How to weave an obelisk with Dave Jackson The Stick Smith

[Music] welcome my name's Dave Jackson aka the stick Smith and today I'm going to show you how to weave one of these garden table lists or wigwams or plant support depending on what you want to call it so first of all we need a jig some sort of jig as you can see down here to actually hold your sticks in a really nice firm manner now I appreciate but not many of you are going to have a jig like this at home you could if you have some timber around actually make one and this spins which means when I'm weaving I can sit still rather than having to move around the obelisk but it's probably only worthwhile you're gonna make quite a few over here I've got another common way of holding them if you happen to have a an old tire lying around you can drill holes at regular intervals to hold your uprights nice and securely while you're weaving not many people have an old tire lying around so failing that you can just put your sticks into some firm ground it needs to be firm there's no point putting it in a specially dug over garden bed because the soil will be too loose to hold the sticks firmly while still weaving so here we'll have done to put stick in the center where I want your bliss and then using a bit of string which will equate to the radius I can mark out the positions of my uprights before then putting in my sticks for what we are going to be weaving today the distance between your uprights wants to be about four to five inches and that will create some nice tension in the wood okay [Music] here I have my pre-cut willow sticks these are a willow variety called Salix terminalis and these are all one year old when your old willow you can see down here I've got lots more the same stuff and it grows very very long lengths in one year and the reason for using 1 year old willow is because it won't put on any side branches in that first year so you've got nice straight stems about lots of side branches coming off so these are the be me uprights and what I'm going to do is put them in my pre-drilled holes in this chick here [Music] now in terms of tools what you'll need the potatoes and over here for when we're finishing the Theophilus you may need a pod King which is a spiked tool again you may not have a bodkin probably very unlikely I have a pod kid so what you can use is a screwdriver and this is the later on for actually making slightly bigger holes in the weave so we can tie off the willow if you have a bench grinder and an old screwdriver that you don't want anymore then you can grind a nice fine point on that so it more resembles the points on this vodka and again later on what you might find useful especially if you haven't got very good grip with your fingers with a pair of pliers and most importantly of all a piece of thick string like this an old food place now at this point very important to put a bootlace around your neck all will become apparent in a moment so I've got my sticks in place now again it's really important to gather these up at the top in an orderly fashion so going in an anti-clockwise direction trying to get each stick and tuck it behind the others to get these all bunching together at the top a nice tight meeting in the orderly fashion take each stick in turn now this is why you need your string around your neck because if I'd left it over there don't let go of all this that's why I tie it off so I'm gonna now tie but it's nice and tightly really try and get it nice and tight this is why a bit of thick string is best because you can then pull it very tightly and do a simple bow but you can easily undo because this is only temporary okay say last six nice and firmly in the jig I've now got the willow to my left here which we're going to be weaving with now this has been soaked in the river which the River Thames is just to the left of me here and this is a basket tree willow called Blackmore from the Somerset Levels and it's really really good quality basket weave well Oh again it's one year's growth no side branches very very flexible it's been soaking the river because you buy dried usually but in order to make it flexible again to weave you have to soak it and this has been soaking for about five days and now it's really nice and malleable so to start off the weaving I wanna get two rods to go behind one up right with the butt ends here got the tips and butts going out to my left two more rods and I'm gonna go to the next upright go behind that with the button sticking out so they're crossing over in one of the spans and then gonna bring these up about six inches I'm holding the crossing point with my hand nice and firmly and I'm gonna get the first two Weaver's and weave them behind an x-up right and back out next get another rod gonna insert it up through this gap with the butt end behind the upright and then bring this up with the other two I'm going to use my hand to get the spacing of these two uprights nice and parallel and then using my thumb to hook around it to hold it in place I get those three rods and weave behind your necks upright and back out and we do the same again get the next rod inserted up through this gap here but in behind but upright and it joins forces with these other two rods again make sure I get my spacing correct so I'm holding this tightly use my thumb to push it away or about a finger to push it back in once you got it in the correct position lock it of your thumb gather all three rolls together there behind and back out and you do the same thing again and again and again but end up behind but upright get your spacing correct and then see what I'm doing I'm pushing down with those fingers and use my thumb to hook it up to twist these together don't let go keep the tension with your left hand and back out again I'm keeping a good six inches from the bottom of districts to the this bottom layer of weaving because when you actually put this in your garden you're going to want to put the bottom of these uprights into the ground a little bit to make sure that it's nice and stable [Music] up for that gap you're doing the same again and again check your distance is correct we've behind fat up right and back out now I'm back at the start and this is where we have to do something very particular to make sure that it doesn't all start unraveling from the bottom so I'm gonna get his first set of weavers underneath that first set of butts and this set of weavers will go underneath that set of butts so you can see here the arrangement there now I'm going to insert another rod as I've been doing all along this time I'm gonna bring these buttons up like so out of the way weave these around get them inside now last time I always bring them out but this time I want to bring them out underneath to help hold these Weaver's in place so I'm going to put my hands inside and gently curve these round a nice graceful curve try not let the willow kink if you let it kink it will weaken it okay so trying to keep a nice curve just pop it through same again for this set and it goes [Music] get a nice graceful curve and pop it through now we have completed the bottom of the obelisk and the buttons are locked into the weaving and it cannot unravel from underneath now as with my obelisk over here I'm going to start a nice graceful spiral all the way up to the top so they insert another rod as I have done before gather up with the previous rods there kind you upright and back out now I want to insert these rods but I want to break free from the original ring because I'm now actually starting to spiral up again twist these to get some tension to make sure your upright is in the right position go behind and back out pretty cap get your upright in the correct position then twist what I'm actually doing with this hand as I hold that cross I'm actually also twisting it away as with this hand I twist away and that creates a very tight bit of tension in and weaving there and by maintaining attention with my left hand my right hand is free to weave the remainder of the willow and carry on going what I'm actually doing now I'm using my hand as a spacing guide so I'm mentally observing but the gap between these uprights is with my hand plus about a centimeter so I'm using that to make sure that these spaces are consistent as I go up higher in the obelisk obviously the uprise we're getting closer together and I'm a subtly want to reduce that distance [Music] [Music] [Music] now you don't want to go too steeply with this spiral as I said at the start the distance pin these uprights is quite important there's about four to five inches difference and it subtly gets narrower as I go up now if I were to actually go at a very steep angle you see already that's got very loose I've effectively greatly increased the distance between the uprights and all the tension goes out to the weaving so keep it as a nice gradual incline think of a health helter-skelter when you won't be too frightened the going off now in my pile of soaked willow over to my left even though this is all six-foot willow some of this five but actually so it's all been graded before I bought it it was all graded but there's still a wide variety of thicknesses in this see this willow rod here is about twice as thick as this will they rod here no but thicker willow rod will create an awful lot more tension in the weave than the thin one the thick ones a lot harder to weave so what I'm actually doing I'm not just picking up any rod when I'm weaving down here when I'm at the bottom of the obelisk and the distance is too no price the greatest I'm generally using the sticker material as I go up the obelisk I'm naturally starting to select the slightly thinner material so this one at this stage is probably far too thick are we going for medium at the moment twist both hands behind and back out and you'll see what's actually is happening is that they are just twisting almost like a piece of rope twisting around each other this bunch are on top here bear that underneath bear they're back on top and then they will be underneath [Music] now here this upright is naturally getting very very close but when I weave it I'm actually going to make sure I pull it out so over the distances are remaining uniform and that way I can make sure that it stays in a nice uniform shape as I go higher [Music] [Music] [Music] so starting to select thinner rods now I need to see what I'm doing this is now about the width of four fingers this gap here so I'm going to try and maintain that if your uprights too close before I twist I'm just gonna push it away a little bit just to get it in the right position and then I want twist it locks it in place this one's a bit far away so I'm going to push it in and then hold it at my club [Music] at this point I'm gonna stand up it's getting a bit higher now I want to carry on weaving this spiral and time about one foot from where I multiply knowing it so I've got a little bit more to go now these uprights are getting much closer now they're about three fingers spacing and this weaving is getting physically tighter and tighter so what I'm gonna do I'm actually for the first time going to omit adding a new rod and I'm just going to weave those without adding a new one but if I do it to one half of the weave I must do the same to the other half to keep these two sets of Weaver's in balance so I'm going to omit missing a weaver twice and you'll feel when it's just getting physically very difficult to weave whether you need to actually admit to weaver or not I'm gonna introduce a weaver again now to both sets a nice thin rod towards the top and I think to more slim Weaver's and I'm almost high enough [Music] now there is only one more Weaver to add and it's important but the one I choose goes through a nice fine point occasionally you'll have some it may be fork at the end it's important it has a nice fine point so I'm going to insert that in as before but instead of weaving them I'm now gonna get both sets of Weaver's together and I'm gonna twist them around like a single piece of rope and simply walk around the obelisk twisting them as I go the rate of spiral the rate of climb will naturally want to increase you can't hold it down just let it go where he wants to go get the string out the way it starts go around just blow the spring now you can if you want you can leave the string in place if you're not confident you're gonna go to buy noose adequately with the willow you can leave the string in place alternatively you could have put a bit of garden wire or leave a bit permanent string under there to actually make sure that it doesn't unravel but I'm going to take the string off and then I'm gonna carry on twisting this willow until there's roughly a foot left in the tips at this point I can lift it out of my jig making sure I never let go but gives it a unravel I'm gonna do I'm just gonna run this over my thumb and then looking down here you can see little gaps little pockets of light and then the feeder tip through and pull this down making sure this bit of willow doesn't kink try and keep it curving if it kinks it's more like to snap and then I'm gonna pull down really hard I can actually let go now because I've done that one knee won't unravel and do the same with already other bits find somewhere I can poke it down now I can actually see quite a few holes down here if you didn't have an adequate hole this is where the bodkin comes in useful all the pointed screwdriver because I can use my body in to force a slightly bigger hole down there then remove it and that gives me a nice big hole to place my willow tip that one's gone a bit dry [Music] and if you can bring it back up and feed it down again in there we have we have a finished obelisk all it needs now is a little haircut when you trim these butt ends off and make sure you don't trim them so short but they pop out [Music] so there we go now it's ready for you run of beans or sweet peas or whatever else you want to climb up it thank you [Music] [Music] you

Channel: SarahLambertGates Daughter of the Water

Views: 398,501

Keywords: sarah lambert-gates, dve jackson, willow crafts, woodland crafts, bean sticks, make your own, dave jackson, david jackson, sticksmith, hardwick estate, sustainable, natural, weaving, stick weaving, coppice, woodcraft, hazel, willow, collins end

Id: i9yoLiesDy8

Length: 25min 31sec (1531 seconds)

Published: Fri May 15 2020