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you don't need a forge to anneal for drilling, just a plumbers blowtorch ;-) if you heat the area to be drilled to a very dull red then it will be soft enough to drill with standard HSS drill bits. Or buy carbide drills and don't bother, they will drill through hardened steel. Or even make a...

Nice looking knife :) Always lots of character in old files and rasps I've made lots of file knives and since I only use a couple of brands of file I took the time to try some heat treating recipes to make sure they worked. That then led to me just retempering the file instead of going...

haemerlin barrows all the way for me! They have the right sort of capacity, wide tops, relatively short legs (which means I don't have to lift the handles too high to get it above the lumps in the ground surface), solidly built and easy to handle. I always replace the wheels with solid PU ones...

All of the saddles that I know swear by Renapor and Sheritons leather balsom. They also swear about/against dubbin and neetsfoot oil. The oils make the leather flexible but weakens the fibres in the long run whereas the wax based balsoms nourish the leather, waterproofs and doesn't make it...

As just mentioned, any structure that is available to be slept in requires planning permission. Shepherds huts and caravans are movable so pass as seasonal abodes when working the woodland, but they should still be moved between seasons or they are thought of as permanent, I too have had the...

half a tonne would maybe build a kennel, not a 10x10 workshop! If it's stand alone cob without a timber frame I'm guessing something like 5 maybe 10 tonnes. Around my way the houses are built from cob and even a garage sized shed has walls of over two feet in thickness If it's a timber frame...

I live in Devon, where most structures over 80 years old are cob. I've also helped build iron age round houses as well as wattle and daub structures (I'm an experimental archaeologist by training), so yes, I'm aware of the need for clay :lmao::lmao:

I use steel ammo boxes to keep things out of rodent munching. My beds were foam army mattresses straight onto the floor but I would lean them up against the posts when not in use to keep things from chewing or nesting in them. The shelter in that woodlands UK link is basically a very...

What species of tree and what sort of sizes do you have there? I've made benders from all sorts of wood, so long as it's young and fresh it will normally bend enough to do this! Oak and many other trees will happily split (even if it's been down a few years), but it will split according to it's...

When I first took on my woods I did exactly as Toddy describes to give me some shelter to get out of the wind and rain whilst cutting. It also gave me a dry space to store tools overnight rather than carrying everything home. I did get a bit posh towards the end and bent several saplings in...

Like Stew says, the strength of the bender type structure is in the arch of the roof. If you build it out of straight poles you have several problems. Firstly is that they will not be as sturdy from side loads such as wind unless the uprights are pretty chunky and driven in deep. Secondly the...

Here are a few photos from the construction of one of the benders. The pole are hazel cut from stools in the vicinity of where we were working, lashed together with nasty blue poly rope. I put a bit of stock fence and a very old and dead tarp on the roof to protect the outer tarp from damage...

Plastic pallets and shed grids I expect are made largely from recycled (and therefore further recyclable) plastic anyway and are much more stable when in contact with the wet ground than tyres are. As Toddy points out, the tyres break down into nasty mush and fragments too, hard plastic doesn't...

i would've just assumed a bobbin for winding thread onto

I'm assuming by 10x10 you mean 10 feet by 10 feet rather than 10m by 10m? I have a cheap shed that is about 3mx10m from somewhere like sheds direct/sheds uk (one of those imaginatively named online places!) and is what I meant about replacing the roof with steel instead of the felt and needing...

I have many sheds in the woods of varying constructions and sizes :D Some cheap, some quite expensive, some from my own milled timber and some from gathered round wood. What do you intend to use the shed for and how big would you like it? The weak spots of cheap sheds are the floor and the...

Very nicely done! I foresee a chess set in the making ;-) What did you use to stain the wood?

thanks guys :) I think I'll end up with a pare of Freets by the look of it rather than risking the Vivo trackers first time out (dipping my toe so to speak!). Probably the Arken as they look warmer and I am a miserable sod with cold feet! stew. Thanks for the offer of the boots, I did...

normally a 7 to 7 1/2 shoe. Am I right in thinking that barefoot shoes aren't always measured the same?

My current walking boots are in need of being replaced very soon and I've been thinking about barefoot boots as an alternative. They will be used on a daily basis to walk to work (but not at work, that would be a health and safety nightmare! :lmao:). So in my case that means a mile of road...