Learning – Page 2 – Coppicing Suz

A Nice Day Out

One of my passions in life is getting people back into the woods. It is so important, not only to encourage people to spend time out side, and away from cities, but also to get people working outside.

As a consumer culture we often experience the woods as just another nice day out. But this kind of relationship can create a sense of seperation from our enviroment and bring on feelings of detachment. We become outsiders peering into an alien landscape meant for other living things that we call ‘nature’. What we seem to have forgotten however, is that we are part of that natural environment! Before the onset of agriculture, and more recently indistrial civilisation, the woodland was our home for thousands, if not millions of years. But fear not. This sense of oneness returns when one engages directly with the woodland environment through hard graft. The primal instinct and ancient connection reemerges.

With this all in mind it was an absolute delight to put on my first community coppicing event. For one unusually sunny February day 14 people had a chance to get their hands dirty and bring light and warmth back to the woodland floor, as has been done so previously for centuries.

Even better was the attendence of a local scout troop! In the era of ipads and social media it was encouraging to see the focus and enthusiam of these children as they engaged directly with the work. They loved it so much they were keen to know when they could come back again! And, with the help of the other adults, all children left with complete sets of fingers, which I was very pleased about indeed.

Coppicing is a perfect way to get people back into the woodlands and learning how important it is to manage this type ecosystem. A coppice expects to be cut, and the more we leave them to overgrow the more, ironically, we damage the environment. A coppice also lends itself well to volunteer work because of the simplicity of the work and the tools that are used. Anyone who can use a pruning saw and some loppers can get involved. And the more we get people involved the more we can send out the message that we have a great solution to managing our woodlands in a sustainable way and providing our communities with amazing, high quality wood based products.

An Apprentice Elf

Over the last two weeks I have been chief elf for one of my mentors Dave Jackson AKA The Stick Smith. Dave is a master at coming up with creative ways to use coppiced materials such as hazel and oak and has a great range of modern products. My favourite products to work on were the bird feeders. One was designed to hold an apple and the other used recycled wine bottles to hold some birdseed. I’m keen to learn traditional skills but I’m glad to have some experience in making high end products that create coppiced products with a modern twist.

Dave also made reindeer, wreaths, Christmas decorations, whistles and tea light holders.

I asked Dave about selling at markets and if he had any tips on pricing. Dave explained that he would adjust the prices depending on how well a product was selling. For example the bird feeders were struggling to sell at £20 so Dave brought them down to £15. Once they started flying off the shelf… he creeped the price up to £18. This didn’t effect the sales but he wasn’t sure they would break the £20 mark so he kept them at this price and managed to almost sell them all. Experimenting like this seems really useful on a weekend market where you have three days to try and understand your customer and work out what they are willing to pay.

Making a Chair Part One

Yesterday I had the honour of working with Small Woods Heritage Craft Officer, Neill Mapes. Neill was running the fantastic Build A Bench workshop with a group of local people. The group were already well ahead of me with their welsh stick chairs so I decided to make a start on a milking stool instead. This will be my first chair and I’m very excited about it.

The first job was to cleave some ash into leg sized pieces. Next an axe was used to pare down the legs into a leggy shape, and prepare the end to be more or less the same size as a 1 inch tenon cutter. The legs were shaped further on the shaving horse with a draw knife.

To attach the legs to the chair I will be using green wood working. This means that I will dry the legs by a radiator for a few days then attach them to a ‘green’ seat. As the unseasoned green seat drys it will shrink around the legs, meaning that, apart from a few wedges, there will be no need for screws or nails. Ingenious!

I cut the seat out on a bandsaw and its ready to go once the legs have dried.

The National Coppice Federation Gathering 2018

Not everybody would be excited to talk about coppicing for a whole weekend but I certainly was. So it was a delight to attend the National Coppice Federation on their annual gathering in Hampshire. Each year one of the regional groups takes the baton and hosts the get-together which, although relatively small, is one of the only chances that members of the coppicing community have to meet up.

Some people arrived on the Friday and met old faces and new. Then, on the Saturday, we had a chance to see some of the local craftsmen practicing their skills alongside two demonstrations of retort charcoal makers.

A retort charcoal maker, as opposed to a ring kiln or an earth mound kiln, uses the volatile gases that the wood itself gives off when its burnt and redirects it back towards the fire. This means that once the retort has heated up enough it will keep itself alight until all the gases burn off. And because that gas is used up it no longer gets pumped out into the atmosphere.

I took a particular interest in the smaller retort that was basically a giant rocket stove. The designer was a gentleman called James Hookway and this was his own unique design that, although small, was portable and very easy to use. This retort was just the right size for someone just starting out in the charcoal making business or looking to just use the unproductive wood that is no good for products or leaving as insect hotels.

During the gathering we also took a trip to a local sweet chestnut coppice at Stansted Park Estate and was kindly shown around by the head forester Michael Prior. Michael had been working at the estate for 38 years and although they had an extensive sweet chestnut coppice he was also keen on biodiversity and you could tell he enjoyed his job very much.

Dave Lister demonstrating thatching spar making

The NcFed gathering was also a chance to network and meet other people who you could connect with and either share skills, news or work. For me it was just nice to be around people who knew what coppicing is! Most of the time a get a very blank stare when I tell people I’m doing a coppicing apprenticeship. Hopefully groups such as the NcFed will change all that in times to come.

I am now a trained killer (of trees)

As most of my friends will tell you, I am a raging hippy at heart and one of the conflicts I have about being a coppicer is the idea of cutting down trees. So this week the internal conflict has been at full volume as I’ve been learning how to use a chainsaw.

As someone who grew up in a city and only experienced woodlands as a ‘consumer of

the woodland experience’ I had no idea how much management, and cutting, occurs in a woodland. The thing that I am beginning to realise is that woodland ‘management’ from humans and our ancestors has been going on for so long that the very ecosystem has evolved around human activity. It expects us to clear small parts of the forests periodically so that certain flowers will grow. It expects us to burn things and thin areas out. We protect it from diseases and invasive species, yes so that we can get materials for ourselves, but this is a symbiotic relationship. The relationship has only changed extremely recently to a parasitic one since we’ve been turning wood into money instead of just useful products and materials.

With that said, chainsaws still feel a little too imposing. But at the end of the day they are a great tool to have if you ever need to cut a tree down or cross cut logs.

During this week we’ve learnt all the basics of chainsaw maintenance, felling cuts and all the health and safety stuff that goes with cutting huge bloody trees down. One of the common issues with cutting down conifers in plantation woodland is getting a ‘hung’ tree. A hung tree is a tree that you’ve cut but has been caught up in the nearby trees instead of falling to the ground. This happened on most of my cuts and there are several ways you can deal with it.

One of the ways is to lightly ‘feather’ away the ‘hinge’ with the chainsaw. I know. ‘Feather’ and ‘Chainsaw’ don’t really seem to match but in some circumstances, plunging straight in with the chainsaw will pinch the saw between the tree and the stump, so when one ‘feathers’ with a chainsaw you are lightly brushing the wood with the saw so that it doesn’t get trapped. When you feather away a hinge you leave about 20% of the hinge attached. The hinge is extremely important as it gives the feller a certain amount of control and predictability over where the tree will fall. If you take the whole hinge off too early it can topple in an unexpected direction.

Once you have a peg you can then use a pole or a felling bar with a hook to lever the tree to one side. This, however, doesn’t always work. When you’ve tried every other option thats safe to use – surfing on top of it is a no no unfortunately – then its time to get the winch out as we did today.

I’m happy to say that I won’t be cutting too many trees down, unless they are well chosen standards to bring more light into a coppice. However, using chainsaws for coppicing is another thing all together and I look forward to seeing how that all works in the near future.

In-situ Willow Hurdle

Today I had a chance to work on a willow in-situ hurdle. The fence was about 10mtrs long topping a small brick wall. My new mentor, Dave Jackson, started the fence by drilling oak beams to the top of the brick wall as supports for the sweet chestnut uprights. We then weaved in wet and dry willow rods that were cut about one year ago.

This was an easy enough job with a beautiful finish. This is going to be a wonderful skill to have.

Top tips for the day:

Keep the butts of the rods that you add to the hurdle as close to the uprights as possible. This will reduce the amount of pruning at the end of the job.
Use thicker rods to correct any uprights that are being pushed out of alignment. The stronger rods will push the uprights back but be careful not to push them back yourself too much as they can snap.
Mix the sizes of rods you use in each handful so that all the different sized rods get used and there is a good variety of sizes across the hurdle.

Reading The Logs

Did you know that logs can predict your future?

That’s right. A log can accurately predict the likelihood of you swearing under your breath when it refuses to split.

Trying to split a 50 – 60cm diameter piece of tree can be quite a challenge. Especially if it was a gnarly bit, a point where the tree split or is still too damp and keeps absorbing the maul. The first three or four foot of the tree are also notoriously tougher. So sometimes its not just a case of whacking it as hard as you can – although that helps – but just like in palmistry you need to learn how to read a log.

Every single part of the tree is different and so each new round piece is a different challenge. My mentor Mark suggested going for the heartwood first and getting a split in that. Then it seemed that heading for the edges helped the split to shoot through the log.

But when the basics don’t work you need to have a closer look at the details of the particular piece of round wood in front of you. For example, each piece of trunk has a small crack in it’s centre. Logically you might think, like I did, that if I followed that crack it was be an easy task. But actually what I found was that it split better if I went perpendicular to that natural crack. The cracks around the side of the ring are not always useful either. Some times they can indicate a point of weakness but, as Mark put it, sometimes they are irrelevant.

wp-1536857427976..jpg — A friendlier bit of tree trunk

The main thing to look out for is signs of branches. These bits are going to be very knotty and its best to chip around them rather than attempting to hack them into smaller pieces.

Turning a piece of trunk upside down can also help. Sometimes one side is more forgiving than another. When you’ve got a really big piece then it might be a case of chipping off one side then going around the ring as if you’re slicing up a cake. Once you’ve split the piece of trunk in half you can have a really good look at the way the tree has grown and chose the spot where the rings are straightest and will easily split in half.

There’s nothing quite like hearing that certain cracking noise to predict a little internal fist pump after you’ve spent five minutes trying to split a bit of tree trunk.

Getting my Craft On

wp-1536856631322..jpg — Hazel branches leaning away from an oak tree

One of the hard questions in coppicing is what to do with all the bits of hazel on a stool (that’s what the trunk that the new shoots grow from is called) that have grown all bendy.

Bendy rods (aka branches) can occur for a few reasons. It may be due to ‘browsing’ from wildlife such as deer. Muntjac deer are very common in the woods where we work and are a pain for coppicers. There are various ways that people use to stop the deer but the most effective it seems is building a huge blummin’ fence. My mentor and myself did speculate whether a stuffed lion or two might work well instead after I mentioned that my father used to be a taxidermist. If we try this I’ll let you know how it goes.

Another reason for bendy rods can be a lack of light. If the shoots have to compete for light with the standard trees (the trees that are left to grow to full size) then they’ll contort their way towards the light that is available. This can also slow growth which can lead to more twisty turny bits. A coppice works best without standards as the coppiced trees get the maximum amount of light but sometimes space is a premium and standards can provide firewood and also a more varied environment for wildlife. When standards are used/left they should only take up 40% of the canopy cover, leaving 60% of the sky still visible.

Anyway, I’ve digressed… Let’s talk about crafts!

Coppicers come up with many ingenious ideas for what to do with all the little bits of wood. Products such as whistles or pencils are popular as well as gypsy flowers and even little christmas decorations.

Over the last few months as I’ve been preparing for the apprenticeship I have also been wondering what I could make with all those little bits. I decided that, however bendy a rod, you can always make disks and a disk is a very useful shape indeed.

My inventions so far have included ‘tree hanging’, bracelets and bowels, all made partly from discs or small bits of sticks. I’m keen to use as much of the stuff we cut down – apart from whatever would be beneficial as habitat homes – and find as many uses as we can. My mentor is also keen on this practice. After drilling holes in some candle holders we decided that the shaving were too good to throw and thought about how they could be used (we decided perhaps some kind of delicate flower decoration).

The level of creativity in this is endless when your base material is the humble stick!

Splitting Logs

“Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood, carry water.”

Zen Proverb

Today in Coppice Land I have spent a lovely day in the woods chopping wood. Firewood is a good income for coppicers and my Mentor, Mark, was lucky enough to know someone with a group of dead beech trees that needed taking down. Mark has kindly obliged and now has a stack of logs to send of to a local garden centre.

The key thing I found when splitting logs, or also sometimes called cleaving, is that you need to use your legs. Unfortunately I didn’t actually do this – and after four hours of log splitting my back is killing me! Its a classic mistake to use your back when doing any strenuous work but next time I’ll be using my legs more – even if it means I have to stand in a funny crouching position all day. Its worth it!

Otherwise it was a very satisfying job. Perhaps, I mused while I chopped, it’s because this job is probably written into my very DNA. For thousands of years we’ve been doing this kind of work and my body seemed to have a natural intuitive reflex towards the task… although thinking a bit more about it, and feeling how my back feels, perhaps not. But I have to say, there is something romantic and wholesome about splitting logs.

The most zen moment of the whole day was when I realised that the splitting became easier when I stopped trying to do the work, meaning, when I let the maul (the heavy

how NOT to hold a maul if you want to split a log – unless you’re posing for a picture

axe) do the work for me and I let the axe fall, using its natural weight, the logs would happily ping apart, and my wrists wouldn’t hurt so much. Just like in the Taoist tradition, one needs to let go of trying and just allow things to be as they are, and allowing a maul to do its job with minimal input from me was very enlightening indeed.

UPDATE: After another day of swinging a maul I released that I was doing some of the work and in fact the process was one of co-creation rather than surrender, a more Yin and Yang relationship rather than channelling pure tao. (Can you tell I had a lot of time to think about this. But what a wonderful way to spend a day – pondering the taoism of chopping wood!)

A day with the East Anglian Coppice Network

20180825_103911 — Making pegs on a tine cutter

One of the many things I’m looking forward to during my apprenticeship is meeting the various local coppicing communities. Coppicers tend to work alone as sole traders and this means that networks are an important way for local coppicers to meet and share skills and stories.

This weekend I had the honour of being invited along to one of the East Anglian Coppice Network events being held at a woodland owned by Iain Loasby. I met Iain after discovering his shop just up the road from me in London. When I came across his shop a year ago I was intrigued by this strange shop that seems to being selling a variety of sticks. When I won the national coppicing apprenticeship I was delighted to remember this shop and realised what a treasure was on my door stop. Although the name would suggest otherwise, Wood Green was the last place I’d expect to find a coppicers shop.

So a few weeks ago I eagerly presented myself to Iain as a fledgling coppicer and was invited along to the network event.

On the agenda this time around was Besoms Brooms and Traditional Rakes. Both of these, especially brooms, are a staple for coppicers and although not used as much for their originally purpose still attract customers looking for a nice item on their wall.

20180825_095956 — Andy and Paul showing us different types of rakes

First up was Paul, a newly retired coppicer, who showed us how to make an ash rake. Rakes often come with regional differences and can use a split handle or a flexible piece of hazel to brace the head. I believe in this case we were being taught the Suffolk way of putting a rake together.

Before anything else you need a nice piece of ash around 6 – 10cm in

diameter to make heads. We were lucky enough to have a lovely piece of ash that split beautifully and I was assured it wasn’t always this easy.

Once you have a rough size its time to use a shave horse to take the bark off and turn it into a lovely smooth piece of wood. Paul chose to ‘batter’ his heads which is a bricklaying term that means making the top of the head thinner than the bottom, but Andy, another coppicer at the event didn’t think this was necessary.

Making the pegs was an interesting process. First a piece of tree truck the same length as you want your pegs was split into tiny pieces, using an old inner tube to hold the wood together, then these pieces were jammed through a piece of metalwork called a tine cutter. Apparently its useful to have a splayed end on your tine cutter so that the tines don’t get stuck as they push through the hole.

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One of the great things about the day was getting these sorts of little hints and tips from the experienced coppicers. “Throw the mallet instead of hit it” was advice from Andy which stopped my wrist hurting so much, and “aim for down here” was more great advice from Paul as he pointed to half way down the piece of wood I was preparing to split with a Froe (a type of wood splitting tool).

After the tines/pegs were made the next task was to drill holes into the head. Paul suggested using a ‘green’ head (a piece of wood that hasn’t been seasoned) with seasoned pegs. This would mean that the head would season and shrink around the pegs, holding them into place.

The pegs were then shaved down on two sides and bashed in with a mallet. Next we needed to choose a handle and split the end. A rake handle can be quite long and needs to be straight as possible but can have some wiggles* in it for character. After the handle and head are fixed together copper nails were used to keep the head and handle together.

20180825_122917 — joining the head and the handle together

Another handy tip to remember was to drill a hole at the end of the split and wrap some wire around to keep the split from going any further.

Besom Brooms

20180825_142056 — Andy showing us how to bind birch sprays with elm bark

In the afternoon it was Andy Bashem‘s turn to show us how to make a good broom. I’ve already helped my mentor Mark to collect birch ‘sprays’ (birch sticks) so it was interesting to see the next step in the process.

Andy chooses to make all natural brooms without any metal parts as this seems to appeal

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more to witches. No, this isn’t a joke. Apparently wiccans use besom brooms to clear old spells from ritual spaces but the brooms mustn’t contain any metal. This is the kind of vital information passed on during networking events. There is also an aesthetic reason for a wireless broom but it does take much more time to make.

One starts off by grabbing a handful of birch sprays then moving them around until all the bottoms of the twigs are lined up. You need a bit space to wrap around your binding material so any twigs that are in the way are pruned. When your happy with your bundle of birch sprays you can then start the wrapping process. In this case we used some Elm Bark that Andy had had in his barn for a couple of years. To refresh it he simply soaked it in water for a couple of hours the night before and the bark became flexible again like leather.

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Once the binding was on tight we then drove a sharpened stake through the middle of the bundle and used a wooden peg to hold the handle in place. The peg is important to stop the twigs and the handle from separating and the customer being left with a very sharp stick in their hands. A good handle can also increase the price of a broom if it has special features like twists. Andy didn’t try to make the broom look all the same and believed that as people are all unique then the difference in the brooms would appeal to different people. As I didn’t pick up enough birch I was pleased to hear this and declared my very small broom a special camper van sized broom to fit into tiny houses just like my own. The broom was then bound with baling twine so that when the twine was removed in a few days the broom would maintain a slimmer shape.

Overall I had a lovely day with the East Anglian Coppice network. I raked in the knowledge and wasn’t swept away by all the new information at all.

I hope to visit some of the members coppices over the next few years and plan to join them at another event soon!

*I’ll develop my technical terminology as go – but in the mean time i’ll be making up my own…)