Lubkemann Tree Craft

35 Rustic Wood Projects That Bring the Outdoors In
1. Auflage 2010
ISBN: 978-1-60765-063-8
Verlag: Fox Chapel Publishing
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 128 Seiten

Invite Mother Nature into your home with 35 rustic projects that are both unique and functional. Using found wood and the easy-to-follow instructions, reusing what nature has provided is a simple way to add natural warmth to your decor. More than 35 eco-chic projects such as a coat rack, curtain rods, candle holders, desk sets, picture frames, a table, chess set, and more.

Chris Lubkemann is the author of five best-selling whittling books from Fox Chapel Publishing, including The Little Book Of Whittling and Big Book Of Whittle Fun. A child of missionaries, Chris Lubkemann grew up in the forests of Brazil and Peru, where he developed an appreciation for knives and entertained himself-and others-by handcrafting rafts, tree houses, traps, and slingshots from scrap wood. Since that time, he has continued to integrate his woodworking skills with good old-fashioned fun. Chris has carved some of the world's smallest branch carvings, and his smallest branch rooster was given a Guinness World Record Certificate. Chris currently demonstrates whittling as the resident woodcarver at the Amish Farm and House in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Lubkemann, Chris

Leseproben

  getting started
The first thing you have to do when preparing to make one-of-a-kind wooden items is find one-of-a-kind chunks of wood to work with! After that, you’ll need to know the basic tools and skills required for making the projects in this book. There are several steps or procedures common to many of the projects. Rather than repeat these in each step-by-step set of instructions, we’ll just make a general statement and then let you apply it to where it fits.   wood
Most of the whittling/carving/woodworking I’ve done over the past 40-plus years has been largely with hardwood species, whether I’ve been working with a twig or branch from a tree or bush or making something from a piece of milled wood. However, many of the projects illustrated in this book aren’t nearly as fussy in the kind of wood they call for. While I’ve used hardwoods for most of them, some could have just as easily be done with softer woods, even pine! The selection of wood for a given project will depend a lot on the nature of the project itself and what purpose it will serve. For instance, if you’re going to make a large coat rack that will hang on an entryway wall, use a strong species of wood, both for the branch that will serve as the rack itself and for the backerboard to which the branch will be attached. Coasters for drinking glasses, on the other hand, can be from slices of almost any kind of wood, hard or soft.   WOOD COMMENTS Birch Excellent. Among my all-time favorite woods. Maple Any maple is worth trying. Swamp maple is one of my favorites. Cherry Both domesticated and wild are quite good. Beech Can be a bit brittle, but if you’re careful, it works fine. oak I’ve made some nice pieces from pin oak, live oak, and water oak. Red oak is not particularly good. holly A very hard, close-grained wood that produces beautiful pieces. Citrus trees Orange, lemon, tangerine, and grapefruit are good. Avoid the new, fast-growing shoots, which tend to be very pithy. Cedar One of the few evergreen trees I’ve used. There’s a bit of sap to contend with. Myrtle Wax myrtle is good. The other varieties are worth trying, too. Bottlebrush, Indian Rosewood, Viburnum Several Florida woods that work well. One of my all-time favorite slingshot forks is viburnum—very, very strong and beautifully symmetrical! Flowering Crabapple, Flowering Plum Ornamental trees that have good branches. Other fruit trees Apple, peach, quince, guava. Good branches to work with.   To be totally honest, I don’t even know the species of the wood I’ve used for some of the pieces illustrated in the following pages. Where it’s important or useful to know the kind of wood used for a given project, I’ve specified what I used. Many times the choice of wood is going to be a matter of common sense, what is available, or what happens to challenge your own imagination and creativity. FINDING WOOD I’m a saver. My wife’s a saver. When our children moved out we had to get more living space! Not that our house is huge, mind you. It’s just that between our closets, attic, basement storage rooms, backyard workshop, storage shed, space under the deck, and built-on “apartment,” we just about have enough room to keep what we’ve collected! My dear Sheri is the undisputed Queen of Shelves. If there’s any horizontal surface more than 5/16" wide, she can figure out a way to display or store something on it! (Perhaps I exaggerate a bit.) Of course, Sheri and I save different things. She saves material, construction paper, yarn, and all kinds of craft supplies, whether they come from after-Christmas deals, store closeouts, or garage sales. Our grandkids just know that if there’s something they want to make, Grandma has what it takes! My saving consists of varied objects like old athletic shoes (good for painting, working in the mud, or wearing on a canoe trip—never mind that the last canoe trip I took was when my 39-year-old daughter was still in college, as I recall). And then there are boxes and piles and containers of wood: branches, blocks, strips, boards, drawer fronts, plywood sheets, bits of molding, stumps, logs...you probably get the idea. When I see a good piece of wood or an interesting branch or stump, I’ll pick it up, because I know that someday it will turn into something! It’s nothing to stop the car, make a quick U-turn, and go back to pick up some potential wood treasure along the side of the road. To find free and eco-friendly materials for your projects, the best thing to do is keep your eyes open. Branches and limbs are available in abundance to the observant woodworker. Drive around after a big storm; make friends with a professional tree-trimming service; and keep an eye on the trees in your neighborhood. Most people will allow you to have their downed limbs and trimmed branches in exchange for hauling them off their lawns! You can also salvage wood from furniture—remember that old broken baby crib? Or that bookshelf with the extra shelf you never could fit in? Just keep your eyes peeled and you’ll be able to find whatever materials you need. Naturally, one of the negatives of being a wood saver is you have to find a place to store what you’ve found until its potential is fulfilled. That could mean dealing with the occasional objection of your spouse, something to the effect of, “Do we really have to have that monster slab of elm in the middle of our front porch? Ikey’s going to trip over it, and Kati can’t use the porch swing right!” No big deal...I just move the slab to the far end of the porch and stand it on end behind the porch swing, making sure it’s angled enough so Ikey can’t pull it over on himself! It takes some effort sometimes, but I’m sure you’ll be able to find places to keep your treasures, too. Windstorms have supplied me with quite a bit of raw material. In early spring, a storm took down one of the branches above my tree house. The nice pile of branches will turn into quite a few...well...whatevers. I haven’t gotten that far yet! Here’s another tree that went down in the same storm. The Amish farmer in whose pasture it fell let me cut all of the branches I wanted. The only negative with this particular tree was that his six large mules got to the tree first and stripped quite a bit of the bark off some of the best branches! Fair enough, I guess. It was their pasture! This pile displays some of my prize pieces of wood—huge trunk sections, weathered fenceposts, old floor joists—these are the types of rewards you get for keeping your eyes peeled! The fact that a lot of my own raw material for these projects has been collected over a period of years doesn’t necessarily mean it will take you years to find or collect all the pieces you’ll be using. If a particular project strikes your fancy and you want to make it, chances are often pretty good that with a bit of thinking and scouting, you can find what you’re looking for. In some cases, though, it may take a while to come across a rather rare piece, say, for instance, a certain hollow log, or a 4-foot (1.2 meter)-diameter cross-cut slice of oak, maple, or elm. For these fairly rare pieces of wood, you’ll have the challenge and fun of keeping your eyes open and making the awesome find that will allow you to produce that super-special one-of-a-kind project!   bark cleaning
Often tree bark accumulates a certain amount of dust, dirt, fungus, moss, or whatever. Before working with wood, it’s always a good idea to wash off any substance that’s on the bark. Dirt can soil the clean inner wood as you work on your project, rub off on clothes or furniture, and even dull your tools. The green stuff you see on this weeping cherry stump and on these branches, as well as some of the dirt you may not see, definitely needs to get cleaned off. Gather your bark-cleaning supplies: water, a brush or rag, and gloves. Scrub the bark with water and a rough rag or any kind of scrub brush. If you’re working with a branch or stump that has lots of little branches that can scrape your knuckles as you wash, I’d suggest wearing an old pair of leather gloves. Your hands will definitely be healthier and happier at the end of the wood-washing process!   sharpening
As for cutting the wood, making slices, etc., a variety of saws will work. Having been raised somewhat Robinson...