Little Helper

Posted on 16. May 2018 by fuzzy

Here’s my little helper in the workshop:

This is Gizmo, one of our two cats. He came to us about 10 years ago, from a friend who had rescued him from a litter of kittens that came from a street cat somewhere in Bilston. She took him in out of mercy, and had him for some time. Then she noticed that other cats in the neighbourhood were being mistreated badly by some yobs, and asked us whether we would have him. At the time we already had two cats, Flossy and Boyo, and we weren’t quite sure how he would fit in. Initially he was very timid, but they got along just fine after a short while.

Boyo passed away a few years ago, and is now buried in the backyard of our previous home in Pepper Hill. He crossed a road at the same time as a car came along, and needless to say, the car won. That was a real shame, as Boyo was a bundle of fun. You could put him on a skateboard and roll him down the road and he would enjoy the ride.

Gizmo is very laid back, but also very curious. He always comes exploring to the workshop, stays for a short while, sticks his head in every open cupboard, then meows at me over the lack of suitable prey and makes his departure. On this occasion I got sitting nicely for me on the floor, right in the middle of the workshop, so I couldn’t really do anything else than take a picture and wait for him to leave. He’s now 12 years old, and hopefully we’ll have him for a good few years more. We will miss him badly when it is his time.

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Holly trouble

Posted on 16. May 2018 by fuzzy

No, this is not a story about anything holy. It’s about holly, the spiky stuff growing in many gardens and used as Christmas decorations. About 6 months ago I got a whole holly tree from a good friend. She had wanted to cut it down the previous summer, but after talking to me agreed to let it stand until the growing season was over, so it was finally taken down some time early December 2017.

I have now started looking into using the first few bits. If harvested in winter, most of the sugar content is gone from the sap in the tree, and as a result the wood turns out almost white, a much sought-after property. In addition, due to the slow growth,  holly is quite hard (not when green), and it turns beautifully. It is an absolute pleasure to work with.

There are two severe downsides to holly, though. The first one is that it cracks like hell. The slightest knot or other disturbance of even grain, and bang, there goes the crack. These two little hollow forms were turned from green, and as you can see, I managed to get the wall thickness quite even. Nevertheless, the one on the left has developed this mighty cleft, and although the one on the right looks only warped to a high degree, I can tell you it has its cracks on the underside.

SO: green turning holly is not a guarantee to avoid cracking. And, at any rate, the warping is so bad that you need to leave extra thickness to compensate. Or you work to a finished surface from green, and accept that you will end up with highly oval bowls.

The second downside concerns the colour. When freshly cut, the wood is an ivory white, with a slight greenish tinge to it. This will last for a few hours, and the slowly turn into a darker colour. This is not a mould growing on the wood, it’s a checmical process caused by the exposure to oxygen and light.

This can be counteracted by immediately boiling the wood for approx. 30 minutes for every 10mm of thickness. However, that puts its own stress on the wood, and in reality: who can boil a 12″ bowl?

The colour change goes quite deep, several millimetres, and I have yet to find a way to prevent it. The only known way for it not to happen is to air-dry the wood completely and then work it. And that requires a lot of patience. No wonder properly dried, white holly is expensive.

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Great Expectations

Posted on 16. April 2018 by fuzzy

So, last weekend Helen and I attended the British Craft Trade Fair 2018 in Harrogate. We’d been to the hall before, but as punters for a different event, and only on a day visit. This time we had booked ourselves 3 nights in a AirBnB.

In difference to the title of this post, I did not actually have great expectations. Although the even organisers were keen to show pictures of busy walkways, and talk about the thousands of visitors they have every year, the reality was starkly different. But let’s begin at the beginning.

We did a trial run of loading the car, only to realize we couldn’t fit everything into the Merc. In the end we decided to go with 2 cars, it’s still cheaper than renting a van for the weekend. It did mean, though, that maximum speed was about 65 mph (downhill and with the wind in the back), just to make sure my wife’s 19 year old Astra wouldn’t pack up in the middle of nowhere.

Travel went without surprises, and I do have to say the entire event was very well organised. We got a spot right next to the loading bay, and the stall was set up and fitted with goods in about 2 hours.

Sunday was always going to be the quietest day of the three, and so it was. Come Monday and it got a little busier, but by 15:00 I could see clear through to the wall on the other side of the hall on most aisles. There were 460 stalls in the hall and probably only around 250 punters. And Tuesday was very much the same.

In the end we received 2 tentative orders, covering about 50% of our costs, plus about a dozen contacts that may yield one more order. So, all in all, I do feel quite substantially underwhelmed. The only consolation was that it wasn’t just us. I spoke to several people who’d done this event many times in the past and they all agreed that 2018 was the worst of the lot.

In hindsight we could probably have managed with the Merc. We had too many things that didn’t get used, and we had too much merchandise on the stall. We brought 6 LED picture lights, and only used 4 (and probably only needed 3), we didn’t use either of the batteries or the inverter as somebody left us with a socket on the stall. The little desk was of some use, but this could be done in a different way. I am pretty sure that we can come up with a way of doing this with one car, if we actually do it again at all.

Well, at least we tried. SO, on to the next event : The Curborough Festival of Artists. Now here clearly the expectation is not on any sales, it’s simply a marketing exercise. On the other hand, the price tag is very different: whereas Harrogate cost us around £1000, Curborough will be less than 200 (and only 25 if we don’t need to hire a van). Just one lucky sale could mean I am actually making some money.

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Things to come

Posted on 13. March 2018 by fuzzy

This is a bit of a strange time for me. I have done some work on some artistic pieces, but at the same time I am also keenly aware that in about 4 weeks time I will be standing on a stall at the BCTF in Harrogate, and since we had a bit of disaster 2 years ago when trying to sell artistic pieces, this time around I decided to also have a lot more simple items on the stall.

Fruit in the making…

I am well down that road, having already completed a few dozen tealight holders and candle sticks, with another 10 or so just needing some final touches. Then there’s kiddie’s dough rolling pins. And fruit, mostly apples and pears. The picture shows the next batch mostly turned, but yet unfinished.  By the time I am typing this, the only thing missing is the stalks at the top.

There will be other small items, such as bottle stoppers, letter openers, key rings, light pulls and so on. More pictures to follow.

The other thing that’s really bothering me is that I cannot find my tripod. Taking good still images really does need a trtipod. I’ve tried higher ASA ratings and lower picture settings, just to get shorter exposure times on the camera, but the results are just not the same. This is really a hangover from our move more than a year ago. Since the building work hasn’t proceeded at the anticipated pace, we still have loads of cardboard boxes in the garage and it’s probably in there somewhere. Except I cannot find it.

Leylandii vase

Two of the more artistic items are a large blue hollow form or vase and a carved tazza. The blue hollow form is made from Leylandii, and the opening at the top is big enough to allow my whole hand to fit inside, which in turn allows for much better sanding. This was, in fact, dearly needed, as the wood would not cut cleanly on the inside and I had some terrible tear-out to deal with. I am happy to report that this is now all done, and all that’s needed is some finish. I am a little nervous, to be honest, about that large knot on the shoulder. I made another hollow form not long ago, and it now decided to develop a very long crack right out of its large knot. We’ll have to see.

One piece tazza with carving

The other item that is work in progress is this one-piece tazza. The rough outline of the form was turned well over two years ago, and it’s been sitting on the shelf for a long time, waiting for some inspiration how to finish it. I had the idea of carving the top part of the stem and the underside of the dish into an array of leaves quite some time ago, but did not have the necessary carving tools (and skill) until recently.

The wood is spalted sycamore, and it is completely dry, so at least I don’t have to worry about further distortion or checking. And it’s got a bit of figure and colour to it, so most likely I won’t do any colouring to the final item. Clearly the carving isn’t finished yet, there’s still a long way to go, but I think the end result will be quite fantastic.

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This year will be different

Posted on 27. February 2018 by fuzzy

In 2016, Helen and I did a total of 5 shows across the year. One of them was a horse trial, one was the Craft and Design Show in Henley (now defunct,) then the BBC Countryfile Live, the Autumn Show in Derbyshire and a hunting event south of Birmingham. Although they were all good fun, these shows are just too expensive and don’t draw enough audience for my work. There wasn’t a single day of trading where I made my money back, never mind actually covering any costs or making a profit. Clearly it could not go on like that.

We didn’t do any shows in 2017, so we could focus on the new house and garden, and also to reconsider our options. Work on the house did not progress as planned, mostly because we just couldn’t get the local craftsmen when we needed/wanted them, so this will be an ongoing subject for at least another year (there’s also the question of money to finance it all). We did discuss what to do about shows.

It’s a tricky one. For now I have only booked one show, and that is the British Crafts Trade Fair in April in Harrogate. For the rest of the year I am planning finding out about local events, which should be a lot cheaper than the big events, and it should be easier to cover costs and make some profit. In theory, at least.

I’ve already figured out that your average street market is completely pointless, because you are competing with guys who import their goods from Morocco and Pakistan, and I simply cannot compete with their pricing. I reckon there must be some events where these guys can’t get in, and those are the ones I have to find.

In addition, there’s no point trying to sell artistic pieces at a street market, so I’ve started making stuff that is better suited for this environment. Wooden fruit, mostly apples and pears, always seem to sell. Candlesticks and tealight holders, door wedges, rolling pins for kids, bud vases, letter openers, key rings, and so on. I am slowly building up stock, and we’ll see how this goes at Harrogate. We will have one half of the stall showing some arty pieces, with a photo album of more work, and the other half dedicated to these lower priced items.

I’ll update you all as we go along, so check in regularly.

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