BCUK axe and campcraft weekend (Part One)

(Image courtesy of Gary Waidson www.ravenlore.co.uk) 

Over the second weekend in October this year I was lucky enough to be invited along to a weekend camp organised by Steve "Mesquite" Harrall via the bushcraft uk forum. The camp was held at a private wood in Warwickshire, not too far from Coventry, courtesy of Damian at Woodsman Bushcraft.

As well as organising the logistics of the weekend for us Steve had arranged for Paul Kirtley of Frontier Bushcraft to come and give us some tuition on axe useage and camp craft techniques. This weekend was the first time I'd met Paul, in fact it was the first time I'd received any kind of formal bushcraft tuition at all, but both Paul and his tuition were pleasant surprises.

I've met a few bushcraft instructors over the years at various events and found them generally to be a little lacking as teachers. The instructors I'd met previously generally fall into one of three categories;

• There's the bushcraft bore, these types take it all way too seriously, they've obviously got a real depth of knowledge and a willingness to pass on that knowledge, they just don't appear to have any tangible personality. 
• Then there's the bushcraft bully, again these types appear to have quite a good depth of knowledge on the subject but that knowledge seems to have instilled in them a sense of arrogance (these are my least favourite types). 
• Finally there's the enthusiast, these are great people to be around, wonderful personalities, no sense of arrogance, great sense of humour, but unfortunately no real depth of knowledge or experience, this last type have usually done a course or two and gained some kind of vague qualification but just don't have an enormous deal of knowledge to pass on, I'd more than happily go for a weekend camp with these people, I just wouldn't pay them for the privilege. 

As I said previously, Paul Kirtley was a pleasant surprise, he manages to combine an obvious wealth of knowledge and experience with a great level of enthusiasm for the subject, and a proficient and well considered teaching style with a sense of humour and nicely laid back attitude. In short, he came across as a person first and a bushcraft instructor second, I'd readily recommend Paul and Frontier Bushcraft to anyone looking for some formal tuition in bushcraft. He's also more than capable of staring a piece of string into submission.

(Image courtesy of Chris Leeland)

The main project over the weekend was the construction of greenwood benches. The idea behind the construction of these benches was to demonstrate a variety of green woodworking techniques, but of course there was also the added benefit that we ended up with some nice seating to give back to Damian as a thank you for the use of his woods. The first stage in making the benches was to collect the materials that we'd need. A couple of recently fallen Beech trees (Fagus sylvatica) were selected and Paul offered some instruction in the correct method of removing the side branches as we only needed the main trunk for this project. This process is variously referred to as "limbing" or "snedding", put simply it means tidying up the trunk.

(Image courtesy of Steve "mesquite" Harral)

Once Paul had demonstrated the correct technique it was time for the rest of us to have a go, many hands made very light work of the job and in no time we had a couple of nice clean Beech trunks to work with.

(Image courtesy of Steve "mesquite" Harral)

In these two photo's you can see my mate Pete and I using a Gransfors Bruks Scandinavian forest axe that Paul had kindly provided for us to have a play with. It's a thing of beauty and I think that Pete and I  both fell in love with it straight away, so if anyone's stuck for what to get me for my birthday........here's a link!

(Image courtesy of Steve "mesquite" Harral)

(Image courtesy of Steve "mesquite" Harral)

After we'd limbed out our Beech trunks the next step was to divide them up into workable sections, what we were looking for were long straight sections of the trunk with as few knots as possible to make it easier for us to split them down. We started out by using a chainsaw to section up the trunk but modern technology quickly failed us and we had to resort to good old fashioned manpower. Thankfully there were enough of us to get the job done pretty quickly and without it being too much like hard work.

(Image courtesy of Steve "mesquite" Harral)

(Image courtesy of Paul Kirtley www.frontierbuschraft.com)

The next stage in the process was to split our logs in half to start creating the seats of our benches. We accomplished this by first making "gluts", or wooden wedges, out of Holly (Ilex aquifolium) which we could then use, along with an axe, to split the green Beech along the length of it's grain. I'll probably write about making and using gluts at a later date, but for now here's a few images of us and our gluts to give you some idea.

(Image courtesy of Paul Kirtley www.frontierbushcraft.com)

(Image courtesy of Paul Kirtley www.frontierbushcraft.com)

(Image courtesy of Gary Waidson www.ravenlore.co.uk

(Image courtesy of Paul Kirtley www.frontierbushcraft.com)

(Image courtesy of Paul Kirtley www.frontierbushcraft.com)

The gluts did the job quite nicely......

(Image courtesy of Paul Kirtley www.frontierbushcraft.com)

.....and then it was time to smooth the split sides down a little to remove any splinters that may otherwise end up giving someone a nasty surprise when they sat down.

(Image courtesy of Paul Kirtley www.frontierbushcraft.com)

Once we'd worked most of the larger splinters out of the seats of our benches it was time to fit some legs. These were simply pieces of Birch (Betula sp.) that were sawn to length and then fitted into holes that were drilled through the seats of our benches.

(Image courtesy of Paul Kirtley www.frontierbushcraft.com)

(Image courtesy of Paul Kirtley www.frontierbushcraft.com)

All that was left then was knocking in some hardwood wedges to the tops of the legs where they protruded from the seats to tighten everything up and hold the legs firmly in place, for this I used a couple of pieces of well seasoned Birch, other's used the Holly that we'd made the gluts from earlier,....

(Image courtesy of Paul Kirtley www.frontierbushcraft.com)

....and then sawing off the bits of leg that were left protruding from the seats.

(Image courtesy of Paul Kirtley www.frontierbushcraft.com)

Et voila, the finished product

We got up to loads more projects over the weekend but it takes longer to write about them than do them so this little trip report's going to be in a couple of parts, look out for the next one if you enjoyed this first installment.

Bye for now,

Stuart