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View Full Version : Green Wood Working – A personal Journey – part 6.



paul standley
01-11-2012, 10:20 PM
It took a few seconds to gather myself as the pain in my ankle was like a hot knitting needle being shoved through it.
In the darkness I’d stepped on the edge of the lane where the tarmac met the verge which had been washed away and there were several inches of drop and my ankle just folded as my leg went outwards.
I’d got heavy walking boots on and I could feel my ankle swelling by the second and I didn’t know what damage had been done but I resisted the temptation to take my boot off at the time so I half hobbled half got carried back to the accommodation block and my room. I managed to get my boot off and soaked it in the shower for a while and examining it, It didn’t seem broken so I put a strap bandage on it and got myself off to bed.
After a long night of ouches ! every time I turned over I awoke in the morning to an ankle some three or four times normal size and absolutely no way of putting my weight on it.

I was 3 ½ hours driving time from home and it was the last half day of the course and I was struggling…! I spent the whole morning with my leg up wrapped in ice and after lunch decided to drive home myself as the alternatives were just to problematical, against everyone’s advice I have to say but I was determined so I strapped it up hard and put my heavy boots on.

Bob and a couple of the others got my car from the car park, loading it up with my gear and the shave horse and sheep hurdle and helped me limp over to it.
I’m not really sure how I made it back because my car has a heavy clutch and the whole journey was on A & B country roads south through Wales with endless gear changes but anyway, I did it and duly went to hospital to get it checked out.

Inverse sprain with torn ligaments was the verdict which as time has since proved, was even more hassle than breaking it because it would have actually healed faster.

My woodland was waiting for me to return with all of this newfound experience and enthusiasm, this was no time to laid up I told everyone, I’d got wood to whittle but pushing my luck would have damaged the ankle even more so I had to resign myself to endless days with my foot up that then turned into weeks of hobbling around with absolutely no chance of walking on rough ground, even crossing the lawn was a challenge.

It’s now the last day or so of May and I make my first trip back to the woods for what seems an age. The paths are growing over, the field layer is a mass of green where the light has got in between the cut Hazel and the Bluebells had already started dying back (I’d missed them blooming) and all my plans for the woodland workshop are a distant memory but walking tentatively through the area we had coppiced back in late Feb/March I could see that the cut Hazel stools were now all shooting vigorously and they looked really healthy and that was a good feeling, all that hard work had produced exactly the right result.

There was no way I could do any work in the wood at that stage, Half an hour was all I could manage on the ankle at a time on rough ground before it went up like a balloon again so I used the time to do some bits at home.

Remember that Willow woven conical obelisk that I had cobbled together back in February at the Green Wood Centre, well I took it all apart and using all of the thick vertical rods, I re-engineered it as a square obelisk, turned a finial for it out of green Rhododendron on my small electric hobby lathe and it looked pretty good so it went away happily as a green wood gift… This was its final incarnation:

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On my travels I had seen a ‘giant’ hazel novelty pencil which had stuck in my mind but I had no idea how it was made at the time and I had read somewhere about making a whistle out of wood so my garage workshop became my temporary home whilst my ankle was recovering and I set about making stuff…!
I’d seen some ‘Bug Houses’ and bird tables & feeders in the shops and thought I could do better than that so I added those to my list.
I fancied having a go at some ‘arty-farty’ Hazel sculpture as this was something I could do in the back yard and my daughter had been keeping me supplied with bits of Hazel out of the wood so this went onto the list as well…!

Here are some examples of what I made through June and into July whilst the ankle was recovering, it was taking far longer than ever I had anticipated it would but I was being creative and enjoying it and I was also teaching my daughter some of the skills I had acquired during the year so far. It was my intention to help her set up a little Natural wood craft business of her own.

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Mid July – I’m confident that my ankle with stand up to working in the wood now and I had reformulated the plans for the woodland workshop having had to abandon the first idea as the site I had chosen back in the winter turned out to be still too boggy.

My Daughter borrowed a petrol brush cutter & PPE from a friend and we set about clearing the new workshop site… I was in business again and feeling lucky…

Paul.