How To Carve A Shrink Pot - Chris Allen

hey guys how are you doing this is that from zero dolls and I hope you're having an awesome day so in this video I would like to introduce to you Chris Allen Chris how are you doing yeah very well thank you that Chris you may not have seen on video before he's made a couple of brief appearances on videos with on quite a while ago when we visited least offer a friend of ours his woodland now Chris Allen is a very accomplished full time green woodworker based in the county of Berkshire in Newberry which is in the South of England he's a full-time green woodworkers a good friend of mine we've known each other for quite a long time and I've been waiting really eager to get him on video but somebody finally got around to it now we're shooting actually two video videos on this occasion I've come to see Chris in this video that you're watching now Chris is very good a very kinda gonna taken time and show you how to make a shrink pot now don't worry if you don't know what a shrimp pot is we're actually going to look at some examples straight after this clip over here but I just like to just say thank you to Chris for taking the time out to kind of record this video and it's going to help you guys out and the one thing I do want to say with this video and this video is designed to enable you and inspire you that for you to go out there and attempt this yourself this is not kind of just watch it and enjoy although you're more than happy to do that also but what Chris is going to do is methodically walk through the entire process from start to finish so you can end up with a finished article a finish shrimp art now there are a lot of steps involved in this process but don't want that to put you off so this is a long video as you can see by the length of this video but it was necessary in order to cover all the relevant sections in order for you to have nothing left out and for Chris to show his process that he that he's kind of evolved over time that is his in process that he's kind of used from other people around him and so what is showing is his process that he uses to make a lot of shrink boxes of beautiful work so so with your kind permission Chris what we're going to do now is actually look at some of Chris's work in terms of what a shrink pot is and we'll get straight into tutorial where Chris Allen is going to teach you how to carve a shrimp part so Chris you explain to us exactly what a shrink pot is for those that may not know yes certainly so what we're going to do is take a green log a freshly felled log and you can see here that the wood is on the inside and the bark is on the outside and I choose to make them this way for the attractive bark feature on the outside but the general principle is we're going to drill some holes we're going to clear out the rest of the timber and to the sidewall and then we're gonna fit dry oak base into the wet timber in a groove that will carve and then the shrink in the shrink pot name is where the wood seasons it dries out and the fibers constrict and the whole thing shrinks onto the base you can see here there's just a couple of checks which I filled with epoxy putty and that's kind of inevitable in some some pots but yeah it's a very traditional way of making a vessel they've been used for holding water in certain cultures and but these I make with once they're dry I fit a lid there we go it goes perfectly on in one direction and you can twist it and that forms a tea caddy so it's got a locking lid and these are very much inspired by other craft P craftsmen that have been making these I bought some from John Mulaney at 3 or 4 spoon fests ago and I've been been inspired to make my own so Chris the first thing we want to talk about is the timber selection indeed so we're using silver birch today in particular because I want the bark to be in the finished product what I find is people really engage with silver birch because you know Joe public can just pick this up out of a lineup of the trees it's the only one with white bark in this country and it looks very attractive as well so I've chosen silver birch for the pots it's also a nice soft timber and this Timbers come from Greenham common which is nearby and was cut for me by the local Wildlife Trusts a b-bow charity and so I'm very grateful for that the one feature that has given me some concern is this scar which is very typical of birch it shouldn't be too bad but sometimes if you see the bigger knots and things like that they can they can interrupt your your carving process with with with any wood really so for the shrink pot that I'm going to make this this is about as clean as as I'd like and what we'll do is we'll drill some holes and I'll show you how to remove the center of the timber or section that's why some saw a bird what other Timbers are generally good and the shrimp pops good question I've only made ones in Sycamore and Rowan although they cracked quite a lot so you're looking for yet sycamores good silver birch is good I've seen people make them in Beach as well and Hazel's the other one that I use because I've got a lot of hazel on this site and I do use hazel for shrink pots and leave the bark on or take it off as well you know that's that's an option and so are you genuinely saying the softer woods in Germany is not as simple as that it's not as simple as that and the Sycamore is a hard harder wood but what I find is the Sycamore behaves itself very well it doesn't crack so much I've done some pots that are you know biscuit barrel size that might have been able to fit one over my head actually oh is that laughs that's why so yeah it's just trial and error really and what I do is I start small so you start on smaller diameter branches give it a try and if it doesn't blow apart then you know go up from there and there's a lot of trial and error you don't want the walls too thick you don't want them too thin so yeah it depends on the the process as much as the timber selection and just one final thing so you obviously you've left the bark on okay so based on my knowledge the bots would usually paint off one there over time so is it because you Hawks there are particular Tommy yeah exactly right so this is winter cut so the sap is down in the rootstock okay and although it will go crinkly and maybe peel a little bit the bark will stay on and that's the same with the hazel I cut in January December January time when the trees fairly dormant and that allows me to keep the bark on the product as you suggested bark can peel off you do this in May or June and you'd literally be able to sort of peel this off and leave bare timber underneath which equally is a nice effect on some trees okay so the first step in the process then Chris yes so the first thing we'll do is we'll drill some holes into the into the end grain of this timber which allows us to get the next stage working the gouge in but also this is big enough that I'll do two or three holes and then join them together so it speeds the process along and so the auger the first point of interest is that it has a guard on it which is just a little bit of oak and which I've cut into section and then drilled into so if I just unscrew that you can see here the the pattern of the auger and how it locates into the hole and really the lead screw is crucial to the operation and the auger and the sharpness of the edges so I always go for edge protection on my orgas and that's just a nice neat little trick for protecting them while they're in your toolkit now this auger in particular is what I believe is called against pattern so these wings are curled all the way round and its really good for end grain now that's a little bit of a happy circumstance I found this in an antique shop and it happens to almost have not been used it's it's in such good condition and the lead screw is what drags the the wings down into the into the grain so that if you look at orgas in in shops and antique shops in particular it's the screw that you should look at most because you can't replace that easily whereas you can sharpen the wings so yeah basically this makes a lovely sound as you'll see in a moment and the wings just chew through that and grain now this is this is an auger that doesn't have an eye at the top so it's seated into this handle and I've drilled some some holes to take the flange at the top and then just hammered the handle home it might come off during use which is fairly common but you also see them with a ring or top and which you will see insert a bar handle through so yeah so there's a particular diameter that people should be looking at if they wanted to go out maybe purchase their one yeah inches good maybe slightly smaller it's entirely up to the you in terms of what you can get hold of and also what diameter you want to cut if you can find good augers above an inch great get hold of them because they're great for other work that you'll do but the larger the orga the more power you have to put behind it so an inch and a half or a two inch auger if I could find one in this pan would save me a little bit of work but with the effort be disproportional to hitting the outside with a gouge you know it's where the overhead lies in terms of do you drill a bigger hole by hand or do you just use the gouge to widen a smaller hole and this one as I said it's a happy circumstance it's old steel from Sheffield and you see the maker's mark there and it just is a brilliant bit I was very lucky to find it so of course the next step in the process is obviously to clamp it down yeah and I I've chosen a bit of wood that's too big for my usual clamp which you can see here and I just put a bit of timber underneath there so that when I go through the bottom I don't bother the screw but yeah this this log is too big so instead we're using the the bench and I've inserted a peg and then a couple of blocks and a wedge just to lock that down so it doesn't move around when I'm all green and as I said I'm gonna do a couple of holes so I'll do three so you place the screw on and then start twisting and that will just bite into the timber and there's not a lot of downward pressure at this stage as I said this is a good lead screw but then you can see the wings are starting to to bite into the timber it's definitely worth getting a close-up on that because as you turn them you can see the chip that's produced you can hear that lovely rasping sound and again not a huge amount of downward pressure just some to keep everything engaged and in line and it doesn't it's not crucial that these are dead square to the log just big turning and this is an obvious and Archimedes screw so what's happening is that the the chips are being lifted up the twists of the order and what I find is I don't need to back this off I don't need to undo the direction of travel on the order it does just lift and if I clear this you should be able to see these smaller chips coming through so it does mangle them compared to the the the long chips but you'll see that as we we carry on so including games don't drill into the pits easy basically absolutely on the smaller pots I do and I just go through the middle and then I widen them out with a gouge on a large pot like this you just say well the rule that works well so I'll do it all to work and then use the gouge afterwards you can see the chips now are much smaller because they're broken up as we lift it and then as we get to the bottom the lead screw pokes through and you go into the bench well we're nearly down we gonna be there any minute you hear a slight crunching sound that gives me a clue that should be fine and then basically go in the other direction and I'm not putting any upward strength on to this because you basically pull the handle off the bar on this auger and but what I do do is just hold with one hand and lift up and keep twisting in the reverse direction and then the author comes out nicely and you can see here the the fibers are caught in the eyes and what you can't do is bang this on something to get rid of them but I like my order so I use a pointy stick I just clear those out instead of banging them and risking any damage to this at all so that's the whole number one they go in and do another one the same process and I like to do these fairly close together well it's not too much work with the gouge school good before strength testing a bit saw smoke involved so you've all good three holes in Chris that's right so just release this wedge and take the pot out so you can see can you just see there's a little bit of sat there we've come through and this and there's some holes but the screw basically that drives the orga comes out the bottom and then the the wings tear this up a little bit and what I find is using the same pokey stick I can just smash through and then I use the end just to break out the last little bit there we go and then that stick is used just to clear the hole and gives you a nice clean hole do that on the other one you see it at that point really does make a difference okay that's all of them cleared through so Chris we're looking at the gouges now aren't we yeah so the next step will be to draw a perimeter for the wall which I'll do in a second but also then to work back towards that wall with the gouges so the the important thing to note about these gouges is they're in channel or in wall gouges and that's all about where the bevel is so if I turn this couch over you see that it's flat all the way down to the sharp edge and if I turn it again you'll be able to see that the the bevel is on the inside so a standard gouge has the the bevel on the outside and allows you to work along a piece of timber where it's the flatness at the back here it allows us to work up and into the wood and go straight down as opposed to having to hold the tool at an angle to get the bevel to engage so these are cherry brand german-made gouges they might be Austin oh no they are German and I've got a 22 and a 16 mil and what I find is the 16 mil gets into these inch holes really nicely and then the 22 is great for just widening the general and doing these larger pots so excuse my increments and when you say 60 mil is that thingy the diameter from one side to the other I believe that that's wingtip to wingtip right and then you'll have a larger if you were to measure the inside curve I did look into it when I bought them but and I would recommend that if you really need specific sizes you just do a little bit of reading and I can't remember the name of the company but these were imported from Germany and you can find them from time to time in car boots and places like tours of self-reliance at the bodger's ball and other places they trade and these ones again are designed to be hit with a mallet you don't always find that and they've got a ferrule at the top this band of Steel you see there's a little bit of wear coming already these are hornbeam handles I believe and that will that will split but the ring is designed to stop the splitting from damaging at all too much and they're fairly substantial I do you get them stuck in pots from time to time and they you know they've stood up to some good abuse over the first year of Irish I'm gonna mark the depth of the wall and you can see here I'm gripping the pencil and running my fingertip against the bark so I basically get a fixed perimeter fixed width I'll just skip that section where the bark is slightly scarred and then rather than measuring or doing it by eye it just gives me and I'm leaving this fairly chunky this gives you the ability to work round and get some evenness and I'll miss that as well because we've got this little pinch point [Music] and then I'll just go in and do that by hand a little bit at the start you see the scarring here the Bark's slightly thicker so we'll just come round and so the next set course that's right the next step is to so widen these holes out and join them up I'm gonna do that with the sixteen milk out just because it fits into these inch holes quite nicely I'm going to pair it with a mallet now readers of the bushcraft Journal will have seen this mallet briefly in the article that I wrote for Danny and this is I think a little bit of might be Elm but it was a mallet that I inherited where I bought a lathe from someone and it's got a nice long handle and it's quite lightweight it was 580 grams I reckon it's probably 550 now and you can see the dilemma Nate or delamination of the the timber and it's getting lighter but what I find is a nice light mallet allows me to strike we can do a lot of high-frequency work so you don't use an actual hammer with the chisels that you the gouges that you use it yeah so you'll see if you buy a mallet from the shop you'll see the carvers mallets are really rounded and for hitting the back of chisels they're wide and if you were to use a hammer you'd have a small diameter to hit the back of the gouge with so instead I use something that's fairly big and also if you were to hit yourself with this you'll do less damage and if you set yourself with a hammer so what I'm going to do is just take a very small very thin piece and just going to knock down the wood and start widening the hole out and what you find is although the gouge is flat you get some stepping through the grain and so I will these initial ones just tip the gouge into the wall but I'm cutting to get it to cut all the way through okay so that's bottom right out and I wonder if this will release yeah so that's the chip that I've generated with this with this tool and I have a coal scuttle which I have been collecting the the chippings from because these make great kindling for the stove and they'll just dry out over time so you know I'm working so you're basically edging it into the wall then get into the wall that's by a few milli time and what I'm doing is I'm heading for one of the other holes okay so that is a little bit too much wood to take I can feel the resistance there so before you hammer it all the way home just release that and then what I'll do is I'll push down with my hand because there's nothing worse than getting one of these bound if they're wood if you hit it into the wood too much or if it goes in at a slight angle you've then got to pull it out and I have closed your ears if you scream which I have pulled these out and stab myself with them before you know that muscle memory where you're pulling against something you can do that with knives and stuff as well and so you do need to be careful with that and where I've got timber that sort of caught up I'll just use my hand to release those chips and things and also you do need to take some of the waste away and what I find is where it gets really thin here you've got to be careful because the gouge can go off at a slight angle and then you've got to do lots of twisting to get it to work to get it to be freed up so I'll just widen this slightly before going across the boundary into the next hole okay so there you can see I've breached into the next hole the hot thing that's twisted a little bit which is fine as a good example and then you just need to twist the gouge to release it go back in it's a different it's just the transition zone and the grain is doing what it wants to and I'll just take another nip out there might just be worth having a look at what's going underneath actually so yeah you can see here that the gouge has only just come through the joining wall and you see how small it and this section is compared to how wide it is at the top that's because the gouge cuts a slight angle but we can just twist the gouge and that'll come out and away so now we do have a gap between the two areas so still staying tentative I can now go all the way down you see how we're now got a channel and that breach is complete so then you can be a little bit more take ambitious with the amount of timber you take because it will release it says so right in stage what you're doing you're very Joanie easing off the tension within the fibers so you kind of control unit break basically yes so if you look if you get that on camera all the way down you see there's a little bit at the bottom where the GAO just sort of gone in it steps through that so there is a lot of tension in the timber you're going down the grain so you're forcing those fibers apart and you just need to be careful not to bind the tool but as you'll see when we work with the larger gouge we can go more quickly this bit is slightly fiddly ER but it's worth taking the time to pass of it on you can see because the attachment to the wood is only on the back so once you get your wedge the gouge in behind there as long as you're not taking too much as you force the wedge in or force the gouge in that will peel off and this one's just about to go as well it's just got a little bit of an attachment so again a much larger chunk and that attach because they're not there and then it get the same principle just why don't that stuff run the split across the into the other hole that one's gone really easily you can see now that there's a gap there you know turn it over and what I'll do is I'll switch on to the larger gouge and you'll be able to see that comes off much more quickly because there's no attachment either side or in front so that piece comes off nice and quickly and if you if you want to you can do more holes spend time joining together and not not big lumps out I do find the bigger lumps that you take the more likely you are to run into a knot and they've become a bigger problem so it's just about working methodically in my opinion but also if your auger is better than your gouge do more all the work if you haven't got a great or go but you've got the a good gouge doing a gap work it's just about balance really so here the wood has taken the the grain inside here which corresponds to this knot has taken the gouge in at an angle so as I was hitting that it forced force it out so I'm going to try and push it back and then strike down you can see that the wood is taking the taking the tool away so I'll just open that up by levering on the gouge there's no tension so I take it back and then just see if we can't get back in there and then a few harder taps and that just strikes through on one side go on the other side and that's released that there you go perfect example so you can see this knot is a branch coming through this way which corresponds to this scar and that took the gouge in a different angle and would have taken a lot more timber which is fine at this stage you know we're we're you know we're loads away from the edge but you've just got to be careful especially if you find that to be the case near the wall because it's really quite disheartening if you if you cut through the wall thickness on the underside because you've here not so I'll remember that's there and just be careful as I work round so I go it's about not being too greedy with the gouge and working consistently and easily so yeah um I basically come very close to the line most of the way around I'm just going to finish off on this side and what I'm going to do is get fairly close to the line with the gouge and instead of taking chunks or takings of hemisphere so that's what I'll do is I'll just twist the gouge so it's not obvious you understand what I'm getting at here so I've just I've just aligned the GAO it's slightly differently so I can get as close so instead of like that which would leave a little point here that would need taking off I've twisted the gouge around let's see if I can so it's like a hot yeahyou so it's basically the circle comes closer to the line you leave the smallest point here because when we use the hook knife to smooth all that off you'll it just starts a little bit more work really so it's a it's one of those little things that you pick up it's a nuance that not necessarily everyone will think of straight away but it's worth sharing it's a reoccurring theme it's like we were talking earlier about if your auger is really good do lots of holes if your gouge is really do good do one hole and lots of authoring it's about the balance it's about where that overhead lies and I know through personal experience and making tens and tens of these that the hook knife can be quite hard work we spoke a bit more time on the gouge doing these little sections that make a difference into the nuts process then you find that in all walks of life so yeah that's pretty much where I want to be just a little bit there but I'll ignore that and then if we turn over you can see that the wall is actually much chunkier this side and that's because the gouge is sort of forced away from the wall so just do a little bit clearing up I'm not going to draw this I'm just gonna knock a few little bits off and you can see if you're looking inside how the gouge steps through the grain the means that I'm not going to cut back into the wall that I've come fairly close to the top side so again it's just about removing a venting that will be harder to work with cleaning I'll show you you can see these are the lengths of chips that you get when you're going down that way there the whole length but they're basically making a slight chamfer because this wall is thicker at the bottom I turn it around and you can see the chips that were making here a much thinner because the way the gouge works so it's just to understand how the Timbers going to work so the gouge work is now complete Chris that's right so the next step in the process so I'm gonna well Zed said to make yourself comfortable so I've sat in a chair by the stove and I'm I'm gonna do I normally do and so yeah what I'm going to do is I'm going to take a left handed hook knife so that's where as a right hand II hold it with the the bend up and the blades on the right and the reason I've chosen that it seems to work the best is that it allows me to push the blade around the inside of the pot and I'm not making a fashion statement I've just tied a bandanna around my wrist so that I can run that against the side of the pot because what I found in the past is you get a big blister here so if I start working hopefully though all that will become a bit more pushing away from you using this particular I'm pushing round like that so I'm actually pushing into my hand and and supporting the pot but the wall is is in the way it's quite a safe way of working and then holding the pot up on my chest like that and once you get rid of the ridges you can see I mean this tool is particularly nice it's a hollow ground grind on the inside and a nice smooth bevel on the outside it's actually leaving it's got a little nick in it somewhere it's leaving a mark but I'll be okay and so these are the ridges that I talked to you about where we we did that little nuance with the gouge they're just a little bit harder to get through but that's okay you can see here the friction on my wrist you could in theory clamp this and work on a long with a longer handle tool but you've seen the setup in the workshop and for me this works nicely so when people use it normal spoon knives in this particular yeah you could so if you're a right-handed carver you could compare round like this and then later be sharp on this side and you could go around and what you need to get is make sure that you've got the right sort of diameter if you're going to make smaller pots which you might start out making and you might find if you've got a very it's got a roughing hook it won't reaches far that sort of thing so just do what what you can what do go with what works and if you've got a few spoon knives just try them try them out see what works best I do have a right-handed hook which you can use to come the other way and I find this finishing pattern which has got a long section and they're tighter curved really helps so who's that particular one made boy this is an investment right and as a result this a trademark nice needs a little bit of a Polish but he's got the blended bevel which really helps at all turn and he's adding to sort of work that I'm doing here and you can see the chips that are coming off a fairly substantial for hook for a hook tool and what you're doing is coming sideways through the grain so it's a cross grain cut which is what this tool is designed to do I do have a fair few years carving experience so there's a good amount of strength behind the tool we are in terms of the wrist strength and things like that I've just come into quite a thick bit here so I'm gonna push downwards to get that sort of diagonal cut you see the difference so instead of dragging sideways you're cutting slightly diagonally downwards just be careful that well they're straight knife work you need the clearances or no you need something with a bit of curvature and the curvature really helps I think on a smaller diameter or if you're not surface about getting a really smooth finish I think the the straight knife would step and it would leave little chatters through the work and I'm sure you know you could if you make market organ style blades you could work sort of in that that that style as well same too early you know I've I have these this tool wasn't purchased for this job it's in the carving kit and it worked it just happens to work really well and as I've bought another one of these blades so I can put it on a slightly different handle I'd like a slightly longer handle for this application of using the tool so here you can see I've gone so far down and I'm just reaching slightly further down and that's for me where this part of the blade comes in the curvier part the blade then you see how the chips are slightly smaller and just reaching to about halfway and that that extra curvature just looks like a bit of a gouge and gets into the areas and then there's a lot of wrist twisting going on where this is the little pinch that we we looked at earlier and you just need to follow the the would round so this one's almost done then yeah almost so I've got a little nick in this tool which I've not clocked and it's just leaving a mark so I have to sharpen this tool when I've got time and just go back over this so I'm just leaving a little bit of extra in places where I'm not quite hitting the line but the next stage is to turn it over and this is the base of the and the pot that we gouged back into and I've drawn another line to work too and just the same process so with this as with everything that's about racing about so technique yeah so safety wise as far as I'm concerned my hand is behind the wood I'm twisting I'm not putting it even if I was pushing you know my hand is very safe where it's being held and then I'd have to come I'd have to come right out of the work to get myself and the focus is sideways it's about riskiness and I'm using my shoulder op in my shoulder a little bit to twist around and then yeah bracing as well I'm working on my working on my leg I'm bracing against my body and and I'm sort of at the end of my range of movement I'm not starting up here and pushing all the way through which would allow some slippage potential so I finished the cut I'd have to then move you sort of move my whole body round to to make that go further and you might notice I tend not to notice it myself but I'm moving the wood quite a lot horns are reviewing that on the video actually they just work towards the line so you can see there's a little mark line line round here so I'm going round once in one position and then I'll readjust a tool in my hand and I'll go around again and I suppose that adds to the safety that we were just talking about as well so I'm not then going to reposition and do that it and then reposition so it's about getting in the zone doing one thing only and suppose you're eliminating variables you get a good shot of that you see where the the clefts are the gouge marks are left so the second phase is literally just a little bit of a shift of the tool in the hand and then I can go through and work about a section so yeah this is where the the scar is and it's having an effect on what's going on in the wood so I'll I'll skirt over that and then look at it in the final finishing see if it needs any more work one of the important things here is that you don't take too much away you're using a hook so you're not going to thin the wall too much and if you can see it's just one reach line left now just go around and take that out so these items are going to be used for food contact I anticipate this will be filled with sugar or coffee or tea bags so I like just to get that nice finish nothing wrong if you want it to sound these you can't get there and it's as smooth as you want but it's worth paying attention to the bit that's going to be in contact with food so it's nice and smooth just less places for particles to get stuck into you can like the author I love the sound of this it makes a nice unzipping sound through the fresh birch and this has been down eight weeks left in length there's still a lot of moisture in it okay I will have to go over that again before it dries so yeah we now have a hollow lock and that's the end of the Halloween phase so Chris the next section yeah so now we've hallowed the log what we're going to do is carve a groove in the base into which that dry panels going to sit and form the container now I'll mark that with a pencil but then I'll use this flex cut tool it's called us right scorp I know scoffs to be something slightly different our mutual friend Lee makes a brilliant one but this flex cut tool is a tip that I got from watching John mulaney's videos and it just makes a groove and it takes a lot of hassle out of the process so from a production point of view and which is my main concern it's ideal you run it around once if it's not deep enough you run it around again I think it was about thirty quid they're widely available it's something that people ask quite a lot about with shrimp pots you've got the part number there and it's the five mil not the eight mil if you so five milk okay yep so yeah good good bit of kit and if you want to you can do it with a knife tip of but that's not the method I use I I saw John doing it it at all and that's the only method that I use for the production though perfect so here you're marking off now where you're gonna cut that's right so going to mark out where the grooves gonna be and using the same technique or a similar technique to where we measured the perimeter I want a fixed depth so I'll put a mark in that looks about right for the base and then I'll just grip and use the the fingertip on the base just to control the depth of the pencil all the way around rotating the work so what would you say is about five mill five six mill something like that and I'm just because I've done this several times and what I'll do is I'll have a shampooed base so the edge of the base will fit into this groove but there'll be a portion in the center that will be thicker and I find that just helps stop the wood from warping if it's dead flat all the way across it can soak up moisture and Bend so yeah you'll see that later in the process and I'm just going to do another line which gives me the the width of the channel that I'm going to cut with the skort tool that we just looked up there's no fixed measurements on these if you're doing a smaller pot you'll have a smaller base and it will be thinner the the distance that this base has to traverse means that I'm going to want it slightly chunkier so that's a little bit thicker than I've been doing on a smaller pots and I've been making this week here's a closer look at the the Flex cut tool itself it's basically a sideways gouge which allows us to work very easily and they've got this sort of seahorse funky handle shape on them which allows you to hold it in your hand quite call it an economic design but it's that sort of thing and what I'm going to do is is yeah try and get you a good shot he's dig in and then try and keep the chip working which I can do usually you see how it's cutting between the lines and I can only travel so far sometimes it I like to go back on myself a bit it's not crucial that they're absolutely level it's not but it's useful if they're between the lines for the same thing again you're rolling your wrists aren't you yes yet so the the safety factor here is I'm not pulling onto my thumb I'm not adding power with with you know with my arm so I can't get myself I'm closing my fist and rolling my wrist effectively yes inside I do think about safety but not in an active way so to have you ask those questions this is interesting to make me think a little bit closer you kind of work instinctively you do that you know when you're driving and things as well I've only London week goes out the window but you know it's the familiarity with your process whichever that might be I was thinking that research and guys are here yesterday you know you do have to think but a lot of it is reflex and instincts and self-preservation I make a living with my hands so I'm always looking or doing things that are fairly so I suppose is that complacency potentially what you'd get getting you into trouble isn't it so I've been around once and I'm just going around again to make the groove slightly deeper than you can cut initially can you see and if I camera pick it up you've just got a little bit of tearing there you go too deep with this tool and the edge catches it just releases the fibers and can be a bit messy I will go back over this with a knife once the base is in and you can champ for this lower edge if you want to so yeah that's all the way around twice now and the gap you know the distance is only two mil cuts three mil in places and what we're going to do is insert the base from this side then the channel will will allow the base to be quite loose which gives the space that the wood needs as it shrinks so each of these growth rings is like a circle of wood that circle is going to get smaller as the cells of the fibers shrink and their moisture and so it's gonna basically pinch onto the base and shrink on which is the whole shrink pop terminology so Chris now that we finish carving a groove what's the next step so we're gonna make the base now and this is a piece of oak I make these on a bandsaw it's bone-dry timber and what we're going to do is basically pop the pot onto the wood and then draw around the inside of the pot and this is where they're propelling pencil helps just one step one quick question before you do that so the bass you you've got a note so for the guys watching you have people watching what the current different timbres they can use I mean it's sort of someone from the local DIY store yeah I use oak because it's nice and strong you could break up a bit of furniture secondhand furniture something like that you kind of want to avoid pine so really it's about what you can get hold of I did see a video someone who sawed off the end of the log that he was making a shrink pot from and then used that to make the base mm-hmm whereas this is in the the grain is along the plank his was in the round and I don't know how the cracking would work but that seemed like her a nice idea well I do you want somebody that's a strong word and bought him hardwoods is ideal you know if you can buy cheap secondhand furniture mahogany that sort of thing would be better I suppose buying it in thin planks is a key factor as well if you can find someone that can plank to 7/8 mill something like that would be ideal so yeah I've I've had the luxury of a propelling pencil and I've propelled to the ledge and that just allows me to go in at a slight angle and Mark out the inside perimeter of the pot which I'll do all the way around and that will give me Alliance who work - that's the same as the inside of the pot so when I cut that out I'll be fairly generous with the line because remember the depth of the groove will allow the base to fit in so you could go over that with a marker pen maybe and then go to the outside line in the marker I just have to remember to leave a little bit extra on and then it's a tight fit you hammer it home and it pops into the channel but then you've got the balance between fitting into the channel and it being too tight if it's too tight as it shrinks the spot that the pot will potentially split so the next step is to cut around now the line yep so I'm going to use a coping saw my views one of these before at school and they're great for tight curves and things like that and they're in a frame that allows you to cut quite deep or quite a distance into a plank and I'm going to use a vise and you could do this on the edge of a table or a flat surface I have a vise handy so makes let's use it and just remembering that we're going to leave a little bit extra I tend to weigh and then that allows [Laughter] yeah I'm going to tidy this up with a knife maybe I could go a little bit closer but bit close they sit is easy to wander in if you have a jigsaw no a scroll saw which is a similar sized blade on a on a table or I do use a a bandsaw for this from time to time as well especially for the larger [Laughter] just just miss the line but come very close to it so yeah it close there they've all work to do there that's fine so Chris now that's also on yep so that's the initial rough soaring and I'm going to use that depth gauge technique that we've talked about several stages to use the flat surface here as a reference and go all the way around it's fairly rough at this stage because I'm going to hit this with an axe can also use a disc sander to do the Sham Pring so that's for the edge of the rim and then very roughly just gonna go around and gives me an area to leave inside and an area to chamfer and it just helps me to work consistently alright so so the idea is that you cut off a bit between the lines then you get a diagonal as a result so now for the axe work yeah so the axe are in in kiln dried or very dry wood can shatter it can cause a lot of splits so you have to be fairly careful and very mindful of the grain direction so what I'm going to do if you see the flecks in the timber are running up and down like that I'm going to start by cutting off at the edge across here this is a grounds for Brooks Wildlife hatchet it's a really nice of axe I rate it highly for spoon work and all sorts of things and I'm just going to see how we get on and you can hear how high a tone that is it's really a slapping sound and it's quite a slow process as well but leaves a nice smooth finish I'm going to tidy this up with a knife and a wood carving knife in dry timber can take a while so you know persevere and work quite slowly with the axe here and accuracy is the key one of the things I'll try not to do is over strike and land the axe up here because then you need to start the shampoo again but you can see by cutting between those two lines you get a diagonal and I've got those lines roughly equidistant all the way around so you get an even shampoo all the way around and then I'll just twist the wood and come up the grain a slightly different angle but as close to going down it as possible and then again slightly different technique just so I'm coming down the grain again and not dirt across it so small axe marks we can clear up with the knife any fishes harder to do so so then here we've got to come across the grain at some point but before we do I'll repeat the process and start again with the easiest most control cuts that's coming very close to the line but then I'll work back up that's now a diagonal cut with the grain and then this bit it's very difficult to do anything but across the drain and the reason that's important is that it can tear more easily and you're more likely to get big splits so I'll just rock to get a slightly more diagonal cut on each side minimize the amount of cross grain slicing in this dried wood to see that's slightly torn up there but we can solve that with the knife smooth it off so Chris know that yes work is complete yeah having having added this chamfer with the axe I'm going to tidy everything up with the with a straight knife this is a Mora 106 really rate this knife I was quite often just go to my teaching box and pick out a sharp one for when I want to just get on and do some carving without to worry about I'll sharp my normal knife is and again thinking about grain directions so the grain runs this way if you introduce your knife that way you could potentially generate a split that will knock a corner off which would be fairly disastrous and just being very careful can you see how my thumb is out of the main path of the knife this is a paring cut and my thumb will move a distance as I work as I changed the position of the knife and if I was to slip my fist would close the blade would miss my thumb I'm also at the end of my reach in terms I'm not dragging on with my hand I'm with my arm sorry I'm closing my fist that makes sense this is very tough going for a fine beveled whittling knife so with this one oh you trying to go back up to the line or close to it and now we're coming into endgrain where the fibers are running like that so you're having to sort of drag that you're pushing one fiber on to the next it's quite tough going [Music] when I've got lots of these I will take them to a sanding wheel just to speed the process up just go back over that a little bit it's better to leave the wood on and the base not to fit into the pot than to make them too skinny at this stage and then you have them rattle around a lot you lose them or the base doesn't shrink on to the pot doesn't shrink onto the base well enough so that's that's about right where I need to be and then since I'm here I'll just carry on so I've skipped this quarter because I need to make the knife go the other way so the grains like this you come around one way I go around the other but since I'm starting this orientation and my hands are in the right place I'll just skip to the other portion of the work where this grip works [Applause] and again it's a balance between how skinny you make this bit and how much of the hard carving you got to do if you have access to a Sun wheel and you don't mind using powered kit I don't mind for production work so much it's a good time to get your dust masks on okay so that's that so if you imagine a cross through here that's those quarters done and then I need to change my grip and push the knife the other way this is a thumb pivot cut and the blade is wagging up and down and I'm not forcing it with my arm so the safety here is that my thumb is being used as a fulcrum and the blade is only traveling a short distance and then I reset you see how far away my fingers are right through like this and then the angle has changed as I've moved round I've just add a little bit more blade brace against the block both fine or end grating cuts where the fibers are dead on like that and you're slicing the tops of love okay and then that's this is the final quarter that needs doing the same principle and there is this part of the fitting there's lots of chewing of throwing and probably have to go over these areas a little bit to refine them so it's just about consistency at this stage so that's where I came quite close with the saw it's quite tough on your hands it's just got a few saw marks you want the smallest of shavings just to nip those sort of marks out needs to be till you will offer that up let's see how we get on and then I'll clean the shop for up on the back go for the fitting it sometimes helps to mark which way round the base is intending to go and this is a close fit but not quite there yet still a little bit oversized so I'm just like boiling that maybe if I take a portion off here and that's a little bit of trial and error I think the marker I've made is actually quite accurate today and it's not always the case I just take a little bit more off and then offer up again like that's pretty close I've gained there take a little there's a little lump there that's gonna prevent it sliding in so once you get it past this initial rim it will click into the groove and then it will be okay so yeah that perimeter is fairly good we can refine it further in a moment what I'm going to do is get the pencil out and just go back over this this chamfer to tidy that up and make it look good so what is it you're marking here Chris so this is the same technique that we've been using all the way through I'm just using this flat surface as my reference running my finger tip along to control the depth that the pencil marks at and that will just give me a line to cut the Sham for too which will give me a defined depth on this part of the know you're refining the Sham from the edge basically yes but the debt corresponds to the rim the depth of the groove oh it could be a little bit thinner but I think because of the size of the pot never before and like that so back to the 1:06 thinking about grain direction again so the grain is running up and down this way so I'll work in quarters you do need to be a bit more careful now so there's a potential to slip and catch your fingers so I tend to work the leading edge onto the rim first and then come back and do you see that so so it's one slightly steeper cut and then a second at the back and then take the middle out rather than trying to take everything in a single pass this was wet you probably get away with a long clean shaving but because it's dry and hard quite rock hard actually I'm going to do it slowly and in a controlled way and really the that edge is the only one that matters this bit is for neatness and you know if you go to take pride in something you do you take care of the back and the bit that people have to make an effort to look at as much as you do the bit that's on show and in my opinion so yeah that is my finger is at risk this finger if I slip badly could get cut but I'm working on mitigating the risks by working gently and in a controlled slow way what I ought to do is build myself a dumbhead shave horse a good not nodding donkey style and just of all this with a draw knife be a lot more easier and quicker but then you've got a factor in the time spent making the horse which I don't have unfortunately so in the same way that I worked one quarter and then the opposite when I was in the same when I had to grip right I'm now gonna work the quarters that I've just shown you are done and I'm going to work the next two and I do that with the paring cut where I'm bracing with my thumb and you see I'm choking the knife a little bit I'm reaching that's because of the size of the piece of wood that I'm working on but the principles are the same leading edge back edge leading edge back edge working back and keeping the the knife out of the way of the thumb or thumb around like yep that's relatively good just a little bit more so Chris the moment of truth a truth indeed so I've I've gone as close as I dare fitting the the lid I think is still a little bit tight in places but we're going to hammer it home and see how we get on you can do this with the back of your knife but I prefer a rubber mallet there we go so he said little bit tight but now you can see look no hands that's caught in the base and you remember we've got that groove on the inside and at some point it will just click into the base so now that has that's gone into the groove and you have to give it a wallop to get it in further and you can see it's in the channel it's not quite perfect here but there's a wood shrinks having a little bit of a gap in places like this will allow it to shrink on and if you've not got the orientation right that can be an issue as well so that's where hammering it through this this initial area here and look you've got a little bit of torn grain so that's an indicator that the base was too tight by a fraction but only a fraction and there is a risk that the groove is not deep enough it can shrink too much if your wall is really thick it can shrink on and then it will crack but it's a lot of trial and error a lot of fun to be had and you can look at other makers some people put a chamb fur around the rim which allows the base to go in a little bit more and actually seeing this I perhaps do that myself put that into my process but I do shamp for the inside once it's all dry anyway so I'll I'll get rid of that but maybe I could put it in to start with so there's there's lots of different ways to do this in the in the the subtle nuances but that's essentially the principle that you get the base into the groove that you've made and that is a shrink pot as you saw at start of the video I had ones with lids or one with a lid on and I really like putting the lids on because it just adds so much usefulness that you can get out of the actual vessel itself so if we were to make the lid now what would happen is that the insert of the lid would get pinched in the pot and you would have a box that you can't open so what I have to do is dry this down for at least a couple of weeks and what you can do is weigh them if you weigh this as a certain weight at this stage as the moisture evaporates from within the grain it loses weight and you can keep weighing them some people microwave them to boil the moisture and get that off there's a lot of Jeopardy in that and you have to do it in short bursts with cooling times in between but that's a good way of doing it quickly but once it stops losing weight that means the moistures all come out and it's bone-dry I've done that with ax handles to good effect as well actually and then once it is dry will come along similar principle but using a transfer paper and what I do then is have an imprint of this part of the wall and you can saw a little bit off the top and that will give you a perimeter to work to and I like the outside to be flush with the lid and the inside ever so slightly smaller so when you twist them and then when you glue them together you align them up so that the outside once it's locked is flush and the inside is is slightly off and that's what causes it to lock with the drawing are there any tips in terms of the actual drawing if you were to just leave it out is it in a cool place isn't it there's again there's it's trial and error what I found I don't have any heating active heating in my hallway in the set on the stairs so this will sit on its side in on the stairs on the carpet on the stairs on the left cyber I won't trip over it and I'll keep in means that I can check it whenever I go up and down stairs especially if you've got any with loose leads and things like that but they reckon 20 degrees so at room temperature over a couple of weeks is a really good way of drying timber I could leave them out in on the shelves in the workshop but the temperature and the moisture in the air is quite you know is still the end of winter in the beginning of spring you can keep them in bags and things as well a friend of mine used to do these and he found the ones with the bark on would go moldy quite easily in a bag in theory you can pack them with shavings which would take the moisture wick the moisture away so if you've got experience drying other things then you can you can apply that and see how you get on but be prepared to lose a few if you're if you're heating them so no directional heat they don't want to be sat on a radiator necessarily is that'll dry the bottom faster than the top and that difference will set up tension in the timber likewise next to a stove or in a window in in shade in the summer there's some moves and you'll end up finding that direct sunlight will crack you timber quite quickly so yeah if you've got if you've got the ability to on the stairs that's where this one I'll end up or in a coal cupboard somewhere or on a shelf maybe but yeah that's that's the finished item for now and then come back later and make the lid so of course obviously this is one you've made before with the lid that's right here's one I made earlier as they say and the idea is that I was just mentioning before that the outside of the lid is flush with the outside of the pot whereas the inside fits in one way and then as you twist it it locks on I've also turned a finial little ball finial which goes into a hole so we've got three pieces here you've got the insert a piece for the lid which is shaped and then the ball so assuming you can turn in a ball on a post or carve a post and a nice little lump of something pretty what you need to do is then work out how you're going to make these now I do make these on a band saw and a sanding disc you'll be able to see their Sham furred they are hand chamfered with a knife around the edges but marking them out is quite tricky now I use the technique of using transfer paper onto a carry map you know the sorghum at style and foam closed-cell mats and what I do is I put the transfer paper onto that mat and then I push the finish pot down onto the transfer paper and which leaves a mark and then on the planks very similar to the planks that we use for the base they're just sort of cut thin on the bandsaw you then trace over the mark left by the rim of the pot which puts a mark onto the wood then that gives you something to aim at for cutting the tops then they're shaped I cut a shampoo and sand that back so it gives you an inner and an outer piece what's going on here is that the inner piece has to be offset from the top of the lid so that when you twist it in one direction it it gets you to that equalness of the shatter of the the flush that we're talking about and so what I have to do is take this base insert it in without the lid on and then twist it so it locks then I use the glue on top and I add the lid and orientate it so the flush this works and then when that's all drying you take it off so then the insert finds its mark where it's loose and then when you twist it the lid is in the correct orientation for the pot I understand good to show without actually doing it on one of these and prior to gluing them together what I've Donnie's drilled the hole for the finial and then I put the finial in afterwards because what you don't want to have to do is put the finial in and then cut the base or anything like that so I add it when the two layers are sandwiched together and then if the post that goes into the lid is too tall you can easily take it out at this stage before you've glued it and saw a little bit off and then pop it back until it's flush and a little bit of superglue to keep those in in the top a few more details that are worth just looking at since we're going in in depth you might just be able to see there's a chamfer around the outside here and that's just paired round with a knife and there are also some cracks on the inside this is this is one that cracked a little bit more no it worse than I would have liked so it ended up as a gift rather than one for sale but there's also that corresponding chamfer on the bottom which if you remember we spoke about a moment ago this crushed grain will be picked out with a knife which actually gives you a nice chamfer and then additionally at the edge the top and bottom on the backside very shallow chamfer if you have a very aggressive or 90-degree edge it's more likely to take a dent or or have a problem by just chamfering off ever so slightly by cutting this bit off you end up with more of a rounded so you have the the top of the lid and the side and then a little chamfer which will protect that edge and I do that top and bottom and it bounces light slightly differently so it's really subtle but it looks slightly better and then as you feel with your fingers you won't feel the real sharpness and it just feels that a little bit softer and it adds a little bit to the tactile Ness of the product and I suppose lastly here you see I've I've had to peel away some of the bark and I've done that with the hook knife just into the inner bark where there are scars or maybe this was a bubble where the grain or whether wood has shrunk away and the bar bubbled up it's just worth taking any loose edges off and finally they've had a coat of linseed oil I do all the bottom at the base I all the bark and you can see there is some variation in the hue of birch but this is much whiter and this is yellow ah you can see that on the timber underneath as well that's inevitable do you brush the oil on or do stitute you kind of dunk it into a No so I want as little oil on as possible a very thin layer or maybe two thin layers I use kitchen roll and it has to be kitchen well that doesn't have anything printed on it a pattern will come off with you in the oil and and transfer onto the work so clear kitchen paper you can use a rag and you have to be careful with linseed oil Eva where that it can combust on a rag as it evaporates it can this is wasa Lindsay yeah so this is I'm talking about cold-pressed raw linseed oil not boiled linseed or although actually on earth you know unless you start licking it you're not going to put this in your mouth like you would a spoon but it is close to food items so yeah the boiled linseed oil I wouldn't recommend on this product because it's quite you'd need a finishing phase afterwards but the cold press have worked nicely and you might not be able to pick it up in this light but there there is no oil on the inside of this pot the oil has an aroma you might have had that on spoons and bowls that you've eaten with and what with delicate flavors like tea and sugar maybe flour whatever you put in these pots there's a potential for the because there's not airflow around the inside of the pot there's a potential for taint and your tea might taste of Lindsay if you did oil the inside so yeah you extra little tips just for you know the refinements that that I've discovered over the seasons that I've been making these and I hope you find all that very helpful seeing comfortably yes shouldn't get pushed up on your carbonyls said there you go guys that is a wrap for this video Chris thank you so much that an absolute trouper man how will through that Saudi go guys as we said in the beginning of this video it is too tall is designed that to show you all the steps and yours is along the way then hopefully you're inspired to attempt this yourself now needless to say down below I'm going to put a link to the following I'm going to put a link to Chris's Instagram profile his Facebook fan page and his website there's one thing I do want to ask of you don't ask much from you guys when you're watching these videos chris is a full-time cream woodworker he usually charges to kind of teach things like this so he's very very kindly allowed me to give me permission to record this for you guys to learn so all I ask from you is if you gain any value from this whatsoever even from an entertainment point of view the only thing I ask from you is you go and check out Chris on his social media and give him a follow and that's the least we can do just to say thank you so we'll put the links to that down below chris is very active very helpful also if you have any questions or queries you can hit Chris up you'd be more than happy to help out and also if you do give this a go which we really hope you do in whatever shape or form however it goes for you please do tag us on social media we would love to see how you get on with it a lot of the videos are done before with other guys with other green woodworkers even to this day we you know keep getting tagged with the makers to say oh I attempted this I attempted that so it's the same with the shrink pots you know no matter you know how it goes for you please do tag us in there and like I said please do go and check out Chris on social media if you have any questions our career queries do let him know he'd be more than happy to help out like I said he does his full-time it does teach him person he solves a lot of his ways in markets but also starting to sell online as well so you can check out a lot more than work that he's doing also another thing to stress that this is Chris's technique that he's developed so he's not saying this is the only way is that correct no very much so yeah so like we were talking about with the hook knife that works for me that knife in my kit and it just happens to be perfect for the job but it's no way the only thing you can use oh I haven't done it today but wouldn't mind trying out a straight knife just you know so your question is would a straight knife work yeah probably not maybe I've got a decent bit of kit that will work so I'll give that a try and likewise if the guys give it a try as well and yeah you just find out what works use weekend don't get put off obviously there are yeah there were two or three kind of speciality tools on the gouges and an ogre ogre etc you know and but Don kind of let that put you off your loads and loads of kit to kind of work on this model this is the first time I've actually seen a process from start to finish that on looking forward so tempted and this myself as well so there you go guys we hope you enjoyed this tutorial tutorial like I said links are down below to Chris's social medium in the world to me as a way of saying thank you so go and check that out if you have any questions or feedback let us know in the comments below and hope you enjoy the video and as always whatever you're doing you have a blessed day a blessed week ahead from Chris and myself Zed outdoors pace elf

Channel: Zed Outdoors

Views: 546,296

Rating: 4.6656718 out of 5

Keywords: zed outdoors, outdoors, survival, survivalist, prepping, preppers, camping, hiking, bushcraft, wilderness, sas, military, forest, wild, tactical, bob everyday carry, every day carry, edc, bug out bag, awesome, best, wildlife, nature, army, ray mears, bear grylls, self sufficiency, wild camp, wildcamp, solo, primitive

Id: CI522RsVBYA

Length: 86min 7sec (5167 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 28 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/[deleted]]

I love when Zed does these videos. Not only does he find great people to learn from, he asks questions that add a lot of value to the lesson.

[u/louiscyr]

Zed has a whole playlist of spoon carving and green woodworking tutorials by some very talented people. It's a very nice resource.

[u/BenchMonster74]

Saw this over on Zed’s FB. Good stuff.