The Bodgers Ball is a celebration of all forms of green woodworking. Coinciding with the annual general meeting of the Association of Pole-Lathe Turners and Green Woodworkers, the Ball is a five-day festival of woodcraft demonstrations, courses and competitions. It is held at Weald and Downland Living Museum in Chichester from Thursday the 10th to Monday the 15th May 2018. … Read More
Electric Fields Festival Sep 2017
My Domestic Science-teaching friend Anna Davis and I showed folk how to grind grain & bake pitta bread at Electric Fields Festival. Accompanied by the thump of heavy bass we rhythmically kneaded dough. Several hundred kids and quite a few adults pedalled away and shaped the resulting dough into flatbreads. Small kids need to add lots of flour to a … Read More
Colvend Farmers Markets
I love to go to my monthly local Farmers market. Although there is no space to bake in the portable oven, there is plenty of chance to give away delicious fresh-baked sourdough bread and to talk sourdough-baking with folks. And to encourage folks to grind away. When folks take my sourdough starter, they follow these instructions to make LOVELY sourdough … Read More
Reveal your inner saw!
Learners will often bring a rusty saw to saw-fettling courses. The canny learner will clean her saw of rust before a course. Cleaning is simple & satisfying but time-consuming. Better to use course-time to learn and practise those things you cannot easily teach yourself. To get rid of rust you can use:- Simplest by far is physical abrasion and water. … Read More
How long is a spider’s leg?
Here are spiders made by some learners brought to the raker-saw course I ran in May 2017 with Dolly Chapman. If you do make a wooden one, check it frequently as humidity and temperature changes will alter it. Here is Will Wall talking nonsense about spiders, with Dolly Chapman following up with more sense. Here is an un-marked spider – … Read More
Permaculture Gathering 2017
Shedtherapy were invited to Permaculture Gathering at Hidden Mill this week. I love to share my sourdough passion with folk. At this event, I gave away free of charge sourdough starter IF people brought their own jar. We first show folk how to weigh ingredients to refresh the starter – it’s always same weight water to same weight strong bread … Read More
Doctors measure with spider legs
Saw doctors use spiders to measure the amount of set in each tooth. Supporting the spider on 4 fingers, I offer it up to the tooth-tip. If that spider won’t rock in any direction, the tooth is set to that spider and I can then move along 2 teeth to measure the set of next tooth. If the spider rocks … Read More
Grinding down your spiders legs
Here is a spider ready for grinding one leg shorter… If you drop your spider, or you’ve just taken delivery and you want to double-check it, first check the leg-length with a flat surface and feeler-gauge. To grind down one leg, here is one method… A sideways view of leg-grinding.