‘Borderlands’ TECHNICAL
http://www.getwoodworking.com September 2019 The Woodworker & Good Woodworking 59
David found many ways of incorporating small pieces ... into larger pieces of furniture
of Victory timber...Nelson enthusiast David Burton with part
of his cache of Victory timber
she fought at the battle of Trafalgar, some – in
particular, remnants from the gun decks – were
so steeped in powder smoke David claims, that
when he turned or sawed them the ghost of that
famous action off Cadiz more than 200 years
ago was re-awakened, and could be smelled
in the acrid scent of the wood’s dust.
The oak from HMS Victory was a particular
case of David’s theory regarding special pieces of
wood, of course, but while the applewood pieces
that I’ve kept as souvenirs of a vanished world
neither served with Nelson nor survived Trafalgar,
they have in common that quality which invites
us (or maybe it’s just me, I don’t know) to think
of wood as an enduring and tangible link to the
past that will endure into the future, needing only
the conjunction of inspiration and opportunity to
bring the connections to life. And that’s precisely
what happened when I met John Gibbons at the
Shropshire Association of Woodturners (SAW),
and he agreed to try turning one of my pieces
of twisted fruitwood, though, in fairness, most
woods worth keeping have these shades of both
past and future in their figure, don’t they. Quickly
tally the growth rings of this newly shaped purlin
end, for example, and they number about 40;
there was much more to the oak tree from which
it was sawn, of course, so the years traced there
in the heartwood must have come and gone in
a world well before my time. And, soberingly,
it should be weathering the passing seasons
long after my time, too.
In this, wood has the patience of stone, but noneof its mineral remoteness: though wood’s
stride can be measured in centuries compared
to our brief three-score and ten, it always feels
familiar, partly, perhaps, because it’s organic,
and partly because its ways are known, and the
means of working it are also part of a long and
continuing tradition. So while John, for instance,
would have liked to have done more turning at
school, when he had ambitions to work in wood
(pattern-making was what he had in mind, but
circumstances made an electrical draughtsman
of him), woodworking was there to come back
to in retirement, because the span of a working
life is far too short to have seen much change
in its practices. In the same way, John’s lathe –
bought when he was 60 but which waited ’til he’d
retired to be set to work – would be understood
by generations of makers as a recent but clearly
recognisable extension of that woodworking
tradition (though as an aside John tells me that
it has already out-lived one of SAW’s chairman,
who was also out-lasted by his coachhouse-full
of timber – a collection of special pieces, no doubt,
saved for the day when he found the right way
to use them...).