Make a BASKET from ASH WOOD — Ep. 022

i had always admired the skill and artistry of basket making over time i began collecting all sorts of baskets both as decor and for use outdoors and around the home most of the baskets were vintage pieces that undoubtedly have passed through many hands and likely have served many a noble purpose so when my friend kirsten mentioned she had a friend who makes baskets i wanted to meet him and see the process which remained mysterious to me many of the indigenous peoples of the northeast had their own way of making baskets with birch or sweetgrass or ash for example the hoden nashoni or people of the longhouse used black ash wood splints to craft their baskets ash trees however have come under siege from an invasive wood boring insect called the emerald ash borer which since its arrival has killed hundreds of millions of ash trees we still have some ash untouched by the borer on our own land but most people say that it's only in time that almost all the ash will be gone from our forests and all the species for which those trees support will likely go with them as much as this video is about learning how to make a basket from an ash tree it's also about how these baskets serve as a vessel to preserve a vital piece of history of our ever-changing forests so there's fish here it's nice beavers here lots of ducks it's a nice place to sit in the evening the the tree that we're working on actually came from the neighbor's property on this side of the swamp i've been fortunate that neighbors are letting us cut knowing that the emerald ash borer is in the area yeah make use of the trees there's some nice trees before the emerald ash borer got into them we could have got them and just floated them here to the bridge and get them out now we have to get them out by hand and it's a lot more dragging for the boys but that's when you need to run their energy low you know before they go to bed at night this is ash you got some quaking aspens i love the aspens that's actually our wood for the trunk baskets oh really no way yeah it's always been my favorite treat it's always been around me just love the just seeing it twinkle yeah the lightest breeze but that's we take a pretty big tree poplar tree and that'll get us years of baskets this is where the swamp starts for us look at this where it all drops yeah you know our property is mostly wetland and it goes all the way to the lake that way it's a nice spot to be i enjoy it more in the winter with the kids we route in it a lot more that's fine it's usually you'll just see water here this has been a dry year for sure yeah so you can walk the swamp and it seems to be getting progressively drier since we moved out here i'm noticing that yeah we could even drive a small tractor this way and not get wet which is usually wet wet in the beginning yeah you'd ever get the tractor stuck back in yeah in the early days yeah yeah so i tend to just do everything on foot it's just better that way between two teenage boys and me we can do it yeah yeah in the snow we slide a lot of wood on snow this is our closest ash tree right here so tell me why this tree died well the main reason is it's old it was an older tree but it's the emerald ash borer that's moved into the area we started to notice it two years ago we knew about it before that but we started to notice it in the trees and it's acting really fast if you see the crown being this bare you know it's too late but you could see it earlier in the bark color this one you'll see the yellower spots those lighter patches i see them yeah that's where the board is behind and already has girdled that part of the tree whereas you know there's trees over here these are all smaller ash you see the top still have some leaves they're not that bad they're still going to be usable next season to cut whereas this tree is going to be not usable for baskets because it's just good to be dry to the base have you noticed if they prefer a certain maturity of the of the trees no no i did we saw it all at once in this you know this tree to you know little saplings all of them are getting infected this tree is really really porous and has a real thick cambium so i could see why it would want to be in this tree yeah you could just swim through the cambium it's a real thick layer it's unfortunate but trying to make the best we can i may still cut this log out just the base chunk this is what's happening you see yeah all that great suckers yeah and that makes you know a knot through the whole wood which is hard to use but this is all either exit holes or woodpeckers going in for them you may just leave it here and just to remember it by let it stand and let the bugs get it we have a few cut we're storing them in a pond right now that's a plan we have some in some water canoes full of water i'm not sure how it'll work but i have enough to do a few years worth of baskets and i didn't always plan to make baskets so maybe something else will happen in the time when that runs out and when you walk the woods with the ash trees do you notice that they're all affected or you think that yeah and it happened all at once all the ash varieties that we have have it and it's really within two years it's just they're dead it's just so striking normally we'll cut them at the end of winter when we have a little bit of snow but the sap is running you know it's warm enough that the sap's coming up the tree we'll we'll show you the tree we're gonna work on today it's really big so we slid it on the snow the kids actually rode it down a hill it was fun to get it to move what's the importance of the sap running do you want the tree to be juicy because when i'm a hammer the next step is to hammer the tree to get the basket splints to separate if you were to hammer the wood dry it's just gonna you know hurt your hand you want it to be able to crush fiber without breaking it this slug has been debarked what would have been the next step after cutting it down get all the barking cambium off and this tree actually soaked for a full year in our pond we're test testing it to see how it would do if it would rot or not oh my god that is heavy it's really heavy it's waterlogged yeah that makes it heavier it seems dry what we'll do is we'll give it a little tea water here because if it was just green green cot i would hammer on it without wetting it right this tree like i said has been soaked for a year and then it's been out of the water for months because i just can't get through it that fast it's so big it should be a year's worth of baskets in this tree though and how old is this tree i would guess it was 70. yeah you can count them for sure i mean i have the original cut there oh yeah i get it to soak in a bit [Music] yeah tea for the tree and tea for me that's the clearest tea i've ever seen so you can see how it squishes oh yeah look at that it's like a little sponge when i hammer it you're not going to want to be here because it will squirt you know that way good to know especially if i get one of these when i'm working on these ones that have been in the canoe that water's a little slimy oh i do smell it i just got it i just got another one there's some nice bacteria action happening in there trying to keep them i try to change it but it's just so much tannin there's so much sugar in the sap i think it just goes the dog doesn't mind drinking that water though so so i'm gonna stand back here get it in position that should be all right if i start back here i can usually squeeze it that way [Music] but the lug is actually vibrating and it loosens the layers [Music] before it's been hit at all the tree is is really tight oh he's going right for your tea cup your teacup is now his tea he's involved in the process at this point i'm gonna learn to work with this dog oh my goodness it's so great yeah all right thank you i think any piece we've done out here has had an animal involved at some point yeah originally when i start these trees after the bark and cambium's off i'm using a really big hammer like twice the weight and i'll work it on the ground just to kind of break the tree just get it to loosen up a little bit stretch it i've already done that on this this whole section i actually went around the whole thing and we pounded it so now we're doing the small hammer and it's well attached here i mean it's not coming apart yeah you couldn't pull that apart yeah you have to compress it if i pound this part you'll actually see that just a little bit of rounding starts to squirt that out and it's also starting to crack a little bit yeah you can see that starts to loosen and that's what we've got here hit this a little bit trying to hit every spot [Music] without missing any i can see it it's pretty subtle it also sounds more resonant over here and then like well the sound is what helps me know it's ready to peel there's a there's a sound it makes and there's also a crack if you hit it wrong that you don't want to hear if your hammer comes and that happens later in the day if you've been doing it a while just do this whole section loose first this is the hard force i'm using i don't have to do this all the way through once we get this section off the next section will work easier and so on to the point where it'll start to peel open in the middle but you got to put a lot of vibration in there yeah it's shaking the whole tree even down here i can feel it it's you know it's it's working it and on a smaller tree it'll really shake yeah this tree will beat me more than i beat it there's a small tree i can put all my energy into it and it stays into it that's when it comes back i feel it it's amazing how much you know you feel the vibration here way more than here it's like you just like from that side when you're hitting it it's a neat sound i've been because my boys have helped me been up the road been away from it you can hear it the sound away from here is nice but the neighbors here isn't so bad [Music] so that's a good tool there and i can feel it doesn't want to pull anymore let's check out between these layers when i pull them right here where the hairs are oh yeah and that rough stuff will eventually come off later that's what i was i'll draw shave off with my knife yeah yeah i'm gonna get it nice and smooth but these are all loose you can feel them to do anything to that yeah that's so cool how it just falls in these strips this is good smelling because it hasn't been in the canoe oh yeah that is nice it has like a little bit of like not a cedar smell but a little bit yeah that's nice it ranges to me between melon and beer the smells that i get off the wood and the thickness is based on the growth rings yeah i'm getting a lot of very tight growth tight rings i think it's just getting warm and dry it doesn't do well in that you know it's so fascinating because i don't know if you'd be able to do this with the tropical wood because tropical woods like don't have those growth rings you know so it's like the seasons yeah i'm not aware of the growth rings and you wouldn't so tropical wood you'd you can make furniture out of it you can't do this you know which is probably why they use like reed or something else in basketry and warmer climates every location has their preferred basket material yeah it's just i guess something that i never really internalized until yeah now i love the color of this and this wood is coming off it only had this little bit of sapwood you can see this bright brighter because it's wet it's not as bright yeah compared to what's in here this is very pink and fleshy this is a great tree this is a gift from my neighbor let us go over there and cut that's as far as we got this is getting harder too cause there's these you know what are they starts you know that's where branches are starting oh i see yeah they're like little pimples yeah and that's from the bore that's the stress of the tree it wouldn't normally put branches this level yeah this is the bottom of the tree so it's like a reason for it to have branches here that yeah dress signal so we're going to use these and find ways to use these you know these smaller pieces should be fine and then here's some of the borer right here you can see yeah we got some good tattooing yeah those ones got it bad had a whole family in there and you can see all the nipples on that first log i mean oh yeah you want to try it i'd love to but i don't want to you won't hurt it you should use two hands that way you won't you know okay keep it flat just stop me if i'm doing something wrong i hope that looks about right sweet you got this hey it is it is kind of like it gives back to you you know yeah it does it's a very nice sound these big logs are great because it's a ripped base of real small pieces that we get to work with lately are really high pitched and you need your protection you got it yeah yeah just tell me when i have to stop i'm not gonna stop here that means i have to start yeah that is the harder end it just takes more you know multiple times because it's the base of the tree it's the core the strength of the tree holding it up yeah it's like it's abs you're just reminding me i'm like i'm gonna tighten my abs when i do this too [Music] yeah i focus on lifting the hammer and directing it and then i'm just letting the hammer hit the spot i direct it towards but i'm almost not holding the hammer anymore yeah you almost have to like as loose as i can hold it without it falling out of my head yeah you almost have to like it goes right up here yeah my jaw you kind of want to um i don't know like i don't want to like grip it too tight in a way yeah yeah you'll take the vibration into you that's why i said these logs fight back a little bit but i feel like my jaw is like do you tighten your jaw plus i don't okay because mine's like i'm open i'm like no i had that youthful energy in the beginning and i was really bearing down i know i enjoy it because i'm only doing less than an hour at a time it's so much you feel it like down here it's so much tighter about down here it's like uh like this bounces you know i'm gonna get a second hammer we can both keep going okay work your way towards the end okay we'll double up on it that's great i'm missing some spots this sounds more like a drum you know and then down here hear that sound it's like really resonant and then here this is a little heavier hammer [Music] you're hired this is what you need your apprentices to do you know then that way you could just concentrate on the basket [Music] it's nice to be able to do it start to finish with someone yeah you get this part understanding the start of it well you can always like you start to feel the wood from this point already you're like this is going to yeah it's going to be you can always touch it as you go that's true you have to understand your body as much as you understand the wood you know got a nice character not right in the middle of it all but we'll make use of that i'm gonna do the very end because it's the hardest hardest this big hammer will destroy [Music] i think it helps like if i'm doing two hands to put the right on top and then the left on the bottom and the left on top and the left on the button you know just to switch it up yeah i did two hands for many years that was the way to do it but then i got into having to do it for so long yeah i could see how oh my god yeah this really it does wear are you any other ways to this just a hammer do a job that you can't really do with anything else the only thing we've looked into or not the person i learned from was doing more of trying to figure it out was to squeeze it to compress it with something you know to roll it but we never were successful at figuring that out and when it comes down to it all the energy putting to finding a better way this is the best way yeah how much do you want to do like this is going to be a few baskets right here and this might be what we're going to weave today probably three of those baskets so i mean what more do you want to do worked for 20 yeah a half hour yeah take a break from this so a little bit nice that was real good i'm gonna pull the last bit off yeah yeah it'll kind of pop at the end oh yeah there you go that's nice so we just lay it over top and he'll peel them apart that's it they're already kind of peeled apart almost you know some of them still it's a good harvest this is a good tree what are you specifically looking for in these things just to separate the annual rings um these are all different thicknesses this is very light this is a little heavier and this is a nice nice one yeah that's going in quite a bit thicker than even these two put together this one here so it's a better growing year they just can't hold together once you compress that layer that fiber layer with a hammer so funny i have a belt made of uh wood yeah and now i can appreciate it a little bit more because you could see how flexible some of the wood could be yeah so at this point when i have enough of it would sort it a little bit by thickness so these are heavy these are mediums and that's light just so later when it's dry i'll have to do more picking through the pile so put them all together just now this sorted see i'm kind of offsetting the tails of them a little bit so that's the heaviest let's do that we can wrap them up let them dry for a little bit can you talk about the direction again like how do you know what the outside is okay this is the bend one way right yeah when we take these off the tree i'm trying to be mindful of the front and the back so the outside of the tree and the inside of the tree and when i store them i'm always keeping the inside on the inside on this bend that makes sense when we pull them apart later all the material will have a little bit of a bend to it when it's dried and it'll keep me from having to think about it so much yeah the reason to coil it like this when it dries this this flat part is going to want to cup when the moisture gets out of it so to keep it from cupping we're going to keep it flat onto itself and you tie it dry yeah we're going to use just a another piece of this maybe the piece we took off we'll take a clean piece of it maybe in the series somewhere in here we'll just crack it oh yeah look at that that should work okay that's good see this weight doesn't really want to break but mm-hmm against it you can see that break yeah another thing i could show you right now is that this wood can be split within itself which is really beautiful it's satiny on the inside wow that's nice if you're careful you can do whole pieces all the way down like this that's like the stuff that you finish on the edge of your countertop like that little lip on the countertop that's what it looks like this is basically what we're doing is veneering yeah just whole annual ring veneering not like a turn piece that cuts through the ears yeah this is a real strong veneer so this is good now we'll just leave it in the sun or in the shop to dry you leave it in the breeze just let it dry for a day or so up to 10 years 12 years i have some it's still usable and i don't think i need to see any problem with just keeping it indefinitely using it down the road once we wet it it'll be good but for now we want to dry a little bit before we tool it so the next step will be up in the shop let's do it all right put away the hammers you can come back anytime and hammer [Laughter] saunder you'd like to get in on that too i'm good [Music] to see some baskets yeah we'll do a little tour like they're different styles sure this is what we have a lot of this is our our family collection some repair work because this time of year late in the season we don't have a lot of baskets that are available you know we sell early in the season and i can't quite keep up with the orders but this is a good range of what's being made from you know carrier strap baskets those those are so beautiful yeah i'm gonna do purse styles like this is a nice purse style i like this because of the design of the the harness was a kind of a dream i had of i was supporting the weave with one one piece that wrapped from one end and went back to the same i really like that that's quite clever it started with a traditional suspender style scrapping like that like i make those too you make this one i wanted something that was you know you could wear this way and throw around back or if you're gonna pick into it or something like that so i thought it was fun it was a dream so that was fun um make all kinds you know traditional designs like this apple basket not my design but i think it's really well thought out so this this isn't something that you designed yourself but okay it's really hard to come up with a new design yeah it's been done for so long it's just coming up with a way to re-harness them or put your own shape into it yeah this is i mean to me this is a perfect design it's credited it's a german design but made in this area maybe down into the hudson hudson area and why is it so perfect sure as opposed to a flat bottom basket you know where where all the weight is in the bottom of the basket pushing down this because you're going to pick apples or something heavy potatoes it's nice to have this peak where the fruit the vegetable can be pushed to the side distribute the weight so they came up with this stack of eight and normally that's all you would have is one you know one layer and then they added on a second layer on top of that there's so much wood there i mean there's more than a solid inch of wood yeah so neat but the way it directs direct material to the side distributes weight is great to me i really like it it's one of the funnest things to weave i mean you can really get lost in this one yeah because you're just going around and it looks so thin i mean is this also ash or is it a different kind of wood yeah i'm just cutting them you know and gaining material you know getting thickness as i go yeah this one really making them as you go to fit julia's used this one my wife's used this one a lot yeah it has these these are disposable if they ever break or wear out we could put new ones it's holding up pretty good too because she just is a worker yeah she picks a lot of apples you're saying that's the stress the julia stress test right there the kids you know i've all used this one to go picking and it's held up pretty well without any well that has a very similar it looks like a similar peak yeah it is the same design it doesn't have the reinforcements but it's a smaller piece and that's one that you've done or this is this is my basket that i made yeah early on so these color wise this is what it will look like this basket will age patina and then this one it's it's like a it's like a reminds me of a winnowing basket it's a that's the inspiration for sure it's not quite as tight a weave as a winnowing basket so bigger for me it's more of a woven woven portrait you know to show the wood let it let it tell a story i'm always finding these pieces that i just cannot burn or scrap you know but they're not quite something you can manipulate and to make a basket like this now is this where the little stems are starting to come out gonna be a branch spot here so it's a knot and there's a lot of these knees i like these yeah you know that's what up here do you get these knees those are my favorites i'm going to think that now that it's darker it kind of comes out a little bit more of those those imperfections as i'm tearing the tree apart you know these these i'm seeing it all the time and this is a great way to lay it out for people yeah the inside of a tree yeah but it's also functional you can dry something on it and then hang them they don't take up any space you can just hang them on your wall you know they're not going to take up shelf space and then you have some over here i can imagine those are more like laying your fruit letting your fruit down or yeah or like bread you know yeah the wife has used these in the catering business so for crackers again it's a nice way to use that material that has there's not really a straight piece in there yeah you know it's all bits that didn't make this this cut you probably see baskets and everything we could we could put that in a basket absolutely i love baskets oh it's beautiful i myself getting them too if they're you know for sale and it's cheap someone's just getting ready i just need to you know bring it into our life and use it you know yeah see we'll see what worked with it especially these old this this was a repair but it was the same material we're using which is black ash so i can learn from it you know where it broke and how did you repair it to get it like i i don't know where the repair is so like how did you get it to the same color that's what i was trying i'm actually just taking what's left of say i make a bunch of these dyed baskets and i'll save my extra material and just pile it up and then i'll pick through that already dyed material and just put it in because it seems to match this pretty well it's not perfect but really there's such variation in older pieces anyways from dirt and age right it works really good but there is a lot of new material in this have you ever made a basket with this shape yeah this would be a fishing creole i definitely made these with a leather top yeah or a woven top for fish it's a great little basket but she had it as a backpack that's her childhood it's so adorable it was great great to be able to bring it back to life she was our post post woman for so many years and uh happy to do it it's great material i mean even at this age it's a little brittle that basket but it's worth bringing it back to life yeah so the other styles we're doing are the carriers strap carriers we do some purses something you can wear and use every day with leather tops right i don't have any of those in stock right now but getting back to it right now i got basket fever it's the weather's in season for us too i think to be in here yeah [Music] [Music] [Music] so i think we got what we need here i'm gonna find the middle of it this is pretty pretty basic layup it's a good weave to teach kids you know this square start some puppy hairs you can lay them up pretty loose to start you know and tighten it up after so again we have the this is the inside of the basket that's the outside you can see the color difference yeah it's like a it's like a chess game you almost have to think in advance you know how they're going to be shaped in order to come up with the last result for sure [Music] i look at a lot of old baskets for shape ideas and where where they've broken down or what their strong points are yeah what are some of the things you pay attention to when you're looking at this i'm trying to get it a little bit you know perpendicular um i should draw some lines on my table and i won't have to always be guessing as my eyes get older but actually the less perfect a basket is the more i like it nowadays i'm finding like i like a little bit of offness to it you know it just just it's more appealing to me but yeah i do like to measure sometimes make sure we're close i'm shaping it as we go so i'll be changing the shape you know as i go up if i find it's moving in one direction um you like to add a little reinforcement and taper these a little so this is uh reinforcing reinforcement yeah it's not much but you could see like it's a a wearable part you could take off later if it does wear through and you still have your structure your mask i always thought of it that way especially with a bigger piece if you really were relying on it and hiking and something broke on the bottom if it was a piece you could actually take off that's pretty clever but it's still protecting the piece yeah once you took it off you'd still have the original basket oh nice [Music] i don't always do it i'd like to do it it's like a thoughtful touch you know it's forward thinking yeah which isn't common i guess i can always trim the height of them later mm-hmm they don't work out but i think that's good let's see where we're at close yeah yeah seeing is that this is the the bottom like this i want to break the fibers a little bit work them reverse so what they're going to end up being so you have a little concave it's bumped up because it's always going to go down with gravity so if you can start it up it'll help the basket last it's like basket yoga yeah so yeah we're just gonna start the shape this thin a wood you can really bend it over like that without a problem on the bigger pieces i would roll it slow with my finger behind it and support it but this stuff really is flexible so it's so unbelievable to see how pliable it is because once you see it in the basket itself you feel it's the sturdiness absolutely but all the components and the pieces working together and the way it's woven is just really resilient yeah a lot of times i'll be thinking that the wood feels too thin to me like each piece but it's you have to consider that it's a piece on top of a piece for almost the entire basket you know it's only the spaces in between where it's breathing you know so you really don't need to have that heavy a piece of wood i'm learning [Music] so bending it up but i'm also bending it back so i'm putting that shape in it too just subtle because at this point once it's out of the water it's starting to dry well especially if you're going to have that little vase shape right you need to kind of coax it that way that's about that so we do a continuous weave there's ways to do this where you would start the weave come around and end it on the same level and then start another weave so you'd have all these small strips stacked that's more common with the older native pieces native american in this area i don't want to use small little bits i think it's more efficient to just keep going all the way up the basket so i'm going to put this this split split one of these uprights down the middle so once we come around we step it up come around you're walking up a step every time so you can do it in maybe four strips this whole basket otherwise you would have to do every one of these one right once and then where how would they tuck them overlap them okay have a splice and if you do it right you won't see the it's like you won't see them on these yeah even there are four or five in here you see them if you look up the basket you'll see a doubled a doubled it's tricky like no you have to look close because i really try to hide them yeah yeah i see that but very you'd have to point it out yeah but you will see it on older baskets because they'll be all askew and they're not taking the time to really hide them i just have the you explain once more sooner what do you say yeah so i just asked like if you put one like how would you overlap it like how would you secure it and you could see there's just like a little double layer right into it too when we do this i'm gonna do at least four in this basket so we can so we're gonna split this one here maybe make a little space this is like working the wood green when it's wet see all the fibers yeah it's not nearly as easy to work with a knife it just wants to open up right by see now how you say how the fibers are long and you know it's not it's not necessarily splinter material it seems like it could be a good like flex fiber almost in a way you know it can it breaks out into this tree was pulped you know and not midwest for fiber yeah yeah yeah that's a major major pulp tree before the emerald ash borer that was the bigger problem that was getting harvested for paper whatnot so this piece is a start taking one of these and tapered it down so we can kind of hide the fact that we're going to be going at an angle all the way up this you can see basket that's the start of it a little bit in shadows so we'll get it tight but i'll go back and re-tighten it once we get going around pulling it more than i will normally pull it when i'm doing the rest of the weave just for this beginning because you want to keep these corners from getting saggy let me see so you got to put a little inward force once we're up two three times around it's just you're just following it without much pressure and you're going to stay with that thinness of the of the consistency of this yeah this overall for this basket is perfect i don't need to put much more into it because you work it's a shape that comes tighter which that in itself gives it strength it's like a canoe thing where it's tumbling back towards itself at the top giving it strength not flaring out it looks pretty good so now we've we've come up so we're back to where we started and but we're one higher just continue that no problem still leaving those protectors out i'd imagine like the little extra work that you did in the beginning just to kind of split it it just seems more continuous for me you know that you're just going to consistently go around as opposed to like cutting different strips and laying them it just has there's more flow to it i guess less interruption yeah i think i've done it the other way you know where you're working bit a bit um that this is where i can really know that everything's ready and i've already planned it all out and that's where i get lost in it for sure so this is all hands on at this point just pulling squeezing shaping it's not not just going around it's it's full there's many directions i'm trying to make this be trying to turn it up i'm trying to keep it flat trying to pull this this way you know i keep thinking of metaphors but it's like a chiropractor like working in the body and finding out where the you know the tightness the tight spots are you know there's so many metaphors like it's a it's a molding of a way you know too it's a lot of re-positioning it and always stopping to look at it because like i said i'm when i'm holding this up it's making this bottom go round again even though i broke the fibers up so we're going to have to reset that in the end to get it to be at least flat it wants to be what it was which was flat all these pieces were flat right this is just it feels like a mess at this point so it really is all hands on just making sure these so i'm folding over each side flat pushing up from the bottom to get the bottom flat at the same time pulling this piece but we're not pulling it out of the shape so this hand's pulling against this hand and the thumbs and the fingers are working against each other at the same time so there really is no there is not an ability to leave physically you have to fall into it but my mind can certainly not be worrying anymore i get a lot of relief doing this it's like solving this problem i find it very relaxing because i can already feel the shape once i'm into my third row i know my fingers there and i don't have to worry about if it's wrong if it's off if i had a problem where everything came out of whack i can just pull it back down you know i do that with the packs often i'll get a shape i don't want and i'll just pull it back down and it could be a half a day's work of it i i know it's it's worth it because it's a lifetime basket and i won't be happy looking at it yeah but the way it's you know my mind should be i'm actually curious if you've ever like used a piece of wood that splintered or didn't look so great and then you'd have to kind of like undo it yeah put so much time into the process of each piece from tree to basket there's so much more time into manipulating the wood you know cleaning it looking at it that you just felt it so many times you would know it's made it through a lot of inspection basically yeah we're getting close to putting these in [Music] yeah i'm looking forward to when you have to weave those in that's easy so i am pulling it i'm trying to get this to come in quick now otherwise we won't get the shape we want otherwise it'll just be a bowl yeah so i'm starting at the corners to really tighten things up pressure wise it's nice on a small piece like this you can get a good shape started with one strip whereas the backpack you know one strip only gets you around once and a half and you still are really wrestling with it so it's it's unwieldy so this is a tricky spot we want to get this in here but we're also having to do this so let's make some decisions all right if it was a pack i'd bring it back around and do the splice somewhere else but this stuff is so thin i think we can make it work it is amazing how it just is like has that round bottom i look it look at this as you showcase it and it's like super flat and it sits very nicely and then this one you're gonna have to yeah the real trick is getting it when you put out in this the sun drying time you really cure it you make sure you've got it flat so i've got this system where i'll take a string a piece a piece of string and i'll come up through the bottom all the way to the top and put a pencil across that i can put pressure to just lace it up yeah and that'll make sure it holds well because the drying time it really acts like it was before which is straight so it all tries to push out but that's what makes the shake you know hold tight you know it all has that expansion in the end so we got the end i think we tapered it pretty good maybe we just do a touch just a touch more on this one just going to go back to here that'll go right over top right so that's the second part yeah but this one want to go like that ah i see we're gonna hide it like that different ways to do it but that works nice and tight mm-hmm there's not a lot of new action happening until the top and i'm working all the pieces now the uprights the bottom the weave pushing pulling these are getting a lot of this so they're going to all want to go the way you're pulling the weave so you got to keep straightening back out it's continuous it is a little bit like throwing a mug a pot you know it has that feel to it yeah you really you are in control of the shape i struggle with just putting time into something that's just visual yeah i i see that there's benefit to it i enjoy it but i it's not for me to do the closest thing is probably those those trays you know but they're still functional as a drying tray or but i put them together as a wall a piece of wall art so you have the woven the knots character and you're telling a story with the knots at least i'm thinking of it that way so that might be the closest thing to a sculpture how has your view changed now with the emergence of the emerald ash borer like the fact that many of these trees most of these trees might not make it like how did how did your views change like pre emerald ash borer and to now or have as far as basket making goes yeah um i ignored it you know as much as i could and i had hope that it would skip us and it you know and it didn't show in this area until late but now that now that we know what's happening and the limits of our supply i feel like each piece is more taking more more time to make sure each piece gets used i i'm trying not to be as wasteful or neglect any part of the tree if i can i don't know it's i've slowed it down more you know i'm not blasting out baskets and then no hurry i just i know these are like um the history you know these are going to be a history of these baskets these trees even when they recover which is going to be 70 80 years where you get another tree that's usable you know i want to think of these as a way to remember you know what could be done like the way i look at old baskets i want to look at you know heavies as an example of what could be done this one's getting nice and tight yeah it's starting to come together you really start to see the shape it's beautiful we'll go back and do this now depending on what this is going to be if it was going to be a water basket i'd want to test it with a mason jar you know make sure we don't get too tight but also it's nice if you want to get a good vase shape to it to just let it go and really crank on it because it could be good for utensils anything we have one for toothbrushes [Music] let's do this [Music] so you're thinning it so that when it it has a double layer over you won't notice it as much or it wasn't a true end of the piece because i had to cut it back so it wasn't thin i did yeah and it's going to fall right over this which isn't a great spot to thicken it mm-hmm you have such a thin piece right so let's see you could always i guess cut it back further right yeah you can yeah bring bring it back yeah i try not like i said we just had that conversation about waist in the wood i feel like i want to use every inch of it at this point [Music] but again you can see i i do waste well this this could also be good wood mulch or something you'd probably have to compost it a little bit first it's good we ball it up it's good for the sauna it's good for we're year-round fire burners oh yeah because you have a wood wood stove right yeah between the shop here which you know making the baskets but the house is heated with wood and the water for our showers is wood so we have a lot of use for that material so you can just let the fire go out and you know easily start it with balls of that that's a good piece you want to be able to hold on to it compare the two it's like magic it really is but when you see you're you doing it you know what i mean you can see it's it's because when you've never woven a basket before and you see it done you're just like oh my god you can't see the component parts it's like hearing a piece of music and not knowing that was bcgf you know what i mean that type of thing yeah i mean seeing you do it just really illuminates the process just seeing the music come together basically [Music] feels a little wide at the top so how would you resolve that just pulling it tighter i'll do this this is going to pull it right back down to this one that's cool i kind of wanted to see that done actually you got it i just want to come in a little more right at this point before i pull out of it i miss demonstrating at the farmers market or at museums because it's it's not what i first thought i'd want to do because i i don't enjoy you know being around tons of people but i like this is the best way like you said to see the process yeah show people even if i'm not talking they can you know really get a lot out of seeing me do this um also don't mind it keeps me present i think if someone is talking to me otherwise my mind might wander that's a little better it's drying a lot it's starting to get stiff you gotta work quickly then i guess a little bit yeah yeah i have a piece that um it takes me it takes me 12 hours and i have to do it start to finish you know i take a little 10 minute breaks during the day but i can't stop it because it's just one continuous finely woven piece and i've done three of them now and it's really a challenge i have to like think about it the days up to it you know make sure i'm prepared because it really is 12 hours of weaving and i'm not i'm not letting it dry out there's just no way to do it another way yeah that's better got it i like these little baskets they don't take much material you can you can make tons of these out of one tree but it's i'll start with the bigger pieces laundry baskets storage baskets and with the big wood and then what's cut off from there what's too thin gets turned into these so kind of work that all the big baskets down to small baskets and that's the most efficient use of the tree for me the trunks are becoming really popular that slat style basket yeah and it's different i think that's what's going to be our future you know what what the emerald ash borer you know taking our ash trees you know they're not going to be usable for weaving it's killing the tree and i need a tree alive you know to harvest it so only what i have harvested is what's available to us so i have a limited supply i was looking yesterday and if i was going to cut anything else but they're pretty sprouted so there's not a lot of usable wood so it's just standing dead wood it's not going to be a future in it so we're going to move towards you know making what we can out of what we have and then you know start doing slap baskets which are built more like little boats they are finding some resistant trees though so my hope is or what they're doing with the chestnuts is they're like back crossing them with a more resilient one but that's going to take so much time like our forests are going to be so different because there's a lot of ash in these or there was a lot of ash in these forests yep you can see the holes already i look at one straight out my window that's my daily thing as i'm weaving sitting and looking this giant dead ash tree that just over two year period just the whole crown went you know it's just the skeleton of a tree it's a reminder and that's a white ash and we use those for the handles and rims yeah so there's black and there's white and there's green does white and green operate the same way that black ash does no not quite um and i don't even know you know sciency wise what's what but i think there's real close in betweens too there's trees that i'm just like this isn't quite this or that yeah i key out the buds like this officially is this but no i think it might be uh a gray hat i don't know i don't know yeah like gray area but really it's to make the the separation like this this black ash and to be so flexible yeah the white ash is a little bit stiffer more dense it's nothing i'd want to weave with i know people that do it and you know they they look like they do it their hands are beat up so about there this in the sun just a little bit on the top we're going to come out a little more and pop this out in sunshine so before you actually do the top you have to cure it a little bit more or yeah i want to take this moisture out it's quite a bit of moisture in the width you know it you'll see it'll be all spaces where this is tight now you'll be able to see through that if you just you know put the basket together and didn't consider that it would get really loose once it dried out so when it dries out you could actually move it a little bit still without locking it in too much yeah whereas this i can't i'm going to be able to just slide all this down yeah a little bit of time in the sun it won't take much with this little basket but all right so that gives a little bit of tension to kind of pull it up so you get a flat bottom because it's when it dries it really is going to want to straighten out everything's going to start going back where it starts that's pretty good sometimes i'll leave them right here if i know i'm in no hurry you know when they get us get the start going because they really will dry fast but today i think we really want to crank on this so we'll stick it out on them sure the wood pile and get it let's do it get a batch of these going you know when they have a whole bunch of them in your hand could have a basket full of baskets like a fine sun here at the farmer's market we just line them up on top of the car oh yes i'm working yeah that works good all right we got to get some rims and handles for this little basket and that's a little more of an outside job i'm not sure but we'll start and see if this this wood here will work i've got a piece of the black ash which normally i don't use like on a bigger basket because i want to pound it out for weaving but these these extra bits are nice length i think they'll work for a rim and handle so let's try i'll split it and see if it's usable okay yeah we got this white ash ready and we can split that so either way we'll be able to do it but for sure let's do it like that [Music] looks good now has that log been soaking for a while or i cut this log in the spring and it's been laying on the ground so it has a little bit of rot on the outside i see that but i think we can get what we need maybe out of these sections well it's got a little character we'll see we'll switch over from the wedge and use this fro it's just another splitting tool that you can control it a little better and what was it about this wood that you said you're not quite sure whether this could be a good one or not well because it's been sitting on the ground and i don't know what's inside it you know how big the knots are and if the dog wants it okay there's that i guess we're not using that let's go split it again and see if we can get something out of that section [Music] do a lot of splitting and it isn't all usable but it will be firewood if it's not um that's a cleaner section yeah that is yeah it's getting getting closer steel's feels very flexible even though it's been setting since the spring it's not let's brittle to a smaller bit he's like i like that one he's really new to this [Music] now we're going right down the grain line as opposed to before we're splitting against it that's good beans i know you want to help but maybe that one's actually pretty on the back because it has a little bit of insect yeah well that's their word yeah boring through is that the emerald ash borer there yeah okay so that's gotten its name in borrower yeah it might even be a little graffiti larvae in there yeah you'll find them that might have been the exit hole there yeah it's it's interesting to me now after seeing at first i was heartbroken and you know because every log i take bark off of now i find this but i kind of like to explore it and see what it what it is because it is just another natural thing you know it's interesting to me i like that it was damaged too deep yeah i always liked seeing like little it looked um like very mysterious you know all the different uh because you find them natively here different types of borers but lots of them yeah he really wants that tool so between these two i think we could probably get what we need out of it good good yeah so i'm just looking for a you know thick enough year growth in there that i can use and you know for the rims it's fine if we have a little knot in there or a little character for the handle part we're gonna get you know probably uh that much just this will this will work so we'll go upstairs and we'll split this out a little further great he just wants that tool [Music] all right let's split these a little smaller got a couple of tools like the one using outside we had this another smaller fro it's just something we can split down through the grain line again so you want to get them as small as those little handles right there yeah getting blocking it out as close as we can you know it'll be two to three times as thick as that but we'll carve the rest off i just don't want to have to carve this into that yeah that is a lot so let's see if we can do this right here [Music] there's not much holding that that's good this part might have the rod in it you know because of that outside layers right we might not use too much of that well this looks pretty good this giant hammer the dog is my smaller one they have a small had a smaller version has dog drool all over now though he actually physically ate it oh did he really just try to control this split a little bit by pressuring it it'll be pretty small that's good so this will be the rims this one probably let's see if we can even do it again and the room is the the the the top circular top okay that everything gets laced together with it's like how many times can you fracture it we got one good one out of this this one here's the good one which one's a good one now oh i see okay it feels good i think but that's probably good enough for just one this one maybe these do extra you know it doesn't hurt to have an extra one if you mess up you don't have to go back to the beginning you can just move on to an extra piece you probably use that one for the next one too if you don't use it right yeah there's not much waste i'm controlling that split a little bit with pressure otherwise it'll run right off one side that's good too so i think we'll save this one for the ears the handles and then make the rims out of this these two yeah i'm fascinated how you're gonna turn those into the little rims see a little more space [Music] start by just getting it within one year on the outside bend the way it's going to be wrapped around the basket make sure that's one year not going through the years okay i'll try to straighten it out a little bit because it's a little squirrely how long does it need to be about this long okay i'm not sure i think 19 so i think we're in the ballpark measure i usually have it cut long and then go around and cut off what's hanging mm-hmm i thought though it's nice to do these out of the black ash too because it'll match the color of the weave yeah i won't have to dye it to match the bigger baskets i have to dye the handles to match the weave and what are you using for the bigger baskets i'm using the white ash and it's really really white interesting compared to the brown but it's a denser wood it stays together for a handle you know this isn't going to get any flux you know for this amount of yeah weight you put in it it can hold fine you know i've used this on big baskets like um my wife's back pass it has a black ash handle mat you know it's held up good over the years it's just hard to get it as thick as you want a little bit thinner and if it's not perfectly straight it's really not the end of the world right again i'm finding i like it more when they're not perfectly straight there's some character lines it can't be you know a 90 degree in it but i like a little yeah movement in the wood [Music] and you can tell it's not machine made yeah i appreciate that you're working with the character of the wood that it already has you know and yeah in the past i wouldn't have used this log at all that would have been in the fire you know but knowing that it's black ash and it's the last of what we have i want to use it yeah just like the weave or tapering them out where they're going to overlap that's getting better in a way it might make you like a a better craftsperson in a way or you know a basket weaver if you will because you're learning to work with something that's a little bit more nuanced [Music] okay and then it's all hand knifed to get it to be beveled and round i think would be best around this more than the leaves the weave we just took a little bit off we're actually gonna make this more of a d shape it's real moist and that's just been sitting out in your yard right it's been on the ground yeah since the spring i was using it to prop the lids on the canoes that have our black ash soaking yeah the wind was blowing the lids off so i just had some chunks extra it looks pretty good there's no tannins or anything in uh black ashes there yeah the water and then just in this that i've only had going for a couple of days and he had a little black ash in there and it's gotten pretty brown i guess then i see in your canoe too but i didn't know if so that was all a lot of that can be you know boiled and boiled down and make an actual nice dye out of it but it doesn't keep well mm-hmm so can you measure that one onto the metal that's going across see if we're in the ballpark of 19 or 18. we're in about a 21 21 and a quarter about that means we can use this other piece so that's happening so it's gonna do the same thing with this one [Music] so you see that one's a little serrated at the end but does that matter where's that just a little like down here i think you said we had 21 so yeah i'm guessing i can pull it back all the way to here because i think at 19 i've got enough [Music] yeah i'm glad we used this stuff it'll be a challenge to see if the ears will bend right um it's a tight little bend or a piece of wood that's been sitting on the ground but if i heat it up it should be all right so these we put in that water and we'll start on the ears there's two on the stove yep somewhere in that hot water i think it should be still warm enough it is yeah it's quite pleasant now what tool is this this is just it's just a little strawberry and we need that one to mark it at 11. yep it doesn't matter from what end and i just cut could you tell me this cut yep [Music] i think 11 might be too long let's do eight okay you know i'll do eight on this one then the eight on this one then yeah okay we'll even them out after now it doesn't matter i guess what end huh cause you cut both ends we're good i'll do this one here you go just need a little nick off that thank you you're welcome same thing just squaring them up making them closer to what they're going to be yeah now that you have um you can share how precious black ashes i would i would have performance anxiety on doing my basket if i did baskets i would want to make sure that i get everything right you know you saw how the weaving can be undone quickly so that that gives me some sense of you know relaxation this part maybe isn't more tense but really the bending of it is where it's going to break or not and that's you know if it's going to break it's not my fault i don't think i think it's a weakness in the wood and i'd rather know it ahead of time yeah that's a good point i just that's not a good piece so it broke i took all the time to select it carve it look at it feel it [Music] that's about a block of it so i think i think we have to mark the middle of that um yep four with the pen or do you want a pencil inside the house yeah the rough that's inside the mark okay mark the middle and then i want to take out one and three quarters you're good at math figuring that out yeah so then uh from the from the four you want one and three quarters i would do two and i'd take a sixteenth off at each end that's how my mind oh i see what you're saying in the end the space for marking is in the center of the wood and it's one and yeah i think that's right so this is like the four and then that's perfect yeah okay and i'll just transcribe that right over all i right you i am glad you trust me i don't trust myself see i'm having performance anxiety right that's why i said weed this whole time we're doing this together so taking that space that's going to be the bend out of that wood because it won't bend this chunky [Music] it's just amazing how it just flakes like that it's like butter in a way in the way that you're working it it's amazing wood i don't carve lots of it yeah like i said it's more of a weaving wood yeah but it does carve nice the color is beautiful to me the brown it's more appealing than the white ash or the sapwood of the same you know it's really bright yeah it all warms up over time it just takes a lot of years for the sapwood to look this brown just with being in the sun and in the air see what i was trying to get for there yeah just stab this camera though if you ever had your camera still so without even soaking this i'm just gonna take a chance let's see if we can get a bend well i can always make more you could probably hear it too if it's getting a little cranky huh it feels pretty good amazing yeah what a great wood wow what a great one i'm gonna bend these a little bit this way because to get them to tuck where they're gonna be they kind of gotta get closer together at the bottom it's hard to get a good finish blade cutting so somewhere in between this the uh bigger handles that i do normally you know for my laundry baskets i can do it all with the bigger knife you don't have to do much of this just taking the sharp edges off of those so when the wrapping comes around it doesn't get caught and break it you could sand it off too that's another way i don't like the sound of sanding when you look at old baskets and the handle work is where you can see the makers mark a lot of times because the weaving is just hard to change or make it unique but different weavers will put a different cut on their handle you can see their stroke work like you could put a you could put a point there as opposed to just a flat a flat ending where it starts so i'm looking in the basket and i see a few that are a certain way you're like well that basket maker you know probably made all of those baskets you can just by the way they left their knife marks on the wood now i'm going to go home and look at all my baskets analyze their handles and uh they can mark them too on the bottom or whatever that's another obvious way but i think on the older baskets they didn't mark them that way yeah i always look for that kind of stuff the way their hands were on the wood let's soak that one i'll make another yep i didn't lose it it's like a little boomerang we make a little bow and arrows for the kids and they're a little the same idea that's cool we should pull those rims out of there because we actually got to get them dry enough to finish off i think they're good i just wanted to give them a little silk yeah let's let's form a mold just a little bit before they dry out put them together the way they're going to be inside outside and then just stretch the fibers now we need a little clampy is there something a little hanging basket has some sort of clothespins and things we'll find yep one or two of those a clothespin i'll do sure okay i should clamp it around all that business let's do another one up here yeah that's that'll start our drying because i don't want does it take too long so handy is that about the size it's close yeah that's good is the sun hitting the stuff yet out there let me see just yeah just pop them right out in the air on the steps that's good it'll start the drying as long as beans doesn't come and take it we'll hear them coming thanks for helping oh i do very little you're doing the bulk of the work as you should my basket would look so janky it's fun when you get a room full of people making the same you know you have the same pattern the same numbers you start with wood and the basket's so different it's reflect their personalities a lot of times you know the people that are really tight get that tight basket wild ones just start to really flow out it's fun and it's not for everybody it really can be as as calming as it is to me and meditative i think it's the opposite for some people it just makes them anxious i also think it would probably be a time of your life too because as a as a young girl i would do i would sit and draw for days but i don't think i've sat and done that now for you know since i was 18. so it's like you know maybe there's a time and a place for it too yeah this is you know had moments where it's become a job because it really has been ours survival out here yeah and then we're always trying to keep the balance of that being really fun and enjoyable never letting it get away from me i was lucky lucky because julia has her her herself so strong and aware and able to grow the food and get the kids really everything they could need that i could really focus on this and travel quite a bit in the beginning yeah i'm happy to be here now and help out how do you check yourself from you know making it not feel like a a job or a chore it's it's been all about um the beginning of it like when the orders come deciding from there what it's going to be yeah you know not not taking everything yeah because just because it's business it's it's not to me so learning to say no then yeah to the point where i just shut it down at times just stop be like i'm not taking anything on yeah just gonna deal with what we've taken on and make some stuff i want to make you know get back to it that always helps when i don't have a list of things ahead of me i like that we should look at the other one and see if this one's close yeah your fingers are able to grab out of the hot water it's not even that hot it's kind of more like i'd like my bath water hotter yeah this one's kind a little bit more to it i think i like it it's like a little keyhole this one i could say would try to match it a little better this wood feels really nice i think i'll use the rest of that log but you know what what i can find is as far as straight sections i'll turn it into little handles we'll have to get the other half away from the beans loses interest quick i like to tuck these right into the basket to dry them you know just tuck them in the weave just a little bit out there and it holds them where they want to be do that start to package oh yeah look at that it's just two strips still needs more though there's some through there i don't think we need this anymore i see so you could just like tuck it in just like that you don't even need anything extra right the rim is what holds everything yeah cut these a notch but for drying it's perfect to put away where it's going to be because it'll stretch the weave yeah and do you want like where do you place it like the end of the hole because is this going all going to bend down is this the top of the rim or there's still some finishing at the top to be done so we have to because we started with this being you know we're going up like this we have to kind of come down with this one so we'll figure that out the last strip we just add it once it's all dry i took it and kind of do it at the same time and then get these ears somewhat level crust get those to go these have to dry a bit now we're gonna have to find the sunnier spot i think okay maybe i don't know removing that one i know into the woods i want to fit these just a little bit better make sure we're in a bit longer than i thought let's keep it all just in case it's a little longer to get around those ears let's go find some sunshine yeah this feels pretty well dried so you kind of see it here how much space there is when we put it out in the sun it was all tight but yeah the idea now is to pack it get everything tight again may need to add a little more to the top but it's all right amazing how much it this decreases yeah it might be 15 you know it really does move and it'll absorb moisture again you know once once it's woven even so there is a sweet spot you know not to make them too dry so if they were to actually get in the rain it wouldn't pop a rim off of it that's good you think you'll need to add another row a little bit now yeah so you're adding this because the the wood tightened up and you need to to get the right height now that it's given more space yeah that was as high as we were we might have been a little higher i try to weep up higher than i'm going to finish and then we packed it down so we lost all that space and now we're back to finishing it off so can try to try to guess where to be probably that there's no real definitive way to do this okay i think we'll just tuck it right there so the next step would be to get these folded alternate inside and out around that top weave and then we can stick our rims wrap them and that'll be so tight you can't it won't go anywhere it's all these tops that actually support the top of the basket some of the older baskets mainly you don't see this done taking taking time to do right they'll just um we cut every other one off so you just have to do one of these i think it's nice to have double the strings you'll fold in both directions yeah and even though you're folding one in the kind of the opposite direction it's not going to snap um it can if i do it right now either way would snap because that sun really took a lot of moisture like this one wants to right it's fine you can get away with like i said half of them the old style would be cracked or cut off so so you'd need to re-wet it again or right now i'm just going to cut them down a little bit if i'm doing a few of these i like to cut them even so i can set them in the pan and walk away you know for four or five minutes and let them just be i wanted the water just to come onto this top weave because the you know so though you can stretch the fibers all the way down to there but this is something we can just hold in here and it should soak so you're right in this it's not quite as high as i'd like it to be but this being thin i think it will so yeah we'll get a sense okay so you're putting them in the water to be re-wetting just that top why so we can turn them back onto themselves so this will turn and weave under the weave oh just easier to see it you know when i'm doing it than to explain why that makes any sense i almost heard it though when you were bending them it almost heard like it was gonna crack a little bit yeah for sure that's what stopped me now i think what we can do is thin these out to help them bend and you can control that so yeah that gives you a little easier so that's not cracked but it's got some raised fiber it's actually perfect i think that'll work good i'll go a little deeper on this one and you could cut through it all the way it's not gonna matte there's you know there's more more to hold it how few can of those can you have in order for it to hold the rim well enough i've seen baskets with none wow and they just rely on the rim to be strapped really tight but if you were to put handles which this has on the rim and you pull on that there's nothing holding it you'd have to put some sort of nails are you scoring every other one i am right now these are all outside bending in and then i'll reverse and do the opposite inside i see yeah that makes total sense thinning them out like this helps you to get them under the weave too because yeah it's a tight space on a little basket like this what what are you exactly thinning though is it like between the growth of one year it's about i'm taking it down to about a half a year a half a year okay so that's where i was wondering yeah you know that's all right it's like in between the growth rings though yeah and that space can get divided multiple times on a thicker piece of wood you could do it in half and then each half and go again and each half you can keep doing that to where it's translucent it's hard to do it but it's worth it if you enjoy that yeah satin finish yeah yeah there are baskets that i choose just to you know make all that satin material and it'll be the inside of a piece you know that's going to hold a certain thing or the outside it'll really reflect the light differently than this does it really has a shine to it okay so now measure all these just by folding them where they're going to fall and nip so the idea is they need to go under underneath under the weave yeah so that they don't come poking out yeah and you could just tuck them and let them you know fall where they lie it's just a little neater to decide it does look good no taper all these and that's to easily get into the weave below yeah it's a tight space this is another place where you see the hand of the maker some people would just come through and do one side so that won't be like to do angled through i was going to say you probably don't see it that much do you because it's hidden for me it's all i see yeah your basket and seeing the making of it so yeah but most people yeah you wouldn't see now that you pointed out the handles and everything like i said i have to go back into my baskets and like check them out now you've ruined me you have an eye for detail so it's just one more thing to look there's should be a black handled knife behind you on the shelf that's my next tool i need i'd imagine though you have to still work quickly because it it's not like it reconstituted water too much yeah they are already definitely getting tighter so that's over and under just like that [Music] that one we might cut that's all the outs could get away with that for a small basket but we'll take the time and go all the way at this point doing this without a schedule is you know the easiest thing i do in life i think just making a basket without worry when it needs to be somewhere just it needs to be where it's going to be when it's going to be at just let it do its thing now and that's made all the difference in the way i feel physically but not in any rush usually coming around the mountain inside's a bit tighter because we've already taken up space on the outside one that stretched the weave tighter so the inside is much much less room to fit a piece does it matter to do inside or outside first no just press i do the outside the ones you're going to see first because i really want to make sure i put the energy into right sure where they end the inside one sometimes i wouldn't even worry about the way they fall on a basket like this you're not looking inside it yeah it's like asking somebody whether they put the peanut butter or the jelly on first so these short ones we're just going to leave and fold over just so they're helping but they're not going to be tucked yeah it'd be a little challenging to work with them but that'll be it's worth having them there's because these little things you know need more support no matter what it'll hold them even where they you know sometimes they won't terminate in the right spot that looks real good there not against that and so you're kind of putting them on the flatter it seems like a flatter sides here or something maybe not no i have to go opposite of this okay there's no way to feed them in there yeah like the spinal column yeah yeah we should have a mason jar to do the mason jar testing it's too tight for amazing yeah but i liked i felt like when we were doing it now the shape is nice and tight nice little utensil basket mason jar is a hard shape because it is a big jar to fit in and still have a taper it almost makes it a drastic shape and the bottom corners stick out enough that you can damage it you know [Music] the rim gives its actual flare at the top because it can come out to meet the rim that's where we're going to get that and it secures the handles or the ears as you call them yeah they look more like ears yeah mm-hmm they do they're good on that one mm-hmm let's just thin it out a little a little sharp edge there now that it's dry it's a little more obvious where the sharp edges since we're gonna be pulling pretty tight on that top it's nice to get it [Music] around still a lot of flex in this piece of wood i could straighten it right back out it's not that dry but so thin there shouldn't be too much movement you know in that thinner wood i was gonna ask if like you're doing the rim i feel like the rim has to be really tight on top if it was a pack basket i'd want to have it really really well fit you know dry but not brittle because that handle gets a lot of use on a pack basket that's its main pickup you put down and you want your notches to stay real tight this i don't you're barely going to be pulling on this we'll get it close and just start and i can kind of as as i start weaving can hold it together because it's not gonna wanna yeah it's just what it is rims are in place ears are where they're going to be just got to mark them so now you have to weave around this there's still one more little oh thing that is make or break on these and that's getting these ears attached so so we're going to try to cut that out of there oh wow i don't know but kids have borrowed my my fine sauce we're going to try it with the sauce see here if i do it right here this is a giant saw for this task i don't know this is uh just everyone say yes this is going to work out fine just enough to catch the rim [Music] need something oh yeah when they're real dry they just pop pop kind of feel like a little slow clap sure well let's get the other one yeah i held my breath a little bit i know sometimes it takes a couple of tunes but that's good i don't know look at that snapper right in there ish yeah yeah okay let's make sure we've got a piece to finish it a wrap [Music] i hope you wash that cup beforehand you uh i'm not i'm not big on that dog yet i think i'll i'll grow to like this piece is a little thin that's what we want like for wrapping the top it's not a big chunky piece it's thin but it's strong and how long has it been sitting in the water now it wouldn't take much but i think i started it when we walked in here a half hour ago that was the first thing i did so you're coming up through yeah i'm going to try to hide it a little bit this way that's right it's like you're securing the inside of it just kind of tucking that tail because we're going over it yeah it's going to hold once i go around once we've got the outside of the tree on the outside of this wrap and we're just going to be going through these holes some you got to make make room or punch holes through when we get to these spots but let's see [Music] let's try tight not holds itself it's amazing to see it all come together it started started from just the raw material sticks yeah again it's that agreement you know agreement of each piece with the next pieces becomes this vessel i love it it's always hard to imagine it when it's sitting there on the table it is i mean who does that there's a basket yeah i can see it yeah you have like a newfound appreciation when you see it really come together all in one it's so cool to not be stuck doing any one thing all day how each part of it's a little bit different it can be done in a different position now was basket weaving maybe in this area or whatever was it a woman's work men's work did it matter this type is a combination you know what i've heard is that it was the men pounding and the women weaving but i've seen a lot of you know native native american folks you know whoever doing it basically what anything i've heard of was would be and then pounding the boys pounding which makes sense get them out of the house i mean villagers had multiple multiple people you know pounding it once yeah what a great thing to sit around in you know during the winter make baskets yeah well if you had a group of people you know pounding that wood i mean you'd get it done really quickly you'd actually probably save your wrists and that's the thing i was considering is like how fast can i process the trees i have yeah if i physically could do it but yeah that would really help to get them processed yeah because then i can store them that's just like you mentioned it now and it's like such a good community kind of builder you know you get your energy out but by doing it together you save each other so do you think you'll put like a little patina on this on this basket or you just put linseed oil or what would linseed it i don't like to i don't like to die dye them afterwards because you can't get in behind um you could probably dye them before yeah when i do the dye baskets all the material is cleaned and i stick it in the dye yeah that hot water would be dye water yeah it's messy but it makes the best finished product because the dye is all everywhere and it's just tannins then that are dyeing it yeah but when this dries and moves you won't see any lines where it's not dyed if you know if you actually dye every side of the material and then weave it it's a little hard on the hands because it's acidic ah yeah interesting i never really thought about it but i think it acts like a preservative too for the wood i think it's a good thing bug wise i mean that's that's one of the benefits of doing it it is look it looks great people always comment on it that's why i was wondering you know how much tannins the ash actually had because typically that would be the thing that would save them from borers and things like that but i guess it's not enough tannin in there to stop the the borer [Music] so this you're just thinning up so it fits more neatly to the rim yeah it's trying to have a big bulging tail at the end so that's once around everything looks pretty good gosh yeah even just once around it it makes it feel like pretty sturdy yeah but this size basket that's really all it needs but let's let's do it let's go all the way just double double back just get a little harder to fit in every little time you know it's so funny because you're working with like millimeters you know a little bit more frustrating than the bigger pieces but when did you actually start weaving right around 98 roughly just that apprenticeship what made you think about that apprenticeship like have you done any anything like this before no i could like the weaving pattern i think i was always drawn to it i looked at baskets when i was a kid and deconstructed my parents you know wicker with my mind and you know some of it i actually destroyed but just something about it i really liked weaving and little silly things like pot holder and then lacrosse sticks seem to be the next thing i remember weaving oh this makes sense these knots support these things and i just like how things work together you know small things to make something strong enough yeah to take impact like that [Music] and then just it was half a stance to find someone that needed a basket help i was drawn to baskets you know the first time i saw one sitting there in the sunshine kind of like what i do i'll put this out to dry and then i know people see them like the mail carrier season because they're out there by the road and that's how i saw just passing by i saw a drying basket and that was it for me i just was all about the way the light hit it and i just wanted to know how to do that and then you were lucky to find somebody around here as well to do an apprenticeship with yeah i was very lucky and i think that you know dude we'll do the same thing the kids taught the kids so they they have a good sense yeah they've been around it enough so i feel like that would cast it on that way yeah right now i i'm drawn to doing i think a class out here just to make use of the trees because i know i can't get them pounded out fast yeah and it would make more sense to just see them get used so you know we'll get set up to do some courses out here that people come and make use of those trees [Music] so we just need to finish that off tie it off on the inside but that's pretty good wow [Music] all the bits are together [Music] so this one's hard to see that's going under there it's going under one it's a real tough one yeah it's one of those things that if you had a tinier hole to the basket you'd have to use something with like a neck to pull it and pull it up it's already just really my hand wants to be in there yeah it could only be half in there that's good and that's got to go under this one and then not under the next one so get out of there [Music] success and that's what's left the crowd cheers okay let's see pretty close to that one yeah square it up yeah yeah look at that well i think feel it how about that well done jamin thank you so much for showing us your welcome your work so here's another little one you make the tiniest little baskets yup do you do it with your tiny hands no i don't know i should try this that would be great she has these little tiny hands that she wears sometimes and they're really detailed this is the worst part yeah so it's a little creepy i have five of them they're even worse so when did you make this basket um a little bit like five months ago i'd say what did your dad say did he say this was this was good does he uh that was the first tiny pack that ski i've made and who did he make it for no and i just decided to make it for myself yeah well that's great you can't you can't wear this though no i can't although if i i probably could add more holes than i could wear it yeah and then what about this one that one i made was like five really a long time ago i made that one so you really got the the uh the making of the basket bug they're really cool yeah they are really is your dad proud of you yeah i think so this one isn't that good since it has been upstairs and kind of dusty yeah but i did try to get it better how many baskets have you started to make i haven't have any right now that i'm in the making yeah but i'm planning to make another one of these tiny ones that's cute that's cool you can compare the two because you'll see like oh this is the very first time i did one yeah see the difference do you like making the tiny baskets or do you think you'd make a big one no big ones are too much work yeah too much work so this one itself took about a day maybe two yeah so do you do the the pounding as well does your dad make you do the pounding not yet no i've been trying to convince him to because he pays the brothers to pound them yeah but he won't pay me to pound him for some reason i think he's more protective of you so do you get to use the work that your brother so your brothers pound the wood and do you get to actually just make the basket then yeah my dad helps me with some of it that's great getting the main main part of it done the bottom so what do you think about your dad's basket weaving i like it a little yeah yeah i have my own pack basket that was actually used in the cinderella movie oh it's a replica yeah wow so he made that for you that's so sweet i've had that for since i was two i think do you use one for a backpack yeah that's the one it's like this big yeah it's pretty nice it's only i think yeah he hasn't made any more sense yeah but that was one i got from the brothers we each have our own pack baskets my mom gets a purse one purse what do you think about it being like one of a kind i like it a lot more than something that was mass-produced or yeah yeah so do you think you'll be making another basket he said he just has basket fever so you think you're going to be making another basket yeah i'm going to try to make as many as i can oh good great so you you're basically starting basket making sooner than when your dad started yeah my brothers haven't been that into it yeah i think my brothers maybe have made one basket but i even have my own weaving bench up there that's so great i'm like i'm i'm so glad to see that you uh you took a shine to it yeah yeah because you're learning it so much earlier than that then your dad even did all the good techniques from him yeah you'll be able to make such a cool basket and you have small hands so he was even struggling trying to get into like one of those small baskets so that since you have tiny hands you'll be able to make even smaller baskets i think i'm gonna try to convince my dad to use the tiny hands in one of his best i think that would be a fun little video you hear that jamin he says it's a-okay you

Channel: Flock Finger Lakes

Views: 899,967

Keywords: Flock, Flock Finger Lakes, Finger Lakes New York, homestead, homesteading, how to homestead, upstate New York, agroforestry, summer rayne oakes, farm life, basket weave, how to weave a basket, ash basket, weaving baskets with ash, make a basket, how to make a basket, indigenous knowledge, how to make an ash basket, basket making, weave a basket, how to weave a basket using ash splints, ash splint basket, black ash basket, basket maker, Jamin Uticone, make a basket step by step

Id: RIK0Na0iZ34

Length: 117min 39sec (7059 seconds)

Published: Tue May 25 2021