Stoke Park 'Woodland Celebration' and totem pole carving

Last Sunday, I ran workshops in Stoke Park, Bristol carving pendants. This is the same park where we built fire pits and benches last month (see previous posts). Although it was the first day out for my new gazebo, the rain held off and everyone seemed to really enjoy making their pendants.

Apart from this, I'm still working hard on the totem pole commission. The pole has moved into the woodshed, so that I can work on it when it's raining as well.

I have also made a clay model for the portrait that is to go at the top of the pole. It's difficult to carve someone that you've never met, using only printouts of a few reference photos, but hopefully having the clay maquette will help me to get a reasonable likeness. Of course, the final face will have ears and a normal amount of hair - this model was important to understand how the parts of the face alone relate to each other.

Stoke Park benches finished- the first piece of public furniture for Lockleaze's new(ish) park

Last week, the project to build benches at Stoke Park was completed. Thanks to the hard work of the local young people who volunteered, the area looks great and will hopefully be enjoyed by local park users for a long time.

Steve also brought in a very interesting find from a river in nearby Snuff Mills to show me - a horse's tooth from the last Ice Age. These horses are now extinct. You can find out more about it here: Horse tooth

More work on the benches in Stoke Park, Lockleaze

We've managed to get quite a bit more work done in Stoke Park, despite our work last week getting rained out completely!

This was our fire pit, until it became a swimming pool within about 15 minutes in a heavy shower. Below, Steve tries  to keep a cooking fire going by sheer willpower as the puddle quickly grows around it.

However, the weather was much better this week and we managed to get much more done, including making a brick-lined fire pit (with a drainage channel!), installing two more benches with their own smaller fire pit and making a little removable workstation to sit on an elm tree stump nearby. Next week, we'll make a table in the woods and then that's it! All ready for Steve to use for outdoors workshops and for local people to use for evening get-togethers round the fire.

This is the ring of benches with the fire pit and drainage installed.

The detachable workstation on the tree stump

 And, after working, everyone enjoys some toasted marshmallows over a fire in the new fire pit. The second pit is in front, with a bench that we made from a yew log.

Benches at Stoke Park, Lockleaze

Last week, a group of young people worked with Steve England, Anna and I to install some larch benches at Stoke Park in Lockleaze, Bristol.

First, we cleaned off the bark using drawknives and scrapers.

I had previously cut the trunks in half with a chainsaw, so the participants all used drawknives, planes and chisels to smooth the surfaces. We then cut in mortices so that the roundwood legs would fit into the seats nicely. The legs were fixed on with coach screws, then the benches were installed (after a lot of hard work by everyone digging holes!). Finally, the benches were joined with coach screws and the recesses that the screws were in were capped with larch plugs.

As well as pitching in with the hard work on the benches, Steve led a few bushcraft walks when everyone needed a break and Anna sorted some great food out on the campfire. The photo above shows the smoke drifting through the woods.

The hexagonally-shaped benches will have a fire pit put into the centre this week and will be used for outdoors workshops by Steve, as well as being there for local people to enjoy when they are in the woods. Having a purpose-built  fire pit will hopefully also protect the roots of nearby trees (such as a beautiful old yew tree) from damage by random fires all about the site.
The larch used was very kindly donated to the project by our friends at Touchwood Enterprises in Bristol. You can have a look at their website by clicking on the link here.