Thursday 20 January 2011
Inspiration in the Kitchen
Susan Parsons, writer for the Canberra Times Food and Wine section, wrote a delightful article about my other passion - making jams and chutneys. The article includes recipes to make Oriental plum jam and Nocello (Italian green walnut liquor) - both are delicious!
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Saturday 15 January 2011
Making a Windsor Stool at Sturt
This year I decided to do a week long woodworking course at Sturt in Mittagong as part of their Summer School series. Sturt is renown for its wood, weaving and ceramic courses and many well known artists have taught at the school, or undertaken residencies. Not only is Sturt a place to learn wonderful things, it also is set in very beautiful surroundings and has a wonderful coffee shop and gallery.
So anyway, I had a fast introduction to a number of hand tools I had never seen before and learnt new terms all which sounded positively medieval!
The first thing we did was to cut and shape the seat of the stool from camphor laurel wood. Although I am quite adept at cutting using a regular hand saw, we used a HUGE old fashioned one, and needless to say my circle was a little wonky. Using a spokeshave (you can see it in the above picture) we smoothed and rounded the edge of the seat. We then hollowed the seat top using a rounded scorping tool originally used to make oak barrels. This process pretty much took a whole day to complete.
My perfectly round seat (above). It took me two attempts!
Next we split wood for the legs. We used a green wood called rubinia (or black locust). Green wood is used because when the legs are tapped into the seat, the moisture difference between the legs and the seat differs ensuring when the wood dries, a tight fit occurs. This was how stools and chairs were made centuries ago, without the aid of nails or superglue.
Concentrating hard!
My almost finished legs.
Next was figuring out the style of the stretcher to space the legs. I chose a three legged stool and the T style.
Next step was to drill the holes for the legs. This was quite a tricky part of the assemblage - the legs had to be at an angle, but I wasnt allowed to get the wobbles whilst drilling the holes (my head is used to stabilise the drill).The legs are still green and will take about 3 months to dry out. When they do, it turns into a delicious warm brown. I have lightly limed the legs.
Phew! What a week. I had a fab time and I learnt heaps, met lots of lovely people and best of all walked away with my very own piece of furniture. I have a feeling Im going to be making a lot more stools and who knows, I may even take the challenge and make a Windsor Chair next!
x
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