{"id":1382,"date":"2021-10-08T10:33:26","date_gmt":"2021-10-08T10:33:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.talesfromtheboatshed.com\/?p=1382"},"modified":"2021-10-08T10:33:26","modified_gmt":"2021-10-08T10:33:26","slug":"a-man-of-letters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.talesfromtheboatshed.com\/?p=1382","title":{"rendered":"A Man of Letters"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>We recently visited the Oak Fair at the Stock Gaylard Estate in Dorset.  It is very traditional, predominantly woodcraft-related, and free of corporate tatt.  One of the exhibitors, Bodden Cross Studios, was offering letter carving and woodturning courses.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I had been thinking that I might carve the name of the boat on her transom, so I took a leaflet and a few days later got in touch with Stephen Stokes, who has his studio near Shepton Mallett, and booked a day&#8217;s letter carving course.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We drove down on Monday, for a two night stay at the local Charlton House Hotel, and on Tuesday I spent a very enjoyable day with Stephen.  While there are books and, no doubt, You Tube videos that one can try to learn from, nothing beats 1:1 tuition from an expert craftsman.  Stephen soon had me carving Is and Cs and then we moved on to carving the boat&#8217;s name: &#8216;Mischief.&#8217;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Stephen is not only a good teacher, he is also a great raconteur.  The time went all too fast but, by the end of the day, I had completed a practice run and started another &#8211; the M is especially tricky, as there are some fragile parts of the letter that can easily get chipped out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.talesfromtheboatshed.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/IMG_4257-1024x768.jpeg?resize=720%2C540\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-1383\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\"\/><figcaption>It&#8217;s the contrast of light and dark that reveal the whole &#8211; pick your own analogy!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>I had planned to take the transom for this course, but ran out of time to have it ready.  No matter, I can practice my letters before tackling the real deal.  <br><br>The tools I need for letter carving arrived this morning, and I made myself a mallet yesterday, so I am good to go. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.talesfromtheboatshed.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/IMG_4254-768x1024.jpeg?resize=720%2C960\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-1385\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\"\/><figcaption>Ash handle, Milk Pear head and &#8230;<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.talesfromtheboatshed.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/IMG_4256-768x1024.jpeg?resize=720%2C960\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-1387\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\"\/><figcaption>&#8230; bog oak for the tenon&#8217;s wedge <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>By the way, I am not taking commissions at present, though if you don&#8217;t mind a novice attempt, my arm is twistable.  Anyway, I have a boat to build!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We recently visited the Oak Fair at the Stock Gaylard Estate in Dorset. It is very traditional, predominantly woodcraft-related, and free of corporate tatt. One of the exhibitors, Bodden Cross Studios, was offering letter carving and woodturning courses. I had been thinking that I might carve the name of the boat on her transom, so&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.talesfromtheboatshed.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1382"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.talesfromtheboatshed.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.talesfromtheboatshed.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.talesfromtheboatshed.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.talesfromtheboatshed.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1382"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.talesfromtheboatshed.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1382\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.talesfromtheboatshed.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1382"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.talesfromtheboatshed.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1382"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.talesfromtheboatshed.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1382"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}