Westmead Artificer

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Artificer: [ART-IF-ISS-URR] : Noun: A craftsman who makes things

What I do...

Making things in wood has generally arisen out of necessity, in that something is required of the, "I can make that" variety. As with lots of things, it just sort of grew from there!

Bow Making

Starting with some ash staves - Westmead Artificer's adventures in bowyery.

A Recycled Hatchet

A broken hatchet from the dump is recycled - see the Brades Criterion page.

Some Spoons!

The Goldilocks set - Daddy Bear in birch, Mummy Bear in sycamore and Baby Bear in willow.

One in Goat Willow (I had to look it up!) The heart wood goes a lovely orange colour.

Rustic garden seat

I cut the beech (I think) log in half with the chainsaw, then used the tip of the saw to cut square holes at each end of both pieces. The smaller logs, which were a section of the same tree, were cut to length and a matching square end cut with the carving axe. I then smoothed the top surface with the carving axe before assembling the whole thing (using the splitting maul as a suitable sized hammer).

The actual process took rather longer than the above would suggest, with fitting, partial assembly, finding out I had an angle wrong, disassembly, recutting, refitting etc. And of course, when the whole thing was correctly assembled, it was too tall, so round we went again.

The wood is now weathering nicely, and the top surface is not roughening at the same time, as I was worried it would.

Garden gate

From this: To this:

Framed, ledged and braced gate, made from fencing boards left over from another job, and wood from the scrap timber pile!

The Wizard of Oz!

Built for the Riverside Players' open-air production of the Wizard of Oz, playing in July-August 2009.

See HERE for more information about the show.

Original concept by Shirley Hillier (Set Designer), graphic design and painting by Lauren Stanyon (art designer), mechanical design and build by yours truly at the Riverside Workshop. Thanks to Will Morris for adding the ears!

The face of the Wizard was to be hidden behind scrim, so it disappeared until lit - the scrim takes on the colour of the lighting, and if lit from the front, is opaque to the audience.
When the handle is turned, the mouth opens and closes, and the nose and eyebrows go up and down (at a different rate to the mouth), giving the impression of a face talking.

The uplighters can be seen here, as can the pushrod assemblies. The cams are made from 12mm plywood, double thickness. The cam profiles are the result of many cups of tea and an entire packet of digestive biscuits!
Cam followers were found to be necessary to avoid jamming the pushrods, and the wheels were added as an afterthought to reduce friction over the cams (trolley casters which were lurking in the workshop).

The face elements were carved from expanded polystyrene, by Lauren Stanyon.

And finally, the view the audience got of this monstrosity...

(Photo courtesy of Matt Wintour).

UPDATE:
The Wizard has since been hired out a couple of times for other shows.