Bleeding Thumb Whittling Club

BTWC-FaM

2012-02-29T10:07:00.005Z

Erhard Schoen, The Unfinished Man. Woodcut, 1533

The German chapter of BTWC is now up and running from its base in Frankfurt am Main. Germany is well known for its skilled renaissance lime-wood sculptors and we are glad to see BTWC-FaM continuing the tradition.

Hans Multscher, Virgin and Child, 1435-40

Axes in Australia

2012-02-27T20:56:00.002Z

After the Swedish spoon carver, another craft video, more "skills pornography".

n u d e s

2012-01-29T15:01:00.008Z

The human form, untroubled by clothes, has been the subject of endless artistic endeavour, and abundant critical thought. We need only mention the works of classical antiquity alongside the anamorphotically modulated effigies of any regional culture you might care to mention, Igbo to Hopi, to give the reader an idea of the range of gazes that have fallen upon the nude, and taken up tools in response. As in geometry and calculus, tracing the nude reduces structures in space to an elemental level -- the extent of greater or lesser degrees of curvature, an extremum here, a point of inflection there, form is considered in the purest terms.

Big thanks to Erika and Patrick for having our 18th meeting in their house. Nudes proved a fecund subject for carving, as you may see below.

Swedish Spoon Carving

2012-01-29T11:20:00.005Z

If you are prone to trawling the net with certain keywords in mind and in search engine (whittling, greenwood carving, etc.), you might be forgiven for feeling that the discipline of spoon carving is, to use the term of William Gibson, at a nodal point. Some confluence of events, zeitgeist, advertisements, internal realisations, leads to the emergence of a micro-trend. A decade or so of Ray Mears on the telly and a furtive wish to get "back to the land" are two of the identifiable ingredients that have led a remarkable number of middle-aged men (give or take a few years, and, unfortunately, they are almost all men) to spend a hundred quid on an axe and a few knives. I know this because they've made blogs.

It's a good thing, I think, and interesting that today it is a consumer-choice-identity-statement to purchase items that would have been in every house one hundred years ago. That much is a truism of late-capital.

Every time someone (me) starts moaning about the latest cycling trend, I can't help but find some zero-level happiness that more people are on bikes. Likewise the new spoon men. A good tool is a good investment, especially if it involves supporting some of the smaller and more interesting forges -- Gränsfors Bruks, Svante Djärv, Ben Orford, Ray Iles spring to mind. Provided they don't chop down too many trees, the worst case scenario is a stockpile of high quality steel for after the apocalypse.

Here is a video from a Jubilee Fair in Sweden, 1923. I suppose it would have been shown as a newsreel before films, something like that. The crafts shown were being presented with an air of nostalgia and pastoral nationalism (cf. Knut Hamsun over the border in Norway). Already at that time, industrial processes were coming to occupy the minds of Swedish designers. The clip of a man carving a spoon illustrates perfectly the point that it is always worth watching a master at their craft. Note the various techniques, different axe and knife grips, supporting the work with the chest, armpit, knee, and his little leather chest apron; a richness of experience and muscle-memory. There is much to be learned from these two minutes of footage.

A longer video from the same newsreel, with chair and clog making, can be found here.

Brasstown Carvers

2012-01-21T22:18:00.023Z

Nolan, J.A., Avery & Pearlie

Ray, Douglas, Dub, Tom, Rome

In 1925 the two ladies Olive Dame Campbell and Olive and Marguerite Butler opened a folk-school in Brasstown, North Carolina, with the aim of supporting and nourishing the local Appalachian folk arts. In the 1930-40 the school became especially known for the products made by its whittlers. Although mostly men were carving at first, women eventually picked it up too, and soon big parts of the local population were producing hand-carved goods. It is said that some families even earned a bigger income carving rather than farming.

Envelope of rotten wood

2012-01-03T23:25:00.009Z

From the Yale digital content....

Envelope of rotten wood

ca. 323 B.C.-A.D. 256

Maker: Unknown

BTWC- 17th meeting at the CRYPT

2011-12-10T14:37:00.011Z

The 17th meeting of BTWC was kindly hosted by The Crypt, a mysterious bar drowned in purple neon-light located in some basement in Frankfurt am Main. Among amethyst stones that protect you from alcohol-poisoning and the smell of lavender, our friend Tim mixed some drinks and offered woody whiskey to all the visitors that dared to put a blade to the test. For those of you who live on the continent and long for a club that can offer you wood and knives to whittle with into the dark hours of the night...watch this space... a German Chapter of BTWC is soon coming to a small town near you...

BTWC FRANKFURT SPECIAL at THE CRYPT

2011-11-30T09:42:00.009Z

1st December, from 5PM, at:

THE CRYPT

Architecture building

Staatliche Hochschule für Bildende Künste - Städelschule

Dürerstraße 10, 60596 Frankfurt am Main

Bleeding Thumb Whittling Club, from London, meets roughly once a month to provide tools, wood, and guidance to those interested in whittling and carving wood. Each meeting has a theme for inspiration, should it be desired.

For our visit to Frankfurt, from one global financial capital to another, the theme is Money. Whittling has always been the choice art of austerity-afflicted populations, but can go badly wrong as carvers turn to making lifeless objects to sell to tourists.

Will whittling survive it's Faustian brush with capitalism? Those tempted, will be given gold-leaf to turn their wooden scrap into gold.

Wood and knives are provided FREE.

Ex Libris

2011-09-23T17:09:00.008+01:00

I whittled this Ex Libris yesterday so that I can put a big fat stamp in all the books that belong to ME (or that i consider to be mine). I guess it could be printed on bits of paper and then glued into the book in traditional fashion as well. The Ex Libris depicts a praying mantis standing on the base-unit of a graphite crystal, and above, my initials in cyrillic.

The Sound of BTWC

2011-09-21T21:05:00.015+01:00

Two mixes produced by the club and Urban Legend/Shrieking Abscess with Brian Moran. One contains sounds plundered from the astounding website folkstreams.net, and one features sonic material produced by members (credits in jpeg below). Below is annotation to the tracks on the folkstream bootleg CD, some jpeg facsimiles of the material associated with the discs (click for bigger versions) and links to the sound files.

Link to download Weaponised Psychedelics Mix Tape

ULSA presents the sound of Folk Streams, listening notes:

Alex Stewart, a cooper, explains what kind of wood is required to make an effective water containing vessel (it must be 1st class).
Explosions and machinery noise in mechanised railway construction are heard, to be contrasted with 10.
Don Stover plays an untitled bluegrass.
Black schoolgirls demonstrate their chants in an LA playground. During this song, the girls form two lines facing each other while individuals take turns dancing down the middle, a prefiguration of the hit TV show "Soul Train".
Work songs of Black Prisoners, sung while axe-felling trees under the gaze of Texas prison guards.
Rare footage and sound from a Southern Baptist sermon. Spontaneous gospel singing and a woman screaming, possessed, can be heard.
A member of an East Tennessee evangelical church talks about taking up serpents, being bitten, and faith.
A contemporary college fraternity activity, "Stepping", is described and recorded.
Runaway teenagers in San Fransisco rap about the day-to-day; a young skinhead exposits his ideological development.
Railway workers (gandy dancers) relate the songs sung to keep time when hammering railway spikes and levering tracks in to true. Several songs are heard, along with the highly rhythmical hammering technique employed.
Fife and drum player Orthar Turner plays a self made flute and talks about this obscure Mississippi-based party music. The relations of polyrhythms in certain African forms, contemporary techno, and this here music are notable.

Link to download Folk Streams bootleg

POM

2011-09-16T16:49:00.005+01:00

We are back!

2011-09-07T12:02:00.005+01:00

Been a long time since last meeting. We have been busy with the side project Facts & Systems and also spent some time traveling in Ukraine, picking up some mean knives. We are going to try these out on a meeting very soon...

You are welcome to join us....

MYCOLOGY

2011-06-03T13:23:00.006+01:00

I wrote this a while back for one of the zines that we produced. Now web-ulized for distant readers:

Three recent forest foragings:

1) End of August: Trent Park, London, UK
------------------------------
Smallest fruit body of a fungus found: 5mm
Largest fruit body: 300mm
------------------------------
In other words, a factor of 60 in linear dimensions. Just one reason to be thrilled by mushrooms. Run, don't walk to your nearest birch forest, where you are liable to find mushrooms and trees engaged in a symbiotic relationship - the tree providing sugar from photosynthesis, the mushroom nutrients leached from microscopic pores in the earth via its mycorrhiza ("mushroom root") - just like little communists, from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs. The mushrooms also absorb and therefore filter out heavy metals and toxins that could harm the tree; this is why you should not eat too many mushrooms from the Chernobyl region of Ukraine, even today.
------------------------------
Colours of mushroom found:
purple, brown, orange, white, yellow (luminescent)
------------------------------

2) Late September: Trukhaniv Island, Kiev, Ukraine
------------------------------
This island sits in the broad low Dnieper River and is accessed by a slightly shabby concrete footbridge. Penetrating beyond the ice-cream huts, winding down as the summer ends, there is an old pleasure bar, unused, now a jolly and grotty pavilion for teenagers and stray dogs to explore. We were told of - but did not see - packs of stray dogs that roam the island, numbering in the low hundreds.

Going further, further past a stagnant inlet where a strange figure loomed in the stinky marsh, there were signs warning against the bite of the tick, which did nothing to slow us.

After half and hour of increasingly grinding walking or shuffling (the sun was out), we realised that walking slowly is more tiring so we puffed out our chests and swung our arms like hikers. The road stretches long before you, each corner reveals a new distant horizon. By the side of the road in young forest are a few dozen fly agaric toadstools. Some are quite fresh, their caps still perfect little spheres, like little red purulent planets. Seeing these, we decided to turn back.

3) Last day of September: Grunewald Forest, Berlin, Germany
------------------------------
We arrived in the forest at about seven AM. After the Second World War, the allies built a hill here using rubble from bombings; it's called Teufelsberg - Devil's Mountain. At the peak they grew a cluster of enormous puffball funghi, a spying station of white-canvased geodesic domes.

Walking through the forest before anyone else, we found mushrooms at every step, starting with a foot high white specimen. Some species huddle together like herd animals, some are interspersed more sparsely, some go it alone. There were shrooms which glowed slightly with bioluminescence or just the morning light, or at least they tricked my eyes, and there were many edible boletes with their characteristic spongy caps.

Past a square of tightly packed allotment-summer house arrangements, up the hill, gaining and losing sight of the geodesics. We exceeded the fence of the Cold War compound and tramped through the dank and up. The view from the tallest radio tower: the sun was low and shining straight at us. A 360-degree view of any city makes it look like lego - here is the airport at Tegel, here is the sports stadium from Albert Speer, several tall masts, one of which must be Alexanderplatz. Berlin seemed to be rather surrounded by forests, unlike London, which is surrounded by more London.

Since it was stripped out when the Americans left, you can only wonder what the radio interception antennae looked like. They must not have been very aerodynamic since they were protected from the wind by these domes. The one at the peak is just more than a hemisphere of fullerene, say 8m radius. Clap your hands and the distinct echos continue for ten seconds, the diffuse reverb for twenty.

By the time we came down from the towers and the mountain, school kids and Russians were digging around for mycology. The mushrooms that were so dewy and vibrating when we arrived were drier and a bit more withdrawn.

Folk Names of Mushrooms
------------------------------
The Sickener
The Blusher
Slimy Milk Cap
Destroying Angel
The Deceiver
Velvet Shank
Bleeding Bonnet
Cramp Balls

Concerning the Film "Shrooms"
------------------------------
The horror movie "Shrooms" (tag-line: Blair Witch on acid) is about a Very Upsetting Camping Trip in which annoying American kids go to Ireland to take magic mushrooms, but they take the wrong magic mushrooms, and they all die. It portrays Irish people as shiftless and inbred. “Shrooms” was funded by the Irish Film Board. If you wish to see this film, please contact us and we will lend it to you. Please do not buy this film.

15th meeting - Come modify some wood

2011-05-22T08:25:00.007+01:00

The form of wood, for instance, is altered if a table is made out of it. Nevertheless the table continues to be wood, an ordinary sensible thing. But as soon as it emerges as a commodity, it changes into a thing that transcends sensuousness. It not only stands with its feet on the ground, but, in relation to all other commodities, it stands on its head, and evolves out of its wooden brain grotesque ideas, far more wonderful than if it were dancing of its own free will.

- Karl Marx,

from 'the Fetish Character of the Commodity and its Secret' , Capital, 1873

Marx is known to have relaxed from his activities in economics and philosophy by solving problems from differential calculus. At BTWC 15, we suggest relaxation not with the swooping and turning infinitesimals of calculus, but the flowing and streamlined wood grain.

Fish by Nick.

Pip´s stuff

Little Jack made a lady hugging a horse.

Cut of the Week

2011-05-21T19:47:00.008+01:00

On our last meeting Ben B cut him self really bad. I mean REALLY bad! You can not tell from the fuzzy picture above which is good, because although it did not bleed much and the blade missed important ligaments, this one was so graphic even thinking about it makes me sick. Apparently he was having some heated conversation at the time of the accident. I later examined his piece of whittling and there was a definite dangerous path for the knife in it.

6 hours at the A&E next to drunk city-boys. 3 stitches.

be ware

take care

Lou

2011-05-21T19:30:00.006+01:00

This is some pieces I whittled a couple months ago for Lou Dalton's AW2011 menswear show. I used reddish pear-wood for a change from the bland lime-wood and it was surprisingly pleasant to work with. Pear is harder and more dense then lime so the detail comes out really nice and there is hardly any burr in tight spots. It is of course also harder to work, thus more blisters.

Hugo

2011-05-14T19:02:00.004+01:00

Hugo is a very skilled weaver that usually makes scarves and other things. He carved this pattern in a block of wood when he was visiting some time ago. I used it to print on some paper, but I guess it could be used on textiles too. If we ever create a new Bauhaus, Hugo will be in charge of the textiles workshop.

14th Meeting - Hotel Garderobe

2011-04-27T12:42:00.000+01:00

For the past few days the sun has bombarded us with streams of photons, so we hid away in a dark hole in a half-abandoned building to conduct experiments. This time around the whittling-club was hosted by "Hotel Garderobe" - a secret cinema run by whittling-club member Adam in a hole through his wardrobe.

Specially made poster for 14th meeting

Photocopy hand-out and whittling by Jack.

Tooth by Jamie J J

Flower by Lawrence

Nothing

2011-04-25T12:40:00.005+01:00

The Swedish writer Biger Vikström wrote in 1958 a short-story called 'En Kofés'. He describes a man who enters a lumber-workers camp and finds them busy at work whittling small objects. Surprised at the abandonment of usual activities like card-playing or story-telling, he asks the cook to explain what is going on. The cook says that they are whittling Kofés, which are objects that need to be executed following two rules:

A Kofés may look anyway.

A Kofés may not resemble anything but itself (it may not resemble any dead or living thing).

The challenge seems easy at first and the man gets totally absorbed whittling. The first rule is easy enough, but the second one starts to pose problems as the man cant keep forms from materializing in his piece. No matter what he does he keeps seeing limbs or objects take shape in the wood. He slowly realizes the futility of his attempt and gives up.

Cut of the week

2011-04-25T11:28:00.004+01:00

This cut is not sustained from whittling. Jack´s quick development in the art of knife-sharpening has turned every blunt piece of metal into a razor. I was just cutting some lettuce.

Chairs show

2011-04-21T23:33:00.002+01:00

12th Meeting at Rachmaninoff's

2011-02-27T12:11:00.019Z

Big thanks to Maggie and Matthew of Rachmaninoff's Gallery for hosting the 12th meeting of BTWC. Thanks, too, to all of the new faces who came and endured small nicks and pricks in the pursuit of creation. Next meeting soon, soon.

The concentrated whittlers sat for hours among facsimile copies of Californian aspen trees defaced by lonely Basque herders.

Adam's work. Salty chocolates on a carved tree-stump.

Abstract collaboration between Maeve and Sophie.

leaf by Arielle

Spartacus whittle

Hair-pin by Pip.

Head by Miles

Unfinished pipe by Lyle

A really cool crown by Louise

Lama sort of comb by Leonn

Whale by Laura

Kuni has made another spoon.

Daisy Duck´s shoe by Ksenia

Even Misha ventured into whittling

Julian´s carving.

Fake flute by Jamie.

Jacob's work

Don't know who did this one...

Cigarette holder by Erika

Camille´s?

Knife and fuzzy stick by Ben T

Green lime-wood carving by new Ben

Adam bird

Aspen

2011-02-18T23:08:00.001Z

In the mid 19th century a lot of young Basque men emigrated to America to make a living. They clustered in the American West where they obtained work as sheep herders. For months in a row they would spend their time in remote parts of the forest with no other company then the sheep. In the aspen groves of California one can find the expression of the loneliness and homesickness that these herders suffered. There are thousands of trees marked with images and names.

A lot of these show naked women, meeting you at eye-level as you pass through the forest. The dark outline of their curves shine clear against the white bark of the trees.

---------------------------

In Utah there is an aspen colony believed to be one of the largest and oldest organisms in the world.

Although it consists of 47 000 stems, it is connected through an underground network of roots. It is believed to be genetically one single male Aspen and it is called “Pando” which in latin means 'I spread'.

Long-legged nude woman. Pic from here.

Pando

12th Meeting

2011-02-04T19:20:00.003Z

Bleeding Thumb Whittling Club at Rachmaninoff's
Wednesday 9th of February 6-12pm

As well as all as all of the usual activities, we are pleased to present two new outputs -- audio CDs -- one with sound work by members, the other containing sound culled from American folklore films, which could be called the aural equivalent of whittling.

We invite you to the twelfth meeting of the BTWC at Rachmaninoff's, to take part in the wood shaving, to consume pickles and coffee (sharp), to take part in the tacit decision of a group to sit in hush, cutting, cutting.

Everyone welcome, tools and wood supplied.

A display connected with the event is viewable by appointment Thursday and Friday 10,11 February.

Rachmaninoff's

First floor, Unit 106
301 Kingsland Road
London E8 4DS
t +44 (0)20 7275 0757
www.rachmaninoffs.com

Molecular carving

2011-02-03T18:39:00.002Z

The geometric layering of so called 'tramp-art' reminded me of models of molecular structures so I post some images here of boxes from Folkartisans (where you can find more info on this particular chip-carving technique) and molecules from the blog Machine Phase about nano-engineering.

Better than Johnny Mnemonic

2010-12-27T23:00:00.003Z

A carrier of secret digital information....

BTWC at bStore

2010-12-07T16:41:00.004Z

BLEEDING THUMB WHITTLING CLUB AT b STORE

b Store
24A Savile Row
W1S 3PR

OPENING Wednesday December 1st, 7 - 9PM

Whittling -- to reduce or eliminate gradually. The word applies as much to an action performed on wood with a knife as it does to some mediation between physical being and an abstract notion such as TIME. For over a year now, Bleeding Thumb Whittling Club has provided tools and wood, pickles and coffee, to those who wish to explore the realm of whittling.

Whittling is an intrinsically modest occupation, yet precisely as such, BTWC views it as a kind of de-alienation process; an effective way to engage with robust experiences of temporality and materiality. Starting out, you can obtain an excellent knife for the price of a pizza; you don't need much wood, so even exotic varieties are cheap (or free, as off-cuts from someone's fancy work-top (or you can go to a forest and whittle what you find there in light filtered through birch leaves and reflected off its white bark)).

Our broader interest in the role of craft versus alienation in the advanced industrial age has led us to look at a score of previous responses to this question. Following Appalachian self-sufficiency culture in pre-war America and the post-hippy "Back to the Land" movement which descended from it, one member has created a rudimentary banjo which will be played on the opening night. Another part of our exhibition touches on the early years of the Bauhaus school of design, where focus was on workshop activity as a way of learning. We are also pleased to present our second publication, where among other things, a utopian marriage of these viewpoints is discussed.

Cut of the Week

2010-12-03T00:31:00.004Z

Jack´s most recent cut

It seems as though we had a dip in number of cuts for a while. Maybe because there has been less alcohol and more coffee, or maybe because we have sharper knives and more skill & patience. Who knows...

But you can never escape them really. Ever.

10th meeting - Bauhaus

2010-12-02T23:09:00.002Z

In later stages of its development, the Bauhaus school of design inculcated its students by having them recite the chant "das Quadrat ist rot, das Dreieck gelb, der Kreis blau" ("the square is red, the triangle yellow, the circle blue") every hour, on the hour. All forms not composed of geometric primitives were forbidden, thus everyone wore circular (or equilateral-triangular) spectacles.

Sorry! I lied; it's not true. However, this kind of misunderstanding is commonly trotted out at the mention of the Bauhaus. We at BTWC know better however, and wish to explore and recover the early years of the Bauhaus project: speculation, the role of craft in industrial society, even expressionism. These strands come together in the carvings at the Haus Sommerfeld near Berlin, a building by founder Walter Gropius in 1921. This is the stimulus for our next meeting.

Photocopy hand-out for 10th meeting. Whittlings roaming in Haus Sommerfeld

Utopia

The meeting, our tenth, also marks a year of existence for the club (in fact it's been a bit longer, we just didn't keep track). Since it is a birthday, we will have cake. And we will always have pickles.

Mark is about to cut the cake with his newly made pear-wood utensil

Whittlings by Jacob

Comb by Pete

The Oxfam spoon by Mark

Jacob on the bandsaw. Cheating, but oh so simple.

YSL by Gery

Ben T started on his Bauhaus graveyard

Cut of the Week - Square is Red

2010-12-01T00:21:00.001Z

- CIRCLE IS BLUE!
- TRIANGLE YELLOW!
-SQUARE IS RED!

From 10th meeting; Gery´s cut of the week...

OMG! Where did you get that Bauhaus graveyard...

2010-11-27T00:05:00.004Z

Collaboration between Ben T and Maeve

Paul Klee, teacher at the Bauhaus

Walter Gropius, founder of the Bauhaus

László Moholy-Nagy, instructor of the foundation course

Owl by Jana

Wassily Kandinsky, teacher in color-theory

John Dillinger is a Hero of Whittling

2010-11-23T23:46:00.005Z

Dillinger, right.

John Dillinger, bank robber, is a hero of whittling. Having previously busted out of jail with smuggled rifles and the accomplices who would eventually form his first high profile bank robbing gang, JD -- finding himself incarcerated once again -- whittled a gun from a wooden washboard, coloured it black with shoe polish, and escaped once more using the facsimile firearm.

Here the story is somewhat obscured by myth, contradiction, and Wiki-facts. It is speculated that the gun was in fact fabricated by police to cover up the embarrassing fact that Dillinger had successfully received smuggled firearms in prison, again, or to distract from a different truth, that he simply bribed his way out.

But the whittled gun story holds water. In a post-breakout photograph, Dillinger is pictured holding a Tommy gun and a small rudimentary looking gun, which could well be wooden. The John Dillinger Museum of Hammond, IN, has shown a gun claiming to be the one in the picture; it has a rounded barrel and, for want of enough wood, only a partial handle. In use, the missing handle area would be covered by the hand, rendering it convincing. Ineffectually gouged into the side is the legend “COLT 38”, an example of JD’s sarcastic sense of humour, maybe. This gun, however, is manifestly not the item sold on historical auction site Heritage Auction Galleries for $19,120 in December 2009. That gun has a rather square barrel, and several other differing features. According to that website, there are three guns with credible claims to being the one used by JD. This one came down through the Dillinger family; think of that what you will.

John Dillinger display at BTWC show with a copy of the copy of a Colt 38

There are several notable points of craft on the gun. The replica of the facsimile which was produced by Bleeding Thumb member Jana is fairly uncomfortable to hold. In the photo with JD, the same awkward grip that I was forced to use can also be seen. Several intriguing details are listed on the Heritage Auctions description: that the barrel was lined with a little copper pipe – to reflect light with the characteristic metallic glint that anyone familiar with guns would expect and recognise? That small nails were used to create the illusion of sights on the weapon – the tiny details of silhouette that an artist or expert knows will complete an illusion. On creation, the black shoe polish coating the gun would have had the deep gleam of burnished steel. Seeing it wielded with confidence by the swaggering Dillinger, it is easy to imagine being convinced. Internet forums debate how JD could have gotten the knife to whittle the board, but the construction could certainly have been carried out with an old style flat razor-blade.

Dillinger is sometimes looked upon as a Depression-era Robin Hood figure, but from my readings, his redistribution of wealth was not significant. More endearing is the sense of audacity he embodies, like Bonnie and Clyde, in moving in an arena of bluster and romanticised anti-morality which cannot be explored today. Robbing banks with a big mouth and sticking it to J Edgar Hoover personally, and good for him too! John Dillinger was eventually killed by the feds in an ambush outside a movie theatre. The fatal wound entered the back of his neck. He was running towards an alleyway and had not yet drawn a gun.

The cinema in Chicago where Dillinger died

Ply-pattern

2010-11-14T00:14:00.004Z

Blades on my mind

2010-11-08T22:30:00.008Z

First using, and then collecting knives, you eventually end up wanting to make one yourself. So I made a knife some time ago & decided recently to try to do it more regularly. I´m not in the position to make my own blades quite yet so I stick with my pre-made favorite; the 'Erik Frost 120', and concentrate on the handle design for now. The first few knives have been very simple and traditionally Scandinavian, but since Jack started to leave Japanese tools around the wood-workshop I kind of got the desire to make a knife inspired by the Japanese Kiridashi knives.

The Kiridashi is a general utility knife used for cutting, marking or carving. They have a simple chisel ground edge and look a bit like a scalpel since they don´t normally have a handle. What interested me in these blades is the way that they are sometimes inset in a block of wood where one continuous bit is used as both handle and sheath. I tried to use this technique but with a long Mora blade. Im not sure of the technical success of this combination, but the looks are sort of in the right spirit. This knife wont be any good for chopping so I´ll give it to my mom with the hope that she will use it to cut her Polish sausage using the paring/pull cut.

Walnut wood and aluminium inlays

Rock, Paper, Scissors; Steel versus Stone

2010-11-03T15:11:00.001Z

Steel beats wood, stone beats steel...

In the course of whittling wood, especially harder woods like pear, box, and lignum vitae, it is not unusual for the edge of one's blade to become round, rubbish, and worthless. Don't throw it away! You must sharpen it! But how? With all that time taken to carefully select your perfect knife, equally you must find your ideal method of sharpening.

What is a sharp edge?

A nice maxim regarding edges: "A sharp edge is the intersection of two mirror polished surfaces".

We can think about this on a microscopic scale. When a blade is blunt, it is rounded over. When ground, it gets a sharp cross-section, but it has microscopically tiny jagged teeth along the edge. When used, these will bend over and stop the blade working well. The aim of using finer and finer sharpening stones is to make these teeth small, smaller, vanishing, then you have a nice glass-like edge. Ow. The angle of the edge determines how tough it will be, and only the very last part of the edge needs to be highly polished...

Sharpening Stones

The usual way of sharpening is on a set of sharpening stones. If your blade is badly chipped (chips 1mm or bigger) or the sides of the bevel rusted, you may need to use a coarse stone (coarse=grinding), something like a few hundred grit. If you can't be bothered to buy this stone, you can clip some wet-and-dry paper of a similar grit to a perfectly flat surface - I use a granite pastry block from Sainsbury's.

After you've got the chips out and the sides are clean, you can move on to the medium stone (800-1200 grit, medium=sharpening), then the fine (3000+, fine=honing). I use a Japanese combination water-stone which is 1000 on one side and 6000 on the other. The last stage in sharpening a knife is to use a leather strop to buff it. This is simply a piece of leather nailed to a block of wood which polishes the cutting edge, and can be used at the end of each whittling session to prolong the life of the edge. It only takes on the order of a few minutes on each stone to get the blade sharp.

Once the edge of the blade is honed, it is usually sufficient to use just the fine stone and strop to maintain the edge, unless heavy work dings it out of shape.

Information abounds on the net regarding how to sharpen knives, much of it contradictory of course. These gents talk primarily from the point of view of kitchen knives but I find their explanations on the motion involved in sharpening to be helpful:

Expert Village
Murray Carter

Some more technical info can be found here:

Fine Tools 1
Fine Tools 2

This is in contrast to one web-page that I came across that would have you believe sharpening a chisel takes 12 hours -- when would you get to use the thing? There are many techniques, and the only way to understand them is to try them out; ultimately, you will know that you are sharpening well because your blade will get sharp. Do not get discouraged! It takes a little trial and error.

There exist both oil-stones and Japanese water-stones. oil-stones last pretty much forever while water-stones eventually wear out. In my experience, water-stones are quicker and easier to use. Because of their fast action, I would especially recommend them if your knife is of very hard stainless steel, but then I would recommend them anyway. I use a 1000 and a 6000 grit water-stone and finish with a strop. The blade achieved is sharp enough to shave with (if you are a sailor and can take a rather tough shave). However, I also have oil-stones, including a very fine and old one purchased from Deptford market. For some reason, I like to sharpen certain tools on the water-stones, and certain on the oil-stones -- I've no idea why.

BTWC offers knife-sharpening services and instruction, in fact we always have.

Japanese Tools 1 -- Nokogiri (Saws)

2010-11-03T10:22:00.003Z

"Form follows function" is a truism, so where do we find it lacking explanatory power? Several familiar tools take interesting twists in design in Japan. For instance, while Western saws cut on the push stroke, Japanese cut on the pull, placing the blade under tension and keeping it straight.

Let me relate the story of this impressive saw. Before the advent of mechanised milling, these Maebiki-Nokogiri were used in Japan to mill raw lumber down to flat boards. The huge flat body is to guide the blade straight along the entire length of the tree. Note also the teeth -- smaller near the handle for initiating the cut then more coarse further along, a standard feature of Japanese saws. It was said that the sawyer who used the one in the picture was over six feet tall and ate two litres of rice at each meal. Said also that he, a master of his trade, would serve tea to his apprentice. How cool.

Whittling at the Woodmill

2010-10-21T23:09:00.004+01:00

Our 9th meeting took place at the Woodmill studios in connection with the Heat Haze outdoor sound seminars. We had the pleasure to whittle while listening to Mark Pilkington's talk on 'Western occult tradition, told through British popular music' & the evening ended with a screening of William Eggelston´s film ´Stranded in Canton´.

Note plaster

Little horse on pillow by Ksenia

Multi-tailed cat by Jana

soft object by some visitors

A young boy called Liam dropped by the Woodmill and did some whittling while on his way home. Staying out way longer than he really should, he figured he could appease his mothers rage by whittling her this heart.

Cat by Little Jack

Jack´s finished spoon.

Paper Birch

2010-10-17T13:40:00.002+01:00

There is a street in north London lined with Paper birch trees. The thin bark is peeling of the trunks in crisp layers and if you get hold of a piece you can pull it right of in the size of a page. The bark can be separated into extremely thin, but still durable and flexible sheets, a quality that explains why it was frequently used as an early writing material. There has been hundreds of old Birch bark letters uncovered around the Novgorod area in Russia. Some of them date back as early as the 11th century. The famous mathematical Bakhshali manuscript was also written on birch bark and is believed to be from somewhere between 200 BC - 300 AD. It might be one of the earliest documents to use the concept of zero (0).

Soviet knives

2010-10-04T19:22:00.005+01:00

These knives were made by my grandfather a long time ago in Ukraine during the scarce days of the USSR. It was very hard to get hold of a lot of things so my granddad made these in the factory where he worked from some scrap. Pretty nice job with proper rivets and so on.

Trent Park

2010-08-30T23:09:00.017+01:00

A couple of us decided to take a trip out to a forest to try some green wood whittling. During the seasoning (drying) process (which may take some years for large logs), wood loses around 40% of its mass as water leaves the fibres, leaving the wood stable and unlikely to crack or warp too much when it is finally used. Before this has occurred, the wood is called green. Green wood is usually much softer and is frequently used for carving smaller or disposable objects where stability over time is not important.

We settled on Trent Park in North London and as we arrived and started to make our way through the oak-woods we decided to penetrate the forest beyond the designated paths. Our explorative spirit brought us to crawling through dense vegetation of fern and nettles for ten minutes before we gave up and made our way back to the trails.

Most of the fallen wood in the forest was in a semi-disintegrated state and so totally unsuitable for whittling but were on the other hand a perfect growing ground for mushrooms. We were instantly mesmerized by the fungi life-form and abandoned our search for wood in favor of the bizarre and diverse species of mushrooms.

We came across a great many different types. Slimy, dry, miniature and some that looked like an exploded alien. The most useful mushroom for a whittler is probably the birch bracket (also known as razor strop fungus) which - sliced and dried - can be used to get a really fine edge when honing of a knife.

Characteristic spongy cap of the bolete family of mushrooms

As we strolled out of the woodlands and onto the open fields, we came across a dislocated limb from an oak-tree that Jack cut up with the foldable saw. The wood was very damp and quite hard, but we still managed to carve some odd spoons.

On the way home, we drove past the 1930s Piccadilly Line extension's beautiful stations at Southgate, Oakwood, etc., built in a kind of English garden city-Bauhaus-Stijl, geometric fundaments and elegant window frames.

Wood frame

2010-08-30T22:22:00.005+01:00

My sisters wooden frame glasses. Think they are made by some Japanese designer.

Some Show

2010-08-20T18:50:00.004+01:00

This is some images from the first BTWC show a couple of months ago. More can be checked out on our flikr page shortly.

Bird by Alex

This fantastic wood-suit was made by Urara and the accompanying cat hat is made by Anna.

Different woods on display and Lyle´s head

Knives and an ulu in the center made by Mark from a cross-cut of a railway track, ebony, and copper pins.

Study for whittlings by Shelly

A close-up of whittling by Adam C

Beer-God by Brian

The BTWC zine, poster, and a copy of serpent-box used by religious snake handlers in USA. Serpents were made for the box as a part of our show program.

Jack held a talk on the mathematical basis of the patterns found in plywood.

Homer plaque by Jack

Freak in a cage by Jana

A small display about John Dillinger, the infamous criminal who managed to escape from prison using a secretly carved wooden gun.

Spoons

2010-08-13T18:43:00.000+01:00

These spoons were done by Jamie, an old-time BTWC member.

While on residency in Rotterdam a couple of months ago, he set up a whittling club in his studio, all properly equipped and furnished with homemade wooden furniture including a Rietveldt pallet-chair.

The spoon above was made by Millie and the crazy spoons below are from the digital database of the British Museum

BEE

2010-07-27T18:40:00.000+01:00

I whittled the bee below after seeing a really nice gilded carving of a bee from the throne of Thibaw Min in the Pitt Rivers museum in Oxford. There are many useful products that originates from the honeybee and that are of great use in wood work. The various applications of bees-wax is well known, but there is also such substances as propolis which are used by instrument makers since ancient times to give the wood a beautiful stain.

Thibaw Min, the last king of Burma

Bees are in general received with much less hostility and disgust than other insects, which is totally understandable. Besides that they make delicious honey, there is actually almost nothing that is not cool about them. They live in a geometric grid with a queen and feed their kids some weird stuff potruding from their heads called royal jelly. When the queen needs to be replaced they all gather round her and give her the "cuddle-death" by overheating her. Then they nurse a couple new virgin-queens which after they have hatched will fight each other (under a battle-cry called piping) till there is only one left.

The two pictures above were taken at the Horniman museum where one could see the internal workings of the hive between two panes of glass. One of the guys that worked there pointed out to us the waggle dance that the bees do when they try to communicate to each other the direction of the best flowers.

A confused and tired bumble bee taking a break on my shoulder.

A good article about bees from Cabinet Magazine.

Fish &c. -- the 8th meeting of the BTWC

2010-07-24T17:41:00.015+01:00

Photocopy hand-out for the 8th meeting

Definition from etymonline.com:

scrimshaw: 1864, back-formation from scrimshander ("Moby Dick," 1851), scrimshonting (1825), Amer.Eng. nautical word, of unknown origin. Scrimshaw is an Eng. surname, attested from 1154, from O.Fr. escremisseor "fencing-master."

Arrrrrrrrrhhhh. Skrimshanders avast. Whittling mediates all sorts of social and artistic functions; the word applies as much to an action performed on some material as it does to one performed on an abstract notion, such as TIME. During months at sea, sailors, and particularly whalers, passed time carving in the tooth and bone of their catches, creating an art form known as scrimshaw. In the 1980s, our voracious demand for soft ice cream made with delicious whale-blubber brought whales to the brink of extinction, so we now have to carve in wood.
Recommended Reading: Chapter 57 of Herman Melville's Moby - Dick, or, the Whale
Recommended Viewing: Bart the Fink esp. Captain Macallister's scene with Handsome Pete.

Whittlers assemble

Ben T started on his Montauk monster. A mysterious creature from the sea.

Sheeran made a bundle of rope

Ray with Ray-bans

Cut of the week: Jacob laughs hysterically, thinking he has cut off his fingertip. It turned out to be ok, but the blade went through the fingernail.

Spherical oyster-like object by Millie

Scrimshaw by Jack. Basically just pencil on cuttle-fish bone.

This comb by Ben T is yet to be finished

Cuttlefish figure by Jana

Think Jamie whittled this one.

This unfinished head was whittled by Jamie out of aromatic cedar.

The chills of death by Adam

Moss and Co. of Hammersmith

2010-07-21T20:57:00.005+01:00

Here we found pear and lime wood, scraps of wenge and mahogany, and the yard man told us that a palette of ebony invested in ten years ago would have quadrupled in value by now. Here I recall an anecdote from Brian: Tate Modern's architects intended the entire staircase to be housed in ebony, but there wasn't enough left in the world.

The yard man also told us how we could speed up seasoning wood without a kiln, if we could only find a car spray shop willing to let us stick our logs in for a few weeks while they baked paint jobs.

It's worth the trip to Hammersmith to walk around the storage sheds where boards of redwood 25 feet high stand on end, and where you can rummage through the scrap pile, where cheap Russian pine from a destroyed palette lies next to enough fancy walnut to make a guitar neck, and to talk to the yard man, who knows a very great deal about wood.

An e-mail

2010-07-16T18:43:00.006+01:00

BTWC recently received an email from Douglas, the creator of the nice insect Netsuke below. Douglas also makes detailed handmade replicas of insects which you can check out here + you can check out his terrible (post)bleeding thumb here.

Grasshopper made out of cherry wood

This netsuke is carved out of a single piece of red
aromatic cedar and sealed with a laquer/urethane finish.

Snake cult meeting

2010-07-12T00:51:00.003+01:00

As a part of our show-program, we did a meeting on the theme of the serpent-handling sect of Appalachia, which Jack has written a post about previously. Jana built a traditional serpent box and the members did various species of snakes to go into the box to keep safe until our next faith-testing meeting.

Photocopy hand-out for the 7th meeting

Camden Lock-style snake by Ella

Friendly snake by Fraser

This snake was made by Mark. It has a metal rod body and whittled tail and head.

A finger by Fraser. Fraser´s finger.

Knife also by Fraser.

Ben T did a tattoo tool.

Gery and Mark whittling. Note: Gery is whittling away from herself.

Stretching and folding topological snake by Jack.

Can be worn like this.

Slithery snake by Jana

Snake by Amy called Dustin

Snake food

Little Jack is whittling a straight snake.

Coffee & Beer

Inside wood

2010-06-13T20:41:00.007+01:00

This is just a couple of the 35,000 slides in the InsideWood database of images showing anatomical details of different trees.

Jack´s Knife

2010-06-07T19:29:00.007+01:00

I wanted to make Jack a knife for his birthday, and could not be bothered to make my own blade so so I ordered these Mora blanks from Moonraker Knives on internet. I used the smaller blade for this particular knife as it is the same size as on the Erik Frost knives that we usually use for whittling.

Sawed of a bit of the tang.

Had a long cut-off of walnut with one side that was very flat so I cut two bits, left the flat side untouched, and rounded off the rest of it. I made a score in the shape of the tang on each bit so as to fit the flat sides perfectly around the blade.

I could not find any ready-made bolster that fitted the Mora blade so I made one myself out of aluminium. Needed to be sawed and polished so probably a hell making one out of harder metals without machinery.

The bits were glued together with Araldite in a vice and the handle whittled into a proper shape after it was all set.

The handle was easier to finish off and sandpaper when there was some masking-tape on the blade to protect it.

The past few days the weather has been really hot and Perrier tastes the best from a can so there has been quite a few of those lying around the kitchen. Used one of the can bottoms, where the aluminium is a bit thicker, to cut out a litter anchor J to be inset into the wood.

After it is all sandpapered and oiled.

I also carved a little face at the end of the knife.

Time: a lazy weekend

Beers: no beers, 2 can Perrier

Fifth and Sixth

2010-06-04T18:07:00.001+01:00

As mentioned earlier, our fifth and sixth meetings were inspired by the Kachina dolls. Although the earliest Kachina dolls are basically rudimentary carved flat bits of wood, a lot of the later ones are decorated with feathers, textiles, and fur so as to resemble clothing, or emphasize frightening features. For us some hair-weave from the local wig-shop and a couple of stuffed animals from a charity shop provided some good substitutes to work with. The usual big jar of pickles was on the 5th meeting exchanged for a buffet of biscuits and for the 6th meeting we built a coconut altar out of peoples contributions of tropical fruit.

Leila´s snake

Figure by Urara

Hair-pin by Shiraz

Some sign by Oscar

Coffin and alien by Lyle

Kiwi by John

Bone and... eh..something by Jacob

Lion by Gwennan

Amy´s camel

Cut of the week (from 6th meeting)

2010-06-03T23:48:00.008+01:00

Ksenia got the first decent cut (above), but it could hardly be matched by the one Shelly got a bit later where she cut off a solid chunk of skin which landed on the handle of the knife (below).

5th Meeting

2010-06-01T14:08:00.002+01:00

Photocopy hand-outs for 5th meeting

Lyle´s shrunken head

Shelly´s bust

Pete started on a head

Leila made a ring and had probably the cut of the week (hidden by the plaster) as she stabbed herself quite badly with a crap chisel from a pound-store.

Jamie´s unfinished double link

Jacob´s second attempt of the evening. Before this one he made some alien-walrus he was not happy with. Dunno where it´s gone.

Gwennan defaced an unwanted present. It was made
out of some weird white wood that turned out very cool.

Meave and Ben T in one of their successful collaborations.

Bleeding Thumb Show

2010-05-24T19:19:00.005+01:00

Welcome to the 1st show of the Bleeding Thumb Whittling Club

From the 29 of may at 85 Kingsland High Street

The show will go on till 6th of June so please feel free to join us in any of our events during the week if you can't make it to the opening, or make an appointment to visit out-of-hours (whittlingclub@gmail.com). The 5th and 6th of June the show will be open between 12 and 6pm.

The opening will also be the launch of a catalogue and fanzine, featuring reproductions of some of the best BTWC imagery, writings from the blog, and new texts.

---------------------------------------
Program
--------------------------------------

We will be showcasing various works made by members throughout the week and the opening will also be the occasion for the release of the BTWC back catalogue

Join us for the opening on Saturday the 29th of June between 3pm and 9pm or the next day for a brunch between 1.30pm-3.30pm.

On bank-holiday Monday the 31 of May we will be showing films connected to John Dillinger, the infamous criminal who managed to escape from prison using a secretly carved wooden gun, of which we will have a facsimile on display. First up at 7pm is "Public Enemies", a thriller starring Johnny Depp as John Dillinger and Christan Bale as the F.B.I agent Melvin Purvis. After that we will show "Manhattan Melodrama" starring Clark Gable, the film that John Dillinger saw shortly before he was shot outside a cinema by feds in a sting operation.

On Wednesday at 6.30pm we will have a whittling club meeting on the theme of the Serpent Handling Cult of Appalachia which Jack came across on his travels through middle-America. The religion is based on a literal interpretation of a passage from Book of Mark, Chapter 16, verses 17-18:

"And these signs shall follow those that believe: In my name they shall cast out demons; they shall speak with new tongues; they shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover."

We will have a serpent-box which will need to be filled with whittled snakes so bring any odd stick you find and we will provide the knives and other materials for you to turn the stick into a poisonous reptile (RSVP to whittlingclub@gmail.com).

The 5th and 6th of June will be the last days of the show so keep you eyes on the blog where we will update with information about any possible events for these days.

San Francisco

2010-05-24T14:51:00.005+01:00

For hundreds of years the native populations in North America have followed the Kachina system of beliefs. Several of the so called pueblo people of the "Four corners" in the southwest of the continent adhered to it, but the Hopi & Zuni are maybe the ones that are most closely associated with rituals based around the Kachinas.

A Kachina is a spirit that can refer to anything in the universe. It can be an animal or a being of some sort, but they can also represent something abstract like a concept. These spirits, which occupy a fog-like parallel universe to ours (like in the smoke of a burning object or the steam of exhaled air), were given figurative features so that the humans could interact with the forces they represented. It was believed that when a person died their spirit would travel to the west to become a Kachina and then return as a cloud, a conviction that led to the practice of putting wet cotton in a cloud-like manner on the face of the dead.

Zuni Kachina "Salamopea Kohana Ansuwa"

The kachinas are said to live on the San Francisco Peaks near Flagstaff, Arizona. They would spend half of the year in the mountains and the other half they would come down to dance with the people in the villages and bring them rain. The number of actual Kachina spirits is hard to pin down since the characters are in a constant flux, but the number is probably somewhere between 200 and 400 with some of them occupying a more permanent and important position.

Pethla She Woha

Atashlaskja Okya

Besides representing the Kachinas by dressing up as them during dance ceremonies, the Hopi would illustrate the different spirits by carving them out of cottonwood root. Although they are refereed to as Kachina dolls, and would be given by the Hopi men to the young girls of the tribe, they would not be played with as toys. Today these decorative figures are popular collectors items and have been sadly diluted into a sea of reproductions and tourist souvenirs.

For the past two meeting BTWC has let it self be inspired by the Kachinas. We are uncertain if there has been any contact made with the spirits in the San francisco peaks, but we know for sure that there is kindred souls down in the town. Derek from the Curiosity shop on Valencia Street in San Francisco has opened a new chapter of the whittling club; Bleeding Thumb Whittling Club SF. We thank him greatly for taking interest in the club, for bringing more whittling to the world and hopefully providing a new home for two of our whittlers, Brian & Neet, who have just left us (they are not dead, just took the plane) this week to go and live in the west.

You can check out the amazing stuff made by BTWC-SF here and here.

The Photographs above are from the collections of Brooklyn Museum.

Lemon wedge Kachina by Meave & Ben T

Hair Kachina by Jack

Coco one-jo

2010-05-23T10:44:00.010+01:00

I whittled and sawed and drilled this one-string banjo, else one-jo, or else really just a coconut monochord. The monochord is a right old instrument, being as it is - among other things - the tool with which Pythagoras investigated and laid out the principles of integer ratio consonance in sound.

The tuning peg, bridge, and bridge peg are all whittled from some nice dark walnut wood. The body is a coconut half (natch), and the neck is some worthless ply that gave me splinters throughout construction (I think the veneer was the main culprit). The neck intersects the body twice, and there is no gluing involved - the parts are just held together by the friction and tension inherent in tightening the string (a 12 gauge Ernie Ball). All surfaces were finished with a blade.

Coconut shell is pleasing material to whittle; similar to a peach pit only darker and perhaps a bit softer. It is similarly free of grain and has a lot of potential for figuration I suspect - poor man's ebony; black bone.

Sonic considerations. The bridge is rather heavy, and is at present attached to the neck; this could certainly be improved upon. A lighter bridge and some sort of membrane or sound board would increase the volume. I have a bit of paper in there at the moment which amplifies things - who knows why... The tone is good though, and it has a great deal of sustain. In terms of playing the little thing, I am using a pebble to "fret" it, in a similar style to the berimbau player, and knocking out pentatonic airs.

Time: four hours
Beers: two "Moretti"

Viviennes skull

2010-05-02T15:28:00.010+01:00

On a previous occasion I copied a design of a bow-tie that the Log Lady is wearing in twin peaks. Continuing this reproduction of wooden details, I whittled a simple small skull that has been seen worn by Vivenne Westwood in various photographs.

Eternal wood

2010-04-17T15:01:00.008+01:00

A friend gave me this big chunk of petrified wood some time ago so that I could add it to my collection of minerals. As I remember it he got it on a family vacation in Arizona where there was loads of petrified wood lying around at the back of some gas-station. He packed his back pack full but had to hand over most of it at the border because of some legal restrictions. I might have misremembered most of the story, but the origin of this chunk is probably accurate as Arizona is filled with sites where there is vast petrified forests.

A piece of petrified wood is a sort of fossil that forms when the wood gets buried under sediment for hundreds of years. Encapsulation of the wood in the protective and oxygen-free environment of the sediment, enables mineral-rich water to slowly replace decaying organic cells one by one with everlasting crystals in various colors. This process preserves the structure of the wood in such a way that one can even make out the year rings of individual logs.

This image is from the Petrified Forest National Park in Arizona

Scattered logs

Chopping butter

2010-03-27T13:22:00.003Z

A better way of buttering your toast by Ksenia.

What members found in the wood

2010-03-20T17:42:00.011Z

John´s previously featured pineapple. Improved and painted.

Tooth by Ksenia

Neet´s head

A classic whittled chain by Jacob. All from one piece.

Jack´s Homer next to the smallest size of Opinel.

Brian brought his own wood to whittle. It was a comb that

he wanted to turn into a demon but that ended up being a pre-historic fish.

Unknown whittler

A man by Adam

Tree by Billy

Billy´s touch on Amy´s head

4th Meeting of the BTWC

2010-03-15T23:04:00.001Z

Photocopy hand-out for the 4th meeting.

Big thanks to Ben & Ksenia for hosting the BTWC in their office-spaceship. The club seems to have out-grown its previous venue and with new members joining at each meeting we can only hope that spring will arrive swiftly so that all of us can gather at the place where whittlers belong;

THE FOREST.

Knife-sharpening service offered at each meeting

The dog got whittled on and it did not seem to mind

Ben´s Rihanna

2010-03-15T22:40:00.002Z

Ben T keeps whittling away on his Rihanna.

ShiraZ Bookmark

2010-03-15T20:44:00.019Z

This bookmark was whittled by Shiran.

Log Cake

2010-03-11T22:51:00.002Z

This is a chocolate log-cake with clusters of mushrooms made by Jana & Jack for Maeve on her birthday.

It is not unusual for different species of fungi to live in symbiosis with trees, protecting them from disease and parasites. Other forms of mushrooms like Armillaria ostoyae, a genus of the Honey mushroom, are on the other hand directly harmful as they draw water and carbohydrates from the tree which eventually rots. Unlike most parasites the Honey fungus does not need to keep its host alive to thrive on it so it has a highly destructive impact once a colony is established. As if that was not scary enough, a colony that consists of a single-individual of the Armillaria ostoyae in the Strawberry Mountains in Oregon, USA, is supposedly the largest living organism in the world. It spans 8.9 square kilometers and is estimated to be 2,400 years old with a total mass of 605 tons.

Real Honey Fungus

Ear

2010-03-10T23:26:00.001Z

The idea to whittle this ear came from some random image from a digitalized manuscript.

Log Lady

2010-02-26T10:33:00.005Z

This is a whittled reproduction of the bow-tie that the Log woman is wearing in Twin Peaks.

Pen-bird

2010-02-20T10:48:00.010Z

The head is whittled from a small left-over piece of lime-wood.

Pattern in the Wood

2010-02-15T14:55:00.005Z

I have often looked at the partial repetition of shapes in plywood and theorised about how they got there. Obviously, at 4' wide, a ply board is not just a cross section of a tree. It turns out that my guess was about right.

BTWC III (Twin Peaks)

2010-02-11T19:45:00.002Z

"There's something about a lady and a log..."

--David Lynch

Photocopy handout for the 3rd meeting

The third meeting of BTWC was rather busy, and although there were quite a few first-time whittlers at this meeting there were hardly any cuts. One could ascribe this unusual alertness to the double combination of home-made cherry-pie, donuts, and strong black coffee, which were served in line with the Twin Peaks theme of the evening.

David Lynch has long explored the transcendental possibilities of wood and the forest, never more explicitly than in Twin Peaks. Whether it be the Log Lady's talking log, trouble at the mill, or the black lodge situated among majestic Douglas Firs, Lynch has limned a special place in the world of timber. Our club has produced its share of owls too, which mediate between the world of souls embedded in wood and that of humans.

As the soundtrack from the show played, we were happy to welcome guests from as far away as New York and Japan. Writer and drummer Oran Canfield juggled five lemons while Ben T introduced the world to the BTWC via Chat Roulette.

Around midnight, people made their way home.

Donut by Billy

More work by the Members...

2010-02-10T18:21:00.008Z

Wonderful whittling by new member Little Jack

Donut by Billy

Another good first-time work by newcomer Shelly

Resting bird in peach-stone by Ksenia

Not sure who's this is. I would guess Jamie's since it has blood on it.

Pineapple by John

Finished owl by Jacob

Mushroom by Jack

Gery's medieval monster from the back.

Rihanna by Ben T.

A finished head by Amy

Cut of the week

2010-02-10T18:13:00.004Z

The only "real" cut of the last meeting. It was performed by Jamie. There was some other smaller ones, but not worth spending plaster on besides John´s who stabbed himself in the nail.

BTWC II

2010-02-09T19:59:00.005Z

Photocopy handout for 2nd meeting

It has been some time since the occasion of the second meeting of the Bleeding Thumb Whittling Club, but we feel it cannot go unremarked upon. The sharp knives were out in force with members bringing some interesting models, including Mark's scooping blade from Mora, with which he crafted an excellent spoon.

This time the wood was excellent. Having cut their teeth cleaning green wood of its bark and other such rudiments of whittling, our members were now able to get involved with some German lime-wood. The staple of German figure carvers for centuries, lime is a medium hardness deciduous wood with a heady citric scent. Whilst somewhat prone to cleaving when cut close to the direction of the grain, when carved across the grain beautiful rich patterns are exposed. We now have a useful stockpile of lime-wood for upcoming meetings.

When the club was finished, we swept up and kept the aromatic chip shavings; one day, we will burn them in a ritual.

Apple Wood

2010-01-29T17:00:00.000Z

Driving through Exmoor, we were scanning the landscape for the characteristic crooked and spindly branches of apple-trees. Somerset is an area known for its cider and apple-orchards so we came prepared with a foldable saw in the hope of picking up some apple-wood for the BTWC. Next to the ruins of an ancient abbey there was a little lonely apple-tree that caught our attention. It had not grown enough fibrous mass to be of any interest to us so we decided to look for some wood in the forest up the hill.

There was plenty of muddy, bug-covered wood lying around on the ground near a creek and we sawed off some pieces just for fun before proceeding into the thick foliage of the ivy covered forest, still with apple in mind. The type of wood that we had encountered just outside was growing here in abundance. It was a weird kind of parasitic tree that grew along the trunks of other trees or anything else that it could hold of, sometimes just stretching out its arms into thin air in the hope of getting hold of a new victim. The strangling attitude of the ivy and this tree gave us a very bad vibes so we backed out of the forest and went back to the car to try out the pieces we had with a knife. The wood turned out to be really crap and it seemed evil through and through. It was left in a muddy puddle as we made off with haste.

We stopped at an orchard, looked at a giant hog, had some eggs and asked for advice on finding apple-wood without any informative reply. After driving around without coming across any suitable trees, we gave up and followed a sign to a local attraction; the Bakelite Museum in Williton. The museum which is run by Patrick Cook in an old watermill, contains hundreds maybe thousands bakelite objects. Bakelite is the first successful synthetic plastic to be produced on a large scale and the collection reflects the multiple uses of this now obsolete material (there was even an old Mora Knife with a nice bakelite sheath on display).

On leaving the museum, with the West Country light failing, we saw a felled apple branch in a sheep field. Ample in girth and respectable in length, there was surely 25 kilos of good core wood to be had. Through careful negotiations with knowledgeable locals, we learnt that the owner of the field was also the proprietor of the Bakelite Museum. Having gained his permission, we scaled the fence and began to saw the mass into manageable chunks, while friendly sheep watched on with a peaceful demeanor not familiar from previous experience of the nervous herd animals.

The largest log is over two feet in length and half a foot in diameter at its smallest. Others are more manageable. The pieces are currently resting, seasoning in the cool hall outside the BTWC premises, their exposed ends sealed up with emulsion paint to prevent the cracking associated with too rapid drying.

Cut of the week

2010-01-26T14:05:00.000Z

The cut came in on a parallel angle to the finger so it is not deep but the area affected is quite big.

Inuit

2009-12-25T14:53:00.000Z

The Inuit people are known for their simple small carving made out of ivory or stone. Sometimes these small figurines were worn as amulets for good luck when hunting or used in shamanic rituals. The polar-bear is a particularly popular motif and there is a whole strain of carvings referred to as 'dancing bears' where the animal is depicted in an animated or playful state.

Cut of the week

2009-12-23T19:12:00.000Z

Just a small red drop

Burning

2009-12-16T13:18:00.000Z

This monkey was whittled out of lime tree. I later burned it over a flame to give it a black, velvety surface. I´v had a hard time to decide weather to paint or not to paint my whittlings so this seemed like a good compromise. It was inspired by a part from Gustave Flaubert's 'Salammbo' where some drunken soldiers put trees on fire and try to cut off the trunks of elephants and eat their ivory:

"The trees behind them were still smoking; from their blackened branches the half-burned corpses of monkeys fell from time to time into the middle of the dishes. The drunken soldiers snored open-mouthed beside the dead bodies; and those who were not asleep hung their heads, dazzled by the light. The trampled earth was covered with pools of red. The elephants swung their bleeding trunks between the stakes of their pens."

Somewhere...

2009-12-16T01:19:00.001Z

...out there...he is whittling away...

A letter to BTWC...

2009-12-12T22:33:00.000Z

Hi,

Thought I'd send you a photo of a whittling knife which is now in my possession - As you can see it has been well used and I suspect that it is at least 30-40 years old - Its a "Laguiole" - top of the range for whittling - they are still made by hand in the factory in Lozere, France.

The knife was owned by Jacky, the father of a friend in the South of France - Jacky was "very French".... When I knew him, he had retired and spent every day in a local bar drinking pastis, holding forth on any pretty much any topic and smoking many, many cigarettes. Jacky has an interesting if slightly macabre history - He married young, worked as a mason and was a talented footballer - In his 19th summer, he was offered a position to play for the Marseille football team - starting at the beginning of the coming season - during that summer whilst on the job, fell from some scaffolding and broke both of his legs - Having destroyed his impending football career - Jacky took a shotgun, put it to his stomach and pulled the trigger on both barrels....... He lived, wasn't seriously disabled by the shotgun blasts and I therefore had the pleasure of meeting the quick tempered and forthright Jacky many times - I had a penchant for wearing heavy boots at the time - he used to call them my "pantoufles"

His son gave me the knife when Jacky died.....These days I whittle cheese with his knife and open the occasional letter......

Tony

Chalk

2009-12-07T11:48:00.000Z

Recently some members of the whittling-club went on a road-trip to the mysterious shell-grotto in Margate. A detour on the way home led the company into a cleft between white chalk-cliffs just as twilight was setting in. The water had cut a grotto into the white cliff and it was filled with carved scribbles; a remainder of the soft constitution of chalk. There was plenty of round chalk pebbles of various sizes to be collected for a test-go with the knife.

The conclusion is that chalk is really easy to cut but it gives you uncomfortably dry hands and is rather brittle. Instantly gratifying, but transient.

The feet of the man broke off so he got a pair of clay-boots

Cut of the week

2009-12-07T10:49:00.000Z

Maeve had the cut of the week as she tried to whittle Cheburashka (pictured above).

At first, the second meeting of the BTWC seemed to get by without any incidents, but towards the end the cuts became frequent with some people cutting themselves in the exactly same spot twice. Tiredness combined with a slight frustration over the slow progress of whittling, can tempt one too use force on the blade in an incorrect way. The action steps might then proceed something like this:

bad grip

grain split

knife slip

skin rip

blood drip

Beside Maeve´s, most of the cuts were not very deep and a clean cut with a sharp knife heals fast. Luckily BTWC always keeps its knifes sharp.

Work in Progress

2009-12-04T01:44:00.000Z

Some finished & unfinished work by the honorable members of the BTWC....

Bird with feathers by Amy

Skull, Bart & psychedelic-Bart by Jack

Sharpened sticks with decorative bark by various members.

Beetroot stained seal by Ben T.

Unfinished figures by Gwennan, Jacob and Amy.

Spoons by Hugh & Mark.

Unfinished Cheburachka by Maeve and Paloma by Ben T.

Little man and big man by Jack.

A medieval monster by Gery.

Owl-man by Jana.

Naked woman legs with stockings by Ben B.

Butter-knife by Ksenia.

On the Occasion of the First Meeting of the Bleeding Thumb Whittling Club -- 12/IX/2009

2009-11-29T21:42:00.001Z

To those in attendance, we say Thank You. The solid elements were wood and bread, in opposition - respectively - to carbon-steel blades and pickles. The liquid elements were those of a triad: borsht soup, grain-spirit, and blood. Between these, flesh mediated numerous achievements: a mushroom talisman with ornate bark-work, a wooden pebble, and a functioning butter-knife.

To the next meeting we add a sharpening implement -- an oil stone. Thus our elemental tool box will be augmented by the solid stone and the liquid oil, though some claim that oil and the other fluids are immiscible.

Photocopy handout

Appalachia, Horror.

2009-11-19T12:22:00.000Z

This August passed, I had the pleasure of visiting America's Mid-South. From my base in the rolling hills of Nashville, Tennessee, I drove east through paleolithic forests into another timezone and the Southern Appalachian Mountains. En route, I passed the Oak Ridge Nuclear facility, where the uranium used to make America's first atomic bombs was enriched with the unstable U-238 isotope in what was then the world's largest building.

The Appalachian mountains stretch up the entire East Coast of North America, from Alabama to the beginnings of Canada. However, it is the region south of Mason-Dixon to which people generally refer with the word Appalachia (local pronunciation -- throw an apple atcha). This region has generated an intense and peculiar culture (I should say cultures) informed by Scots-Irish immigration, evangelical Christianity, and a kind of Hamsun-esque 'pantheistic oblivion' through contact with nature. The other ingredient in the mix is isolation. On trips to rural communities in search of old 78 RPM recordings, collector Joe Bussard spoke of homes without telephones or electricity at least as late as the '70s. It is important to reflect on that frontier community of America which has no voice internationally, and probably no wish for one.

You get something of a feel for a place through the flora and fauna - frequently road-killed fauna - that you see when passing through. East Tennessee is humid, and the forests range from a succulent green to rotting brown. For my time there, wood for whittling was hard to come across, the most promising sticks usually rendering no more than a rotten core or an enormous centipede. On the forest floor are snakes, which provide an ever present reminder of Satan, but are also a pagan force, unseen danger, and so on. These reptiles enable the existence of an illustrious Pentecostal Christian subset -- the Serpent Handlers, who, with microscopic precision, honed in on this as the Bible's crucial statement:

"They shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them" Mark 16:17-18

Therefore, their worship consists of many of the usual rituals such as speaking in tongues, song, and dance, but with the added thrill of handling live, deadly-venomous snakes. One story from this sect describes a preacher who was traveling between rival churches, one more liberal than the other (when I say liberal, I mean that one referred simply to 'Jesus' while the other gave the full 'Jesus the Christ'). When he was bitten and poisoned to a painful death, the orthodox church saw this as evidence that his faith was not true.

Many of the preachers have special decorative boxes for transporting the serpents, inscribed with verses from the bible. A project that I am interested in is recreating one of these boxes (with breathing holes) along with a whittled contingent of snakes to go inside. We should recall here Moses' snake/staff transformation, and the obvious ease of whittling a snake from a stick. The picture below shows such a box, and in case you can't make it out, his hat says 'Jesus is my God'.

The Museum of Appalachia, near Knoxville, is where I heard all of this. The museum has an extensive collection of artefacts, instruments, and folk-art. Primitive and libidinal 'face jugs' are a particular highlight. Whittling and carving make a good showing too. There are numerous examples of hand-crafted banjos displaying devastatingly effective simplicity, just as often joyful crudeness. Before the industrial mass production of guitars, the banjo was a far more popular instrument due to its ease of construction. Decoration comes in the form of fancy neck heels or figurative peg heads. Often, the whittler's rule of working with the natural form of the wood is used, with odd shaped branches creating instruments with a minimum of tooling.

The collection has a large section devoted to whittling proper. These items are mostly folk-art or knick-knacks. One display relates how an older whittler would carry around a little supply of little shoes or birds, presents with which to delight his many grandchildren. Most of the subject matter is rooted in the everyday; wildlife, some excellent serpents included, and in a characteristically self-reflexive example of human activity, model knives and tools.

Religious tropes bear heavy on this part of the world, but the dominant Protestant theology eschews iconography. It seems, however, that this injunction is lifted when it comes to Satan, who is always so-named and is frequently depicted with an almost action-sculpture style of fervour. What was, to me, the centre piece of the Museum and a triumph of primitive craft for capturing the inherent sinister part of nature, is a huge sculpture of Satan made from walnut wood. The sculptor first spent days walking around hills and valleys searching for a suitable chunk of wood, an action which already loads the piece with performative pathos. A knotted and twisted walnut trunk duly was found, it's dark colour and marbled, sinewy grain recalling dark offal, kidneys or liver. Again, the tooling is minimal; the already-there shape of horns is added to by inlaid glass eyes. Below is the final exceeding accomplishment, as the teeth of a dead animal are seamlessly integrated into the trunk. The perfect fusion of wood and bone, life and decay, terrifying in their pervasion.

Cut of the week

2009-11-18T22:00:00.000Z

The first gathering of the Whittling-Club had a 40% cut-accident ratio among the members so we have several candidates for the Cut of the Week this time around. Most notable is maybe Ben B. for the deepest cut of the week and Amy for the sexiest cut of the week.

Ben's Cut

Amy's Cut

Thanks Amy and Ben.
Thanks also to Ben T. and Jack for their contribution of small cuts.

Boxwood!

2009-11-17T14:18:00.000Z

We at Bleeding Thumb are happy to report of taking delivery of a little log of boxwood. Here are our first impressions.

Jack: The buxus log was unassuming in appearance. Yellow powdery bark didn't seem too promising. However, on cleaning off the bark, a crispy, crinkly sound was emitted, and even the outer bark comes off in nice rolls. All bodes well.

Jana: Its like cutting with a warm knife through a mix of mustard and butter dipped in liquid nitrogen.

Faux Bois

2009-11-10T18:55:00.001Z

Wood Book

2009-11-10T02:04:00.000Z

"A representation of inland and foreign wood, as well trees and shrubs, which, are collected by the lovers of natural history in their cabinets of natural curiosities for use and pleasure."

These illustrations of wooden boards come from the "Houtkunde" published in 1773 by John Christian Sepp. The full digitilized version of the book, with more than 100 colored prints and descriptions of different woods, can be found at the TU Delft Library.

Bears

2009-11-02T13:24:00.000Z

A small bear whittled out of apple-wood.

Maybe later.

Source of Wood

2009-10-29T16:24:00.000Z

Sometimes the best source of wood for an urban whittler is simply the furniture discarded on the street. I don't mean those piles of wet mdf-pulp mixed with cat-piss, but broken chairs and cabinets where even a scratched leg might be made out of prime hard-wood. Professional whittlers and woodcarvers have long used old furniture for obtaining rare or extinct woods. I have not come across any of these rare woods yet but a broken chair on the street served up another set of sticks for making Burgis-style fingers – enough for a whole hand.

Dalston style...

Cut of the week

2009-10-21T22:51:00.001+01:00

Ksenias cut of the week. She is washing off some paper that got stuck in the cut after she gaffa-taped her finger to stop the bleeding.

Horror

2009-10-17T14:28:00.001+01:00

Whittled by Jack out of birch in the summer of 2009. Too horrible to look at directly, like medusa, it is best viewed via some reflective material.

Pretzel-MAn

2009-10-17T14:19:00.000+01:00

Whittled out of pine by Janice in summer of 2009. The eyes are natural knots in the wood.

Lockdown - Opinels and Legality

2009-10-13T18:08:00.000+01:00

Bleeding Thumb is ambivalent about this particular update, containing as it does good and bad news. First off, the club has obtained a stock of six Opinel No. 7 knives with carbon steel blades. These will become the club knives available on loan to those attending without a blade of their own. Sadly, these are some of the last Opinels on sale in England, their locking blade having fallen foul of recently updated knife laws.

It's not entirely clear how the homespun, slow-action mechanism of the Opi poses a particular threat, especially compared to, say, a butcher's knife. What is apparent, is the hateful machinery of the "Theatre of Security" grinding into action, spitting out worthlessly demonstrative policy without thought or care over what might actually have a positive impact on society.

This is not some libertarian polemic against some perceived infringement of liberties, more a coda to a governmental blunder. Whilst having a weapon function, a knife is a tool in a way that a gun or ninja stars can never be; to end on a positive note, it is still legal to carry a blade "with good reason". And to whittle is certainly that.

Crime scene

2009-10-13T17:03:00.000+01:00

A chair was attacked last month by a small gang intoxicated with alcohol and tabasco. The chair was reduced to rubble within minutes and spread across a vast area of the kitchen. The finger below was whittled from the remains a couple of days later by Ben Burges. The other kitchen chairs were found unharmed.

Mora Knifes

2009-10-07T01:00:00.000+01:00

The Mora knife is as much an institution in the average Swedish household as the Ikea Billy bookshelf. The knife is named after a small town in Sweden where knifes have been produced since the 17th century. The classic model has a red wooden or plastic handle and a 3- or 4-inch blade, but the original makers of the Mora knife, Frost Knivfabrik (Frost Knife Factory), also produce knives especially designed for whittling and carving. One particular model is called the Erik Frost 120 and is named after the founder of Frost Knivfabrik which has been internationally renowned for its production of high quality blades. The simple design, high quality carbon steel and cheap price makes it the best whittling knife we have come across in the Club so far. Unreservedly recommended.

Erik Frost 120

Peach Monkey II

2009-10-07T00:54:00.000+01:00

Opinel and a word about blades

2009-10-05T00:04:00.000+01:00

The Opinel knife from Savoy in France is undoubtably a design classic, and is certainly suitable for whittling. In fact, my first whittling was done with an Opinel, and it was that same Opi No. 7 with which I first gashed my thumb, spilling warm red blood on dry summer grass. I digress; the Opinel is a folding knife which locks shut and (on newer models) open. The locking-open is a handy feature and the handle is comfortable to hold, though as with many folding knives, the slot for the blade can lead to blisters where pressure on the skin is concentrated. I became most acutely aware of this after hacking my way through a 4cm limb of birch one afternoon, though it is testament to the quality of the knife that I could even do so.

The Opi is very cheap and cheerful, but prospective buyers will wish to be made aware of recent developments in the manufacture of the knife. The classic model features a beech handle and high-carbon steel blade (oil it to prevent rust with, say, mineral oil). This blade in particular is strong and tough and will sharpen easily and take a good edge. By way of contrast, newer stainless-steel models (and stainless blades in general) are much harder to sharpen and many will not hold that eye-wateringly sharp edge which we all hope and strive for in our knife-care.

In conclusion, an excellent tool, as suitable for whittling as it is for cutting up a fine block of cheese whilst on a picnic.

Cut of the week

2009-10-04T21:13:00.001+01:00

Jack's cut of the week:

"This was a cheeky little cut, I barely felt it, and not much blood to show for my trouble. Later I added to it by jabbing a perpendicular incision near the base of the cut so that it formed a kind of cruciform shape." - Jack

Peach Monkey 1

2009-10-02T21:11:00.000+01:00

done et