The clay plastering of the FE workshop is completed and we are between coats on the exterior lime wash. The only reasonable thing to do is use our spare plaster experimenting bale to carry out some destruction tests!

So we have had most variants of the predictable jibes and japes about straw as a building material: it will burn, it will rot, the wolf will huff and puff, blowing the workshop across the field… Even the local farmer selling us the bales warned us not to put anything electrical in the ‘workshop’ when it was done, for the sake of fire safety. That’s all complete nonsense, and …Continue reading »

So, Flowering Elbow attended the first Mend*rs symposium 29th June-2nd July. Organised by three inspired menders and scholars: Jonnet Middleton, Guiseppe Salva and Beck Collins with the aim of:

And, somewhat more ambitious, to ‘bring about the age of mending‘!

When we saw the call for contributions for this it sounded really …Continue reading »

We had our first plastering party, hoorah! A really good fun weekend, with lovely people and lovely mud. Here’s a quick low down on what we did and learnt.

Since our testing of different clay plaster mixes and digging mission (documented in the previous blog post) there was quite a bit of

…Continue reading »

Plastering party: 18th-20th May

Duel purpose post here: a little update on workshop happenings and an open invite to come and learn/do some clay mixing and plastering on the straw bale walls. So the weekend: the scene is set, we have some bale walls crying out for plaster, a lovely load of clay earth and other ingredients to mix some plaster with, now all we need is your enthusiastic hands and feet to help put the whole lot together!

This should be really good fun: play with mud, learn new skills and experience different, natural building materials, check out the invention studio so far, and enjoy the beautiful surroundings at the Golden Hill Centre. We’ll start Friday evening and carry …Continue reading »

The Straw Bale walls so far…

It has been some time since the main wall construction was completed, but I see that the last blog post on it shows it in early stages, so lets have a little update. We were not able to properly render finish the wall last year because of the cold weather –  both clay and lime render, don’t like the frost, but now spring is here we can finally finish them off. That’s what we are doing right now, but I am getting ahead of myself, before we start blogging about the clay plastering process, here’s just a quick review of the workshop walls and doors…

When we had all the bales in place, the walls were pre-compressed with heavy duty (5 tonne) ratchet straps. This is an important …Continue reading »

Just a little update on the sideways burning stove for you. The door is now opening and shutting quite nicely – the tensioning latches you can see below will hold the loading chamber door against the glass rope sealing strip (once we put it in). We picked up a few of the latches from e-bay quite cheaply – hopefully they will do the job and the springs will last through the thermal cycling they will receive.  We made little hooks on the body of the stove for the catches, out of old nails and weld filler (our exciting little attempt at weld sculpting).

Primary and secondary combustion air supply

So we used the magic hacksaw to make a few cuts in this …Continue reading »

If you have been following our scrap made wood stove progress, you will already have seen a glimpse of the power hacksaw, but we did promise more… Here is a little video and some info on the saw.

It came from Aberystwyth University, where it has sat in storage for years, unused and unloved. There were a few other things being sold off, in a secret …Continue reading »

Beginning to Weld!

Ok so the weather is going bazaarly hot, what better way celebrate than by donning the welding gauntlets, sweaty mask and continuing the sideways-burning, self-loading stove project (see the first instalments if that makes no sense). We get the welding ball rolling by tack welding the primary and secondary burn chambers together.

Once we are satisfied with the position we can set to and try some proper welds. Here is the first weld seam, certainly not …Continue reading »

Long have I been jealous of Bongo’s combination mitre saw and table saw, and his ability to quickly and easily to produce accurate cuts of any angle. This was never a problem when I lived down the road but since moving away to the country I have had to rely on either jigsaw or circular saw or in the worst case make cuts completely without electrical current of any kind. Therefore I was pleased as punch when a Bosch GKG 24V (cordless) came up on a well known auction site. Sold as seen with a rumbling noise, sparks and broken bush cover. I purchased for a very agreeable price hoping that a combination of the base unit and a corded circular saw I have knocking around could produce a hybrid unit.

However on arrival the saw was in …Continue reading »