Tree Work On The Smallholding

I'm not sure this is how everyone spends their Sunday but I enjoyed it!

I managed to rope my poor old Brother into helping me yet again this weekend. I have a few trees on our smallholding that want some work doing to them. The first hadn't got its roots on our land but it was overhanging the footpath, it was blocking out a lot of light and was going to make access difficult when I get a tractor up here, so using my brothers special set of skills we managed to get the tree looking a little better.

I love watching him climb and he always makes it look easy, leaving the tree exactly how I wanted it.

The top gate is now a bit lighter and the views even better for Daves hard work.

The second bit of work I got him to do was to drop a poorly growing oak tree that had been strangled by ivy. It was under the canopy of a much grander oak so would never really do any good and i wanted it removed before I put my pig pen down in that corner!

Dave dropped it no problem and helped to dismantle it, now I've just got a lot of clearing up to do and firewood to cut in the evenings. I've planted 17 other trees this last week so I'm not feeling too guilty about getting rid of this one.

(Dave cut the tree high as it was full of wire - someone in the past had used it as a fence post) This lot should help keep us warm next winter (and no doubt I'll get pretty warm cutting and splitting it) and there's no doubt that the neigbours know I've moved in now!

Cheers for your help Bro

New Work Area

Today I had to plane some timber to the correct size for a little project I'm making.

In the old days that would involve going up the garden to my old workshop, cranking up the radio (and heater) and planning away. Now it involves fighting my way to the back of the container, pulling the planner to the front, rolling out an extension cable and doing all the work in the door way so I can see what I'm doing! I'm not complaining, but it does make me want to start to build my new workshop even sooner!Really glad all my machines are on rolling stands, with the smooth wooden floor of the container it makes them easy to drag to the front and then drag back again when I'm finished with them.

I'm also looking forward to building a chicken coop soon so I can get some chickens again - I've already got their first lot of bedding!

Wet room Part 1

I started my wet room job properly this week. Its surprising how much work there is in such a little room. First off I had to strip out the old toilet and shower then remove all the tiles and plasterboard.

Not only had the root damaged the bottom of the boards and broke through the grout, this then allowed the water to travel up the plasterboard making it very weak. The picture above shows how bad its gotten. All the waste got skipped off site giving me a (unlevel) blank canvas to start afresh.

I removed the roots then repointed the wall where it had done any damage. I then started the slow process of battening the walls out to take the plywood. Slow because I want it to be perfectly level to enable easier tiling and so it looks right, the battens before were just fixed straight to the out of level walls and tiles cut to suit which doesn't always look the best.

I did cheat and use plastic spacers which save loads of time (although it's sometimes easier to use folding wooden wedges if you've got the saw set up to make a batch). The plastic ones are useful though as you can increase or decrease the spacing by 1mm just by changing the packer rather than knocking wedges all over the place.

With the external walls insulated its ready to have ply fitted next week and then I can tank it out to make sure its waterproof before I lay a single tile. I've also got to make a new little window for the room so that should be a nice job for a sunny day next week.

Snow Stops Play

Well mine anyway! A list of jobs to be getting on with but its snowing quite heavily and making the place look like a postcard - but one I can't do any work in!

The container is a great place to store my tools but its not as inviting as my old workshop when the weathers bad outside, that said I'm starting to draw up plans for my new workshop/store and where it will go so pretty excited about that - it will be bigger than the last one.

Work this week was varied again and on Wednesday/Thursday I had to expose and inspect some footing on a job I've got on for the next few weeks. When I dug down I found the most beautiful example of masonry footings I've ever seen and the bricks didn't even have a blemish on them. The old boys who built the house I'm working on knew their stuff.

As well as this I've got to completely gut a wet room and then board it out, tank it and tile it. Looking forward to seeing the whole job from start to finish as its been a while since I've done any tiling and it can be quite an enjoyable job.

Loft Hatch and Door Hanging

Nice job today.

Changed a moulded door over to a 15 panel glazed door to start with.

Then added in a loft hatch in the garage as there was no access to the roof.

Fitted lining made on the job with stops and architrave - looked like it had been there from the start by the end. I did however notice that Wimpey Homes had only put 50mm of insulation above this customers utility room and being the nice soul I am I offered to fit the insulation while I was up there fitting some flooring at no extra charge if they got me the insulation.

A nice little job working for nice people - Good way to start the week!

Coppicing - A Bit Of Variety

Another week, another interesting job!
My brother booked me in a few weeks ago to give him a hand for 4 days coppicing along a stream for the same farmer who we did the coppicing for last year. The wood in the area has been untouched for some time and all the Hazel and alder are overstood and need coppicing back, as well as a few ash and birch.
My job mainly involves driving the tractor, operating the winch, hooking and unhooking the wood. This is as well as dragging brash - although my brothers log pick made moving timber easier (a lot less bending down). The weather today hasn't made moving stuff any easier (I think water proof trousers are something you should buy and never have to use!) and it looks worse for tomorrow.
Pretty psychical work but its good to have a change. As well as this it gives me a greater understanding (and without wanting to sound like an arse - respect) for the material I work with everyday of my life.
Mind you, when I normally work with timber I don't normally end up getting this dirty!

Hang That Door

A light week for work (for what I hope are obvious reasons) but I did go and finish a job I started last week, changing 6 doors over.

I removed some tired looking flush doors that had been filled one too many times and replaced them with some new 6 panel moulded doors supplied by the customer. I chipped away at the layers of paint on the hinges and had the old doors off in no time, but then the fun began.

The linings (frames) were all different shapes and nowhere near level or even straight. This made the job a much longer process as I basically had to scribe each door to fit each frame.

To make matters worse the doors supplied (naming no names - B&Q) must have been stacked on a pile of bananas as they were completely warped out of shape ("Oh yes we've had a lot come back" - they said). You might have to open the picture to see how bad.

I added an extra hinge to each door and made sure they were fixed firmly so hopefully they will pull back into shape (they were all working sweetly by the time I left). When I finished hanging them I chopped in all the locks and loose fitted the handles.

Then to make sure the doors wouldn't warp due to atmospheric change (heating) I gave each a coat of primer, helping the customer get that bit closer to finishing.

Off to hopefully finish the job on the hotel tomorrow (yes a Sunday!) as very few bookings mean good access to rooms.

My Greatest Creation

On Sunday at 7.30 my life changed forever. My daughter, little baby Evalyn, was born into this world weighing 6 1/2lb. Both mother and daughter are doing well although very tired
I feel such a proud Dad!

How to fit a Door Closer

Or more to the point, how to fit 40 door closers.

I think I've got it down to a fine art now. The tricky bit is removing the old perko door closer (door closers are fitted here due to building regulations and stopping the path of a fire - not sure if you guys have the same rules in the states) these are fitted in the back edge of the door, sprung loaded and can be nasty if your finger gets caught. I've been using a pair of needle nosed mole grips (you'll get them back dad I promise) to hold the chain while I take out the screws (many have had to be drilled out due to the last carpenter rounding off the heads). When I release the mole grips it snaps together and makes you wince at the thought of your finger being in there (or at the height they're fitted at something worse)!

Then I fit a new overhead door closer (the setting out measurements are forever in my head 68mm, 105mm, 16m, 46mm) pretty easy things to fit if you read the instructions and use the templates - practice makes you faster.

Later I've got to drop back and repair all the doors where the perkos were, but access in a hotel can be a problem and it does hold me up a bit when rooms aren't available. Still the chamber maids are a good laugh and not many carpentry jobs you can wear a t-shirt in January.

Sorry if this is a boring post!

Hospital Job

Don't worry I've not cut a finger off or anything.

"Hospital job" is a term we use in the building industry for a job we can drop on anytime and fill in between our other work. To have a hospital job is great as it gives a little bit of job security, even if its only for a few weeks, it means if a customer cancels at the last minute you've got another source of income for that day or if you finish a job early you've got something to keep you going.

I've got a great one for this winter - Renovating a horse box from a rough shell to holding three horse with living quarters in the front. The only thing I've ever done like this before was when I converted an ambulance into a camper van (then travelled all round Europe in it with my now wife- but that's another story) so this should be a good challenge. The other bonus is the truck is being stored in the larger of my dads workshops (heating in January and good company - I think I'm going to be spoilt!).

The shell is pretty rough (I'm not doing the metal work on the outside - my work is just the inside) and after looking at the kitchen and units in it (and smelling them) I decided to rip them out. The last "coach" builder made a couple of mistakes, like not tanking the living quarters off from the horses so every down hill trip resulted in more urine under the floor - not a great smell. Stripping the carpet off the walls revealed more flies than I've ever seen in one place, the wall was black in places with them.

Still the dirty work is done now. Last week I managed to get a new dividing wall up, insulated and fit the ply floor base, fit ply to the rear ramp and refit all the windows (its also been painted and body work patched up) so its looking better already.

Not working on it this week, fitting 39 overhead door closers in Birmingham, but no doubt I'll be back on it again soon (it's a job that will wait for me).

Happy New Year

And sorry about the lack of posts! We're now in our new house and currently have no Internet or TV, had a manic Christmas driving round seeing friends and family and only now will our life start to get back to normal - well until the baby turns up!


The move was quite rapid with lots of helpers, although I was told off by quite a few people that I shouldn't have made my wife move at 8 months pregnant, but everyone could see why as the new house is ideal for us to bring a family up in.

[Picture looking across two of our fields at our new house- a 1950's semi]

I've got my container all set up to house my tools, made a few minor alterations to the house and unpacked lots of boxes, changed the fuel tank, put furniture back together - it pretty much felt like home the first night there.

The house is a cosy little 1950's semi-detached with open fires and a nice layout, we've then got a good sized garden and 5 acres to the side and below. This is split into three fields, all to play with, divided up with some beautiful large oak trees, a few larch, ash and willow with some patchy Hawthorne hedging. I've already had my brother there altering a few trees to allow a tractor in the bottom field!

The next year is going to be interesting! A new baby(really exciting), hopefully lots of work coming up, a smallholding to plan and get going and a new veg garden to start growing.

I'll be posting all my self sufficiency type stuff on my other blog http://keepingmyroots.blogspot.com/ which will now involve more than growing veg and a few chickens. Hopefully we can now produce more of our own meat as well as plant an orchard with a big veg garden right on our doorstep. I'll be trying to preserve as much produce as possible and hopefully we're become less dependant on the "Big Machine".

This blog will still detail what I get up to with wood (as well as the work we've got to do on the big oaks (I hope you're reading this Dave)) and I'm going to push hard for interesting and varied work on a wide variety of projects.

Thank you all for following me over the last 12 months or so, having this blog and reading everyone else has made me so more passionate about what I do (if thats possible) and its made me want to learn much more. Thanks again.

This is going to be a good year.

Moving House

Well today we signed on the dotted line, so hopefully I wont jinks it by saying that we're moving house!

We've managed to buy a smallholding of five acres with the beautiful backdrop of the Malvern hills. This is something I've always dreamed of and maybe we're mad to do it but it means we're be able to live a life that's much more self reliant, growing more of our own meat and vegetables, have space for children (in the not so distant future) to run around in and the space for me to build a large workshop and develop my business.

Where we live now has been a great home to us but I've always craved more space as I was brought up on a farm. I've built a lovely workshop but its size enables me to have only one project on the go at a time and I have to lug my tools up and down the garden to the van as its at the far end of the garden.

[Picture of my current workshop]

The garden is also full to bursting with two greenhouses, 9 (now deceased) chickens in two pens and raised beds full of veg, as well as two allotment plots in a nearby village which was just too far away to "pop off" to.

The new house means I'll have a good base to build my carpentry business from as well as trying to give my future children something near the upbringing I had, involving hard work, fun and with lots of time spent together.

Above is a picture of my new "temporary workshop" (although it will loose the wheels at its new destination) in my fathers workshop after its green paint job, this is until I can build something a little bigger.

I've now got to work harder to pay the mortgage but its now for the thing I always dreamed of, with my wife who I want to spend the rest of my life with.

Feeling quite scared but very happy! Watch this space!

Dormer Window

I went back to the "Complicated Little Roof" today to fit the roof on the dormer window.
It was no easier than the rest of the roof as the drawings were next to useless and the customer wanted it different to how it was shown anyway. Once we'd worked out what overhang he wanted (it's different to the rest of the dormers on the house as it sticks out from the brickwork) I managed to get the rafters and ridge board up and then cut the long compound mitres on the jack rafters (which fitted first time - to my surprise!).
I've got a day left on this roof when the next window turns up, I just hope the weather is as dry as it was today (although maybe not as cold). The main downside today was I had to put my tools away in the dark!

Sharpen-up Sunday

There's something strangely therapeutic about sharpening up your tools on a Sunday night ready for the week ahead.
These are my hand tools that need sharpening, and they stay with me everyday of the week.

Off Centre Turning

Had my last wood turning lesson for whats going to be a while the other night. I'd been learning how to turn off centre on the new variable speed Axminster lathe that the guild house have bought. The AW1416VS lathe is great for this type of work as it turns at any speed you want, meaning when I was turning off centre I could turn the speed right up to just before it starts to shake! The turning was done with a special chuck of Chris's (my tutor) and although I was only turning with pine I learnt the basic principles even if what I produced didn't look that great! ( I didn't bother sanding to too higher grit as its only a test piece) The speed has to be kept low but still fast enough to produce a good finish, not easy for me as I like to turn everything at a fast speed!and when you adjust the chuck to bring it back on centre parting off is a little more tricky than it would be with a normal piece.

Anyone else tried off centre turning?

Closing The Gaps On Some Windows

Although I keep being let down with work at the moment what I do have is pretty varied!

Wednesday and Thursday this week I spent trying to close the gaps on some old windows. The windows need replacing really, and the customer understands that, but due to budget (as the house is listed and the windows would not be off the shelf) they decided just to have the gaps closed up a bit to try and save on heating and to make the house a bit more comfortable to live in.

First job was to take out some leaded glass from an old frame, break the frame apart, clean it up and re-glue it back together. I had to be really careful with the glass as its hundreds of years old, really thin and the lead holding it together was pretty weak. Then I had to linseed oil putty the glass back into the frame once it was back in position. My putty work will never win any awards as I don't do much of it, but it looks fine where it is and should last a bit longer now.

I then worked on closing the gaps on the four large windows on the front of the house. Not really a very fun job, sticking strips on and planing them down to fit. But it did mean I worked with hand tools for 2 days straight, mainly my three favorite planes (60 1/2, No.4, No.778)

The gaps are much smaller now and it should make the house less draughty, I even filled and then primed the repairs, ready for the windows to be painted.

A lovely old house to work on (the upstairs even had wide hewn oak floor boards).

Complicated Little Roof

I had my first time off ill from work in 6 years this week, but by Tuesday night I was ready to get back at it.
I started this little roof on the Wednesday morning and straight away I knew it wasn't going to be straight forward. There's 4 steels marked on the drawing to go in; to take the old roof and support the ridge beam as well as the end gable brickwork, there's also a dormer window and a large valley gutter one side with a parapet wall containing a concealed gutter on the other. The first thing was a bit of head scratching and deciding where to begin ( as the picture below with drawings, bevels, scale rule and calculator shows!)
We decided to get the "cranked" steel in first, then the steel that's supporting the old roof, involving stripping the tiles, removing the old dormer window and cutting the old rafters.
We then managed to get a couple of rafters up with a ridge board (scarf joint ready cut) ready for us to place the new ridge beam so the brick layer can build up to it.
The sun was setting fast as we finished off tonight, but next week should see us shoot ahead with it (although I can already see that the drawings are missing another steel as there isn't one to pick up the shorter section of the new roof, so i guess we're have to come up with a solution for approval!).
Only a small roof but hundreds of things to think about! People forget how much a carpenter has to remember!

Carving Chisels

I decided to have a bit of a tidy up in the workshop today (moping around as a fox killed all my chickens last night).

I brought a cheap Stanley toolbox the other day and decided that it would be good to keep all my carving chisels in one place. When I rounded them all up I was quite surprised by the number of them as this doesn't include my wood turning chisels or any of my normal everyday chisels that I use for work.
Some of them need quite a bit of work doing to them and I'd like to re handle quite a few of them but the ones in the tool rolls are all sharpened ready for action. None of them have cost me over a couple of quid but they have taken me quite a few years to accumulate (I've just remembered I've got another set of six tucked away that I wasn't happy with and not shown here).
55 here so far, ideally I'd like to have them in a big cabinet on the wall, but that will come when I get a bigger workshop!
Need to find more time to use them now! Anyone else got a nice set of specific tools that doesn't get used as much as it should (although they do get used!)?

Boyz In The Wood

I'm sorry my blog has been so boring lately. I've been so busy driving to Birmingham everyday and decorating every night that the weeks are slipping by.
I stayed at the farm last night as Mum and Dad are on holiday and my brother wanted to go out. My brother, Dave (Some of you already follow his blog http://davidalviti-rusticcreations.blogspot.com/) had left me out a few books to borrow (as we both read a stupid amount of books a year) but inside the one was a old picture he was using as a book mark.
It made me smile as we must be about 3 and 6 - a happy childhood on the farm.
Still somethings never change as this photo from last year shows (although we're stood the other way round in this photo). I hope we can have another photo like this when we're old men still cutting up bits of wood!