Wood Spirit or Woodwose Carving

I bought a book about carving Wood Spirits a while ago which like so many things in my house started to gather the dust. After last weeks event at Edensor when I decided to carve a face on my chair leg for the bodgers challenge stool I decided I wanted to find a way to make a face quickly Thankfully the weather being abysmal and me being on a weeks holiday I decided to have a go at one. I have quite a large amount of fresh sycamore which I split and started to carve. The whole process took me a leisurely 4 hours and as a first attempt I think that is really good.

This is the Wood Spirit or Woodwose without any finishing applied.
I wanted to bring out the beard and give the features some definition so I used a Peter Child`s pyrography machine to burn into the wood using a hot wire.

As you can see this has added definition in bundles but I was not sure if I liked the overall effect. I then decided to apply a light watercolour wash which I think really works.

Now all I need to do is apply a couple of coats of Danish oil and the wild man of the woods will be finished. I am undecided as to If I like the first plain Woodwose or the painted version but it is good to see what can be achieved with an application of some paint.

Acer ferramenta, lignum et cervisia!!

Which kinda stands for Sharp tools wood and beer. Firstly a huge thanks to Clive and Christine who made us all feel so welcome with elderflower cordial, quiche, cake and our own Glastonbury style pyramid bodging shelter. Here you can see Clive and the Urban Bodger Mike Bramley with our new banner and Clives amazing shelter.
Edensor is the workers village for the Chatsworth estate and the event was to raise money for the local church and school.

After setting up and a beautiful lunch of quiche salad and stewed peaches with elderflower cordial I went for a quick walk round the fate where I picked up a copy of Ray Tabors Traditional Country Crafts from the second hand book store.
The church is a combination of old and new and the web site of the chuch is attached
http://www.stpetersedensor.org/index.html
The Church is full of some beautiful architecture and monuments

The stunning skeleton is carved from local Ashford alabaster and is the finest I have seen in this country. the detail on the feet is quite mind blowing, the sculptor must have seriously studied human anatomy to create such an accurate representation. The grave stone in the porch is very similar to the foresters grave stones you can find in Nottingham, I will need to look into the history behind it further. In the porch is also a stunning head carving the original matching carving is very degraded but the newer copy is a wonderful piece and reminded me of the classic film Bride of Frankinstein played by Elsa Lanchester.


Anyway back to the bodging. We decided to make a stool with the hope that we can raffle it off in the future for the Edensor charity. Clive carved the base and Bryan, Mike and myself made the legs. Bryan and Mike created a pair of lovely turned legs in the oak and I shaped mine on the shave horse and carved a beardy man on the front. All a bit rushed for my liking but it looks effective from a distance.

There were a huge amount of visitors to Clive and Christines garden who seemed to really enjoy watching us all work and looking at the work we had all created in the past.

 The little shrink pot I made with directions from this blog went down well, I think people loved the fact that it still had the bark on and looked like a tree.
Sadly the afternoon ended far too soon so a photo was needed of our merry band of bodgers.

Just when we were about to go home the BBC arrived to do some filming for a fly on the wall documentary about Chatsworth to be shown in the autumn on a sunday evening on BBC1. Bryan was recorded making a dibber which was kindly given to my sister. My contribution to the programme may be some bashing heard on an interview that was being filmed nearby!

The Latin motto idea came whilst sipping tea on the lawn and eating fruit cake on a perfect english garden, once again thanks to Christine and Clive.