Rab's Arborist Blog

This was my home for 18 months. What a place.

Since when did 'send me up a saw' mean send me up some red liquorice. Jokers..

A rough sand and a rub down with linseed oil to protect the wood then the Ash wedge inserted to keep the head in place. That's the axe project finished for now.

The head fitted to the handle awaiting the wedge to fix it in place.

A couple of hours working with the spokeshave refining the shape until it feels right in my hands. Then slowly shaving down the shoulders until it just fits into the eye of the axe head. You want this to be as tight as possible to create a strong join between the axe head and the handle. After that I sawed a slot for the wooden wedge to be inserted.

Roughing out the shape using the drawknife and sandpaper wrapped round a dowel.

These are the tools and piece of milled Ash I'll be using to create a new handle. Including a home made shaving horse, home made drawknife, spokeshave, folding saw, sandpaper and linseed oil.

An old axe head I found rusting away in a shed. While cleaning it up with a wire brush I found out it was Sandvik. A good quality Swedish make so I decided to fix it up.

Milling job.

Lobo

The bench complete.

A rustic bench I'm making out of 4" thick Lime. We milled the Lime last year and there's photos up on the blog.

Another climbing job with the college. It was my role to spike up and tie the rigging ropes onto the stems to pull these conifers over making sure they go in the right direction.

Dismantling a Silver Birch (Betula pendula) in a garden.

I had just found the stereo in this photo.

I got the cuts better this time.

Reducing one of the Alder stems to the ground using a series of hand held step cuts. This is how you do it if you want to be knackered at the end of the day as the cuts were to far apart.