Woodsman

by Ben Law

  About twelve hours after lighting the kiln (using a 6-foot-diameter ring kiln), it is time to close it down. As I tend to light my kilns in the early evening so that they burn through the night and the smoke is not a nuisance to neighbours, it is usually early morning when I close down the kilns. Arriving on a summer’s morning, when the warmth of the day has not yet emerged, to be greeted by birdsong and the warmth of the kiln, now emitting slow wisps of smoke from its chimneys, is a thought-provoking way to begin one’s day. The smoke will have lost its white colour and now be almost translucent, perhaps a shade of metallic blue. I remove all the chimneys and cover over all the inlets with soil, completely sealing the kiln and shutting off all intake of oxygen. All that will be left will be a heat haze over the lid of the kiln. The kiln is left like this to cool for two days before opening. If opened too early, the oxygen could re-ignite the kiln. Opening the kiln is always an exciting moment. Although I have by now made enough charcoal to be pretty certain how well the burn has gone by how the kiln behaved during the burn, the truth is only revealed when I open the lid. The first view gives an initial sense of the burn. If the wind got up during the night the inlet channels may have burnt away a lot of wood. If there are a lot of brown ends (partly converted logs) it shows I either shut the kiln down too early or failed to get the fire to spread out to the edges of the kiln. Instinct makes me pick up a piece of charcoal every time I open a kiln. The weight and sound are familiar. It is time to bag up.

  My first burn was reasonably successful and I’ve improved my techniques to refine the process into a reliable method for producing charcoal for barbecues. When I first started marketing the charcoal, I had some bags printed explaining the local origins of the charcoal, how it is produced, the fact that the wood used to make the charcoal came from coppice woodlands and the importance of the sustainable management of these woodlands. This was far too much information and I’ve now simplified the packaging to a few key words. Recent research carried out on charcoal packaging concluded that the key information the public wants on a bag of charcoal is that it ‘lights easily and burns hot’.

  To see how interest has grown in locally produced charcoal, I have only to mention my trading with one small, local ironmongery, whom I first approached to sell charcoal to in 1993. It was an April morning when I met with the manager and explained about the charcoal I was producing, and its benefits over the imported charcoal he had for sale in his shop. After a look at the product and packaging – and a lot of pushing from me – he said he would take half a dozen bags on sale or return. About two weeks later, I called in at the shop to see how they were selling and not a single bag had sold. ‘Better take them away. Can’t see them selling here.’

  I wore that disappointment for a couple of years, while I sold direct to the public and built up a few other retail outlets. About two years later I got a call from the manager of the local hardware store, explaining he had received a request for local charcoal and could I supply him with 20 bags. I delivered them, and it was not long before a second 20 were ordered. Now another 16 years on, I am the sole charcoal supplier for the hardware shop and they no longer sell imported charcoal. This clearly shows that the buyer is becoming more discerning and more people are willing to pay a little extra to get a good-quality local product.

  I also make artists’ charcoal. I do this by peeling thin twigs and placing them in a biscuit tin. I pack the biscuit tin with sawdust, pierce a couple of holes in the lid and then tie the lid on with a piece of wire. I place the biscuit tin inside the charcoal kiln to the outside, near the top and midway between the inlets, and it converts to charcoal with the contents of the rest of the kiln.

  I began by making the charcoal from willow, as this was what I knew was commercially available, but it was not long before I experimented with other woods. Research led me to try oak and spindle and, being surrounded by it, I had of course to try sweet chestnut. The results from all the different woods were good; different woods gave different shades and textures, which were gratefully received by artists.

  In the early 1990s Rodney Baldwin, who runs Green & Stone art supplies in the Kings Road, Chelsea, lived in Lodsworth and he contacted me about purchasing some artists’ charcoal for his shop. I remember putting some makeshift packaging together. I used a paper bread wrapper to wrap up the charcoal and then cut out a brown paper envelope to go over the top of the bread wrapper. I tied it up with a piece of sisal and hand wrote on the packaging: ‘Artists’ charcoal, 12 sticks mixed diameter, produced in the woods, Prickly Nut Wood, Lodsworth’. When I took the charcoal down to Rodney’s house, I apologised about the packaging and told him I was getting some boxes printed. Rodney replied, ‘No, don’t do that. This packaging is just right.’ So I cancelled my box order and to this day I package my artists’ charcoal in old bread wrappers, cut-out brown envelopes and sisal! Another marketing lesson learned.

  Since my early making of artists’ charcoal, I have seen the possibility and demand for a range of English wood charcoal. A selection of different trees would without doubt produce a fine range of different-textured charcoals. It is hard to find commercial alternatives to willow, and although willow makes a fine charcoal, grows in straight rods and is often made in association with basket making or hurdle making, and is therefore a by-product of that industry, there are many other woods that make fine artists’ charcoal and give a wider variety of textures and tones.

  Every charcoal burner I know who burns in the woods using a portable ring kiln leaves behind piles of what we call charcoal ‘fines’ – small pieces that have fallen through the riddles at bagging time. What to do with these piles has been a concern of mine for a number of years. In the mid-1990s, a group of us looked into the possibility of selling the charcoal fines to a charcoal filtration company. However, our investigations revealed that the charcoal must be dry, free from contaminants and at an easy-to-access collection point. Our fines, however, are contaminated with leaves and bird droppings, are often far from an easy collection point, and a dry storage space would be out of the question. Dry storage spaces in woodland life are far too valuable to fill up with charcoal fines. So the idea was abandoned. But then along came biochar.

  Biochar came to public notice after a television documentary about the dark soils of the Amazon region (the so-called terra preta). These rich, dark soils were fertile and productive, and the origins of this lay in the use of charcoal dust. Charcoal does not act as a fertiliser; it is actually inert but it works like a type of sponge, retaining moisture, and allowing microbes and fungi to colonise it. In James Bruges’s book, The Biochar Debate, he quotes Chris Turney, professor of geography at Exeter University, saying that ‘biochar’s porous structure is ideal for trapping nutrients and beneficial microorganisms that help plants grow. It also improves drainage and can prevent up to 80 per cent of greenhouse gases such as nitrous oxide and methane from escaping from the soil.’ Biochar production can be made from any organic material, but for those of us already burning charcoal and sitting on piles of charcoal fines, there is a ready market for our fines. Charcoal is almost pure carbon and by burying it in the soil we are locking up that carbon. Charcoal does not break down in the soil; deposits have been discovered dating back thousands of years, so the burying of charcoal has to be a useful tool in helping to re-stabilise our planet.

  I know of a couple of charcoal burners in Northumberland who have been selling biochar to the Royal Botanic Garden in Edinburgh and who are finding that the demand for biochar is beginning to outstrip the demand for barbecue charcoal. It would feel good to know that a good percentage of the fines we are producing in charcoal production was returning to the earth in the form of biochar.

  The coppice at Prickly Nut Wood is now restored and on cycle, and I am no longer cutting coppice to make charcoal. I cut coppice for other products and the waste wood from these products then becomes charcoal. Hence my charcoal burning is now creating a product out of a waste product. If I go and build a pergol
a or some fencing for a client, the off-cuts come back with me and join the piles of timber for charcoal. Similarly, if wood I have coppiced has not been used for other purposes, after two to three years it is then converted into charcoal.

  Having learnt some basic craft skills and understood the nature and properties of the wood I work with through working in the coppice, the next stage for me was to specialise – finding a niche, something unique, something that others had not yet tried. The opportunities in niche markets are everywhere. We just need to open our imagination and then create and market the product. For me, my niche unexpectedly came from building and the linking of coppice products into the building industry.

  Shelter, a roof over our head, is a basic human need. How and what we build a shelter from will vary considerably, depending upon where on the planet we live. If we study local architecture, it is clear that the use of the available local resources has dictated how buildings have evolved. Taking the United Kingdom at a local level, we soon notice that where there is a clay soil, bricks, cob and clay tiles are abundant; in the chalk regions we find lime and flint; and where it is heavily forested, more timber is used. In recent years this pattern has changed. Architects design buildings and then search for the resources to meet their designs, using materials that have been transported vast distances across the globe at great environmental cost. The need for architects to start with a study of available local resources and then design from what is to hand has never been more necessary. Wood is often transported from Russia to be used on a building in Sussex, when there is perfectly suitable material growing a few hundred yards away from the building site. We must start to use our own resources and manage them sustainably so there are materials for future generations to use. In doing so, we must design suitable buildings that can incorporate locally grown timbers.

  My first dwellings at Prickly Nut Wood were timber and canvas. Provided a wood burner kept them dry and warm in the winter, these were suitable as basic, year-round dwellings. A ‘bender’ has the advantage of being able to be constructed in a single day. A number of freshly cut hazel poles, some twine and a canvas tarpaulin – and you have a shelter. For all-year-round living, there are a number of extras that turn such a shelter into a comfortable home. A raised floor is important, especially during winter. I made a raised floor from a collection of pallets and then boarded over them. A rug over the top and you have a dry floor, raised up and ideal for winter living. A good-sized window makes a huge difference on wet winter days, as does a comfortable chair, and I always like a door frame and a wooden door. Canvas doors are frustrating to tie back and to anchor securely shut.

  My second dwelling was a yurt. Yurts are beautiful structures and well designed to withstand extreme weather. I made my first yurt with the knowledge that there was a baby on the way, and the need for the yurt to be finished for us to begin family life in a new home was always pressing. I cut the roof poles (ribs) and wall poles (trellis) from five-year-old sweet chestnut coppice, and peeled them all with a draw knife. I then oiled the trellis poles and drilled out the holes for the cord to tie the lattice work together. 560 holes to drill. This was a time when cordless drills did not feature in an average tool kit, so a small hand twist drill did all the work. The roof ribs needed bending. I boil bent them by placing a 40-gallon drum on top of some bricks so that I could light a fire beneath it and then filled it with water and placed the butt ends of the 42 roof ribs into the ‘cauldron’. I then boiled these for an hour, before bending them over a jig created by a fallen tree to create a curve in the bottom section of the roof rib. They stayed in the bending jig for two days.

  The hoop or ring of the yurt is one of its most beautiful features, and steam bending a perfect circle makes the aesthetics of the hoop feel balanced. For the hoop I cut a 15-foot length of sweet chestnut about five inches in diameter and around 16 years of age. I then cleaved the length with a froe to give me two 15-foot half rounds. I chose the best one and kept the other for a spare, in case the first one failed. I then worked my chosen half round with a draw knife to reduce the thickness down to about one and a half inches, and then placed it into my steam-bending tube. Steam bending is one of carpentry’s more unusual processes. At the beginning of the day I can cut down a living stem of sweet chestnut and by the end of the day it has become a round hoop. The manipulation of the fibres within the timber is an extreme process, but the end result is incredibly satisfying. My steamer is made up from an army water boiler, but one can as be easily constructed from a raised 40-gallon oil drum, with a hole drilled in the lid from which a pipe runs to the tube where the timber to be steamed is placed. This tube is commonly made up from a large plastic pipe that can withstand pressure. Large gas main pipes work well; a poorer alternative is a plywood box or even a steel tube. The 15-foot yurt half round needs three hours of constant steaming. It is important to keep the fire burning at ‘full throttle’, for if it dies down and the level of steam is reduced, then much of the penetration of the fibres can be lost.

  The simplest example of how steam bending works is to compare it to boiling spaghetti. When spaghetti is dry it is brittle – if you try to bend it, it will break. Once it has been boiled it can be bent into a shape, and once it cools it sets into this shape. Wood is similar. The steaming soaks the fibres and allows them to be realigned; once cooled, the timber sets into its new position. Any steam bending relies on a solid former around which the steamed wood is bent. For the Yurt hoop, I used a four-foot-diameter iron-wheel tyre; such artefacts can often be found on farms in the countryside. To this some internal welding was carried out to strengthen it further for when the bending began. I like to have a least two other people on hand during the bending process, as there is only a short window of time in which to bend and clamp the timber onto the former. Before it was put into the steamer, I tapered down each end of the 15-foot piece so that the ends would overlap as they were bent around the former, completing a 360° hoop out of one piece of wood. When the piece of wood comes out of the steam box it must be swiftly carried to the former (gloves have to be worn, as the timber will be very hot!). And as one person bends it around the iron wheel, others follow behind, quickly clamping the timber to the iron wheel.

  Once the hoop has been clamped in place, it is time to relax, stand back and appreciate the key component of the yurt – from growing tree to finished hoop in less than a day. The hoop stays on the former for about two days before it is removed. It is then pegged or bolted together. Soaked rawhide wrapped tightly around the tapered joint will shrink as it dries, and makes an attractive finish. The hoop is then drilled out 42 times to receive the roof ribs, then finished by heating up an old copper soldering iron in the fire and pushing it through the drilled holes. The soldering iron sizzles and smokes as it turns a round hole into a square one. The roof ribs are finished with square, tapered ends so that they cannot twist once inserted into the hoop. More holes are drilled for the hoop bracing. This forms both an attractive infill to the hoop but also works to brace the hoop, as pressure is applied on all sides of the hoop by the roof ribs both during raising and once the yurt is standing. A wooden threshold and door frame allow for a wooden door and complete the timber work. A canvas band that encircles the yurt from door frame to door frame, covering where the roof ribs sit in the horns of the trellis poles, acts as a structural part of the yurt. Like a bender, a woodland yurt benefits from a raised floor. Living in the round structure of the yurt, looking up through the circular wheel to the stars, was for me one of the many highlights of my woodland journey.

  * * *

  Around this time my existence at Prickly Nut Wood had reached the notice of the local planning authority. I arrived after a foraging outing to find an enforcement notice pinned to the yurt’s canvas. An enforcement notice is quite a blunt correspondence and an insensitive approach as a point of first contact. I felt a sense of how an Amazonian forest dweller must feel when confronted by a logging company threatening their home. This enforcem
ent notice was the beginning of a drawn-out dispute between myself and the local planning authority, one characterised by mistrust on both sides. In hindsight – and with a deeper understanding of planning law on my part – they were just doing their job. The approach they took in carrying out their actions, however, was insensitive and likely to provoke a reaction in anyone whose home was threatened.

  My frustration boiled up from not being able to explain the bigger picture as to why I was living in the woods. The forest dweller’s approach to life and work, and the deeper understanding of the landscape, all seemed to have no place within planning law and I felt as a woodlander carrying out a tradition of land use and forest dwelling rather persecuted by the bureaucracy of planning law. I think the rather aggravated poem I wrote at the time sums it up rather well.

  who are you o suited one

  who walks upon this land

  straight from your BMW

  with clipboard in your hand

  you have come to inspect a landscape

  you will never understand

  you question why I’m living here

  and the structures in which I dwell

  and then report back to a muddle of heads

  in a landscape I call hell

  remember we are men of wood and steel

  with bill hooks of razor edge

  that slice through grain of chestnut

  and plash a rambling hedge

  remember when you talk to me

  I am married to the land

  and whoever crosses my path this life