Autumn Jewels

The weather this weekend has been great, with warm autumn sun and watery blue sky.
I headed out on the bike for a couple of hours this morning, and with the leaves starting to sprinkle down to the ground it was good to be out cycling and hearing them rustle beneath the tyres.
 Our long summer this year certainly shows it's self, when you take a look at the berry laden hedgerows . Heavy with hip's,haws and brambles to name but a few .
 Take a look at these eye catching, autumn jewels :)

Blacksmith axe making and wooden lodge construction from Sweden

I found this and thought you guy's might enjoy it like I did !
Many thanks to the original uploader :)

Took A Notion

I carved another sign this weekend I really enjoy doing these signs , and along with a little spoon that I took a notion for. Hacked out of a piece of Rowan (mountain ash) with a hatchet then tidied up with various spoon carving tools. Here's the sign and spoon  :)

Bringing Letters To Life

I  was going to spend a while on the garden bench today, but parts of it still need a bit of pondering time.
So I pulled out the sign that I started a few posts back. . And I got stuck in to some carving, I scored in the letters this gives me a good edge that I can work up to . After a long time scoring in these letters , I was ready to start bringing them to life .
 I tend to use just a couple of  chisels , to do these relief carved letters this keeps the look consistent . It's not done yet , there's still a bit of tidying up to do, but you get the picture . Keep looking in, to see it finished :)

Hatchet Treatment

Autumn has sneaked into the wood's, in my part of the world . On a bike ride the other day I spotted some red leaves on a Sycamore . After a long, hot, dry and seemingly endless summer, green is giving way to red and gold and I don't mind one bit !!

 I was out in the shed for a while today, more shaping and a start made on sanding the timber for the garden bench  . As usual I kept the defects and I will make them into features .One piece gave me a little trouble it had a split that wouldn't shave or sand out . This split got the hatchet treatment to remove it for good . I changed the shape a smidge and this got me into sound timber, some spokeshave work and a touch with the gouge gave the hatchet edge a more natural look :)

Don't Judge A Book By It's Cover

Every Sunday morning I go to a local carboot sale flea market type thing, as I'm always looking for old rusty tools that can be brought back into use . Although no tools jumped out at me today this did !

An old ledger starting in June 1923 on the cover it reads GRANGEMOUTH SAWING AND MILLWORK  B&Co Ltd.
Lots of the customers names are familiar to me in this old ledger, but a local company stuck out to me. (Nobel's Explosives) they had a factory in Linlithgow where I live a long time ago.
 I 'm 99% certain that B&Co was Brownlee And Company, who ran a huge operation in Grangemouth called Caledonian Sawmills where they milled timber from all over the world including America, Canada and along with the Baltic states and Scandinavian countries .
 Back in the good old days Grangemouth had a booming timber industry, with endless boatloads of raw materials arriving to feed these busy sawmills, at the bustling Grangemouth Dockyards on the River Forth.
 Inside this ledger in beautiful handwriting are client's names, description's of what was ordered, and some little boxes with various lines drawn in them. I reckon these were the cuts that were made in the blocks of timber that they took the orders from, then the hours and cost in the last columns .
 Even the bindings on this book are worth mentioning with really thick leather along the spine and corners , the pages all have a nice coloured edge to them making a pattern when the book is closed and the label on the inside cover from the Printmaker-Bookbinder in Glasgow, adds another bit of history to this  battered  old book.
It just shows that back in the day when you needed a ledger, you really got something special .
I hope this was of interest ;)