't already have them. If using these tools, particularly with certain woods and stones, you'll also need to consider wearing a dust mask and using dust extraction (a Henry vacuum cleaner has been known to work well - maybe with some kind of mesh over the nozzle to stop small workpieces disappearing inside!)

Another range of tools worth looking at would be palm gouges and chisels. They have rounded handles that sit comfortably in the palm of one hand and aren't used with a mallet, so could be ideal. Very good ones are made by the Swiss company Pfeil. They aren't cheap, but they are usually excellent quality and are available in Britain.  

Some tools are also sold with a choice of either traditional handles or palm handles, such as the 'RayGonzales hook skew' made by Ashley Iles which is one of my go-to tools for many fine carving cuts.

Image from: http://www.ashleyiles.co.uk/ray_gonzalez_tool.html

One question that will need thinking about is how work pieces will be held. As long as the workpiece is securely held all kinds of tools can be used on it, even a simple pocket knife. To be honest, it's the same question that any carver faces regularly when working on fiddly or awkwardly-shaped pieces! 

I'd suggest having a range of clamps, vices, wooden blocks and simple home-made frames that can be used in different combinations to hold work. 

One-handed 'quick' clamps similar to this one would be useful. They can be used relatively easily with one hand, but can easily work loose with repeated vibration from carving work so might need regular retightening.

Image from: http://www.irwin.co.uk/tools/clamps/quick-grip-medium-duty-one-handed-bar-clamps

G-shaped cramps (a cramp works with a screw mechanism, a clamp doesn't) hold work more securely, but could perhaps be more fiddly to fit on when only using one hand. 

Image from: http://wsdt.wellingboroughschool.org/resources/dtoncd1/school/cramps.html

An interesting, simple method for holding sticks to be whittled is shown on this blog. What you need will depend entirely on what you're making, so perhaps start trying to make things with an experimental and adaptable mindset and evolve methods to hold your work as you go along. 

One place not to hold work is on your lap - slipping with the blade and hitting one of the arteries running inside your thigh wouldn't be a great way to finish your carving! 

Another place to get further info might be through the local occupational therapy unit. They may well have ideas for techniques and devices that could be adapted or repurposed to enable easier carving.

I hope that this information is useful to you and encourages you to give carving a go if you are considering trying it and have the use of one hand only. 

If you have experienced carving one-handed and would like to comment or add to what has been written here, please do. I'd be very interested to hear other thoughts and ideas. 

If you do decide to have a go at carving and make something that you feel happy to share, please feel free to send me an image. I'd love to see what you create! 

Carving the 'Jackie Collins Inspirational Woman of the Year' award 2017

Last year, I was commissioned to make this award for the Penny Brohn UK cancer charity. It was a real pleasure to be asked to do the same this year.

The award was to be presented to Jo Malone MBE, who is well-known for creating perfumes and fragrances. I used timber from a cedar tree that was cut down in the grounds of the charity's offices in Bristol, which was an off-cut left over after making the 2016 award.

The award was designed to be the kind of thing that Jo would like to have. Apparently she is a very practical person, so it made sense to produce an award that would have a practical use. A bowl seemed ideal, as it can be both beautiful and useful.

The shape was inspired by the leaf of a pomelo, which is the key scent note in Jo's new line of 'Jo Loves' fragrances. These leaves are quite distinctive, having secondary leaflets coming off the petiole (the stem of the leaf).

Image from: http://ucjeps.berkeley.edu/moorea/dicots2.html

It seemed appropriate to use cedar wood to make the bowl for a person who works with scents, as the wood has such a distinctive smell of its own.

Most of the shaping was done with power tools, for speed and also because I find that power tools often give a better result when working with softwoods such as cedar.

The words carved onto the bowl - 'Passion, Resilience and Creativity' - were chosen by someone who works closely with Jo, as they were felt to be particularly important to her.

The bowl was finished with a good-quality finishing oil and was presented to Jo at the end of May 2017. Here's a photo, supplied by Penny Brohn UK and used with their permission:

A drum stool with a difference! Making carved wooden drums as seats

The story of this project begins last summer...

I had been invited to make some carvings for Gwalia farm near Machynlleth in North Wales, in return for a stay there at their stunning 'Cabin by the Lake'. This beautiful spot has a private lake, canoe and wood-fired hot tub.

Luckily, an oak tree on the farm had just dropped a large branch and so there was plenty of timber to carve!

The cabin was missing some nice seating around the fire, so by the end of the week I'd carved an owl stool...

As well as a stool with a carving of a Natterer's bat (as a few of them were flying around the cabin at dusk).The second stool also had slits cut into it, to make bars which made a note when struck. They are a bit similar to a West African 'krin' drum:

I really liked the drum idea and showed a few people when back in Bristol. Jono at Touchwood Play realised that the drum stools would work very well in a new project that they were working on. After making a couple more examples to refine the idea, I was commissioned to make six of the stools.

First there was a trip out to Backwell, near Bristol, to look at the oak timber available. It had to be of a certain diameter to make a good stool. Once the logs were back at my workshop, the hard work began!

Firstly, the logs were cut to size, the bark removed using a mallet and chisel and then the stools were smoothed to remove tool marks. I used a chainsaw to cut the bars into the logs.

The bars then needed to be sanded and cleaned up, which took a lot of time. Once that had been done, I carved two rows of ridges onto each stool, to make an effect a little bit similar to an instrument called a 'guiro'.

The drums still needed sticks to play them with. These were turned from locally-grown hornbeam timber. Hornbeam is a very tough wood, traditionally used to make butcher's chopping blocks and the teeth for large cogs, such as in mill workings. It was perfect for this job.

The sticks were chained onto the drums using good-quality stainless steel chain (as stainless steel doesn't react with and discolour oak, unlike normal iron or steel). There was also a hole drilled into each drum to hold the sticks when not in use. The chain is attached halfway along the stick to avoid it making a dangerous looping foot snare when stored in its holder.

The drums just needed a few coats of finishing oil and they were done. Using a tuning app on a phone, we also managed to find out what notes the different bars made. There was a surprising range! Quite a few were A or B, but one played three C notes with an octave between each. Others played Gs and Fs. You can hear them on this Youtube video:

I'd like to refine the tuning methods on future drums, although the tuning on these drums will probably change a bit over time anyway, as the wood dries.  

I did notice that small cracks in the oak, formed during seasoning, didn't seem to affect the sound much at all.

The drums will eventually be mounted in a circle onto a wooden platform in a play tower. They will be fixed down using large screws, so that they can't fall over or be thrown and injure anyone. To allow them to resonate and make a good sound, there will be rubber feet under each one. I've placed wooden sticks under them in these photos to allow a good resonance when playing them in the workshop.

A very busy day teaching woodcarving in Bristol!

It's always interesting to see what different students want from tutored woodcarving sessions. Some people like to be shown a few particular techniques and then to get on with practising them with some guidance if needed, whereas others want to try as many different things as possible in the day.

Both are fun be a part of, of course. My last session of tuition was definitely the latter and it was the first taught session in my lovely new workshop. I really enjoyed using some tools again that I don't use that frequently and discussing how to use them too.

One great thing about teaching one-to-one is that learners can use some of the power tools that I'd sometimes be wary of bringing out with a group. When things go wrong with power tools they can go wrong very quickly, so I like to be able to keep a close eye on things. 

I wouldn't usually teach people to use certain tools such as chainsaws or Arbortechs in carving as they are potentially so dangerous to inexperienced users (or experienced ones!). Tools such as the scroll saw are a lot less aggressive and so I'm happy to use that occasionally. 

Katya wanted to make some wooden frames for embroidered pieces that she had produced.  First of all, I showed her how to use a panel saw (below) and a coping saw (first photo) properly. Cutting accurately by hand with a saw is a skill that anyone using wood should know. Electric saws are great, but occasionally only a hand saw can be used (when there's no electricity available, for example).

Katya was very happy with the piece that she produced using the scroll saw:

We also tried using a Dremel hand drill, an electric powered wood lathe and an electric drill.
It was the first time that Katya had used any of them but I think that by the end of the session, the scroll saw was still the favourite! She also kindly let me use her photos in this blog post.

Brading, a historic town in the Isle of Wight. Carvings done with power tools. Punishment, torture and the secret of hewing timbers.

This town is on the eastern side of the island and is proud of its long history. It has a few surprising things still to be seen...

Much of the town was involved in smuggling at some point and with this background of illegal activities, it seems appropriate that the whipping post and stocks have been preserved in the Old Town Hall next to the twelfth- century church. The stocks are thought to date to the seventeenth or eighteenth century but there are records of stocks being used here in 1555 and the whipping post was last used in 1833. Why have the stocks got five holes? No one really knows, but one suggestion is that they were specially made to accommodate a regular offender who only had one leg!

At the other end of the street is a metal ring set into the ground. It is a bull ring, to which bulls were tied before being attacked by dogs and then slaughtered. This revolting 'sport' was justified by the belief that this made the meat better. It was thankfully stopped here in 1820.

Next to the ring is a sculpture of a bull which was made by Paul Sivell, a carver based on the island who specialises in using power tools:

He has also carved another sculpture to be seen by the car park next to the church.

Next to the old Town hall and the church is a very interesting building: the Rectory mansion, possibly the oldest building on the island. It lies on Roman foundations but was built in 1228 and some think that timbers from a previous Anglo-Saxon building on the spot were reused in its structure.

The building has a rather fine ship's figurehead on its corner, but I haven't been able to find out the story behind it.

Seeing some of the timbers that have been used in the Rectory house reminded me of chatting to my friend Nigel recently about timbers that he had found whilst renovating a seventeenth century building in Bristol.

(see here: http://carvingswithstories.blogspot.co.uk/2012/12/recycling-in-17th-century-bristol.html)

Nigel said that when restoring an original doorway in the building, he noticed that only the sides that were facing outwards (and were therefore on show) were cut square. The other faces were left waney edged, as they had come from the tree but with the bark removed. They were hidden, facing into the wall.

Which makes a lot of sense. Hewing timber or sawing by hand to make it square are both long, hard and skilled processes, so why do it on the faces of timbers that don't need it? If there are no joints that require a flat surface to work, then don't bother cutting one. Some of the timbers in the Rectory mansion might also show evidence of this way of thinking.

As does this timber from Baddesley Clinton in Warwickshire:

Not lazy, just smart thinking!