It all begins with one curly shaving

They leapt like snakes escaping a fire. 

And the look on my face must have reflected an airborne invasion of these strange, wriggling things. I was agog. Real snakes? Of course not - I was in Herefordshire after all - but regardless, those leaping serpents were something to behold.

It was September 1997, and I was watching a bearded fellow work his magic on a leg-operated lathe, or pole lathe as it’s commonly known. This handmade, wooden lathe stood in his outdoor workshop in Clisset Woods, and English Ash dominated woodland that gave me a taste of something new, worthy and slow.

Standing there, watching this curious reciprocating lathe, I was having a moment - nothing to do with the with the leaping snakes. I’ll get to those in a minute - no, my moment was one of those moments you hear people talking about often enough, but never really understand until you experience one yourself. It was my life changing moment.

Life until that point had been good. Great even. A loving family, the best of friends, a roof over my head and just enough money to do stupid things on my seven day rolling weekend. But I was unhappy. Trees grow in all directions, but ultimately they push their leaves to the sky and their roots to water. They seek and find what is needed to grow strong. I on the other hand was led by fulfilment. I sought the buzz of excitement, and in my quest to seek life, I forgot how to live. I was on the 24/7 party boat, where fun times, and an expectation to be that guy who always woke face-down in an alley were converging on one final terminus where I really didn’t want to go.

I needed an out. A big out. A job would be a good start, but I looked and smelled like a hobo - which I’ve since learned is a good thing - and I had this curse going round inside my head that still lingers to this day. It goes like this: if my work took up 10 hours of my day, sleep another eight, that would leave a measly six hours to do all the other things I hold precious. Okay, so I get to grab some hours back on weekends, but no matter how I viewed it, I would always picture myself dedicating the majority of my life to satisfying the needs of another person or organisation disconnected from my own desires and beliefs.

And that became my curse, forever looking for that perfect occupation that didn’t exist. It’s caused me all kinds of angst over the years, but somewhere along the way of struggling with this ill-conceived concept of freedom, it led me, most unexpectedly, to a life of working wood with simple tools.

And it all started in a Waterstones bookshop, in Bristol, on a wet and cold day in 1997.

I looked like a bear, wrapped in my brown fuzzy thrift store coat, with wild hair splaying out from underneath my chunky-knit beanie. I loved books, and I still do, but talking honestly, I was in that book store on that particular day because I was sick of being cold. Sick of being bored. Tired of being lost without a rudder.

And then I saw the book, just it’s unassuming green spine that caused me to stop long enough to slide it off the shelf and flick through its pages.

GREEN WOODWORKING: Working with Wood the Natural Way

By Mike Abbott

This looked all kinds of interesting! There was this guy, Mike I presumed, on the cover, pumping his leg up and down on a human-powered lathe attached at one end to a long, bent over sapling. He was working in a clearing, surrounded by trees, contraptions I’d never seen before and the things he’d seemingly made on this lathe thing from the dark ages. From the moment I opened the book, I could tell that the man who had written this book had been consumed by his craft. There was infection in his words, of the best kind. He wasn’t giving the lowdown on how to make the things on the cover, he was saying why you should make them. 

I had absolutely no money to spare. The little I had was for food and rent. But while green woodworking had yet to consume me, standing there like a bear in a bookshop, it sure had taken a bite. That book never made its way back to the shelf from where it came, and it’s something I hold dear to this day, now old, dog-eared and with an inscription from Mike, just inside the cover. Because some months later, I made it to Clisset Woods, to start a ten-day chair-making class led by Mike. On day one, I was wild with excitement, watching the master at work on his lathe.

And now about those flying snakes.

Actually, they were more like tapeworms, long beautiful, wriggling, cavorting and flying tapeworms if there is such a thing. And they were starting their skyward journey from the sharp edge of Mike Abbott’s roughing-out gouge.

I was there with a handful of other green woodworking wannabes, huddled behind Mike’s lathe as he effortlessly ploughed his gouge into a fresh piece of ash. In a rhythmic, poetic and fluid motion, his foot, resting upon a treadle, pushed downwards, while at the end of the treadle, a length of cord ran up and around the blank, spinning it towards Mike, while his gouge hungrily gobbled up wood and spewed it skywards in the form of these serpentine (or parasitic) shavings that rested eventually in a snakepit of countless cast-offs at the foot of his lathe.

And that is all it took: one curly and beautiful wood shaving, made at the hands of a master craftsman. I was hooked for life.

It’s funny now to think that my love affair with making things from wood came from a cast-off, a waste product. Maybe I subliminally thought that beauty can still come from something considered trash by others. I don’t know. But I do now recognise that wood shavings of all lovely shapes and kinds, made from that melting pot of a skilled hand, a blade and a piece of tree, is the opposite to sawdust, the byproduct of noisy machines. 

These time and effort-saving tools barge wood into submission, coercing it with power and a half-sharp blade. This isn’t woodworking, it wood controlling, making a living organism yield and bend the knee. I just don’t see the fun in that. Sure they have their place in industry where efficiency is the game, and I’m no purist; I own a whole raft of those plug-in-the-wall things, some of which, like power drills, I find completely indispensable. I’ll use them when needs must, but I won’t thank them or enjoy their company like I do with my axe, because my axe, like me, is more comfortable among the trees than a yard of hobbled timber.

It’s the slow process of taking an imperfect tree and working it with imperfect hands that hold a blade I should have sharpened the day before. This ambling walk through the woods, winding its way to a finished piece often far from what you conceived, that is what I enjoy.

I hope, if you’re just starting out, or poking an inquisitive nose into a funny-looking book like I did all those years ago, that you’ll continue on this journey into a truely soul-nurturing craft. This little book is designed as a free taster for you, introducing you to a number of projects that you can make with a handful of simple tools, some basic techniques and a will to create, slowly.

The projects in these pages mostly come from articles I have written for the Australian Wood Review magazine. It’s a great magazine that celebrates woodworking of all kinds and the artisans who dedicate themselves to making a whole manner of beautiful things. One of the articles will show you how to use a pole lathe identical to the one that changed my life for good. If you feel inspired, there are detailed plans at the back of the book giving you everything you need (bar the wood) to make this lathe. 

There’s lots to busy yourself with, from butter spreaders to puppets, lathe turned spoons, coffee mugs and a Muddle Headed Wombat chair!

But for now, you need only concern yourself with making just one simple and beautiful thing.

Because this journey begins:

with

one

curly

shaving.