Willow basket tips?

[punkrockcaveman]

Knocked up my first willow basket yesterday. I rushed into it a bit, but I find I learn better by doing, than just reading or watching how it's. So I've watched a couple of videos but haven't done masses of research, and the net result is a rather shonky basket, however I feel like I gained a lot from the experience and mk.2 will be loads better so I'll update this thread when that happens. So here it is (be nice ) :





Now I feel like the willow needed to be much thinner and pliable, especially lower down in the basket, hence I've not been able to plug those big gaps and some of the willow is angular rather than a smooth weave, am I thinking right there? I mean it will hold apples, but I'm pretty sure a lot of seashore edibles would drop through those gaps!!

Any advice appreciated

 

[Toddy]

Good on you for giving it a good go and ending up with a basket you can use.

It becomes somewhat addictive, seeing just what will make a good basket

First up, did you use freshly cut willow ? or did you cut it and leave it to dry out a bit ?

Thing is you see, fresh willow will shrink, and it's pliable but it's still more inclined to bend sharply than willow that has been dried and then re-soaked.
It makes it hard to make, and keep, the weaving tight, and I think that's where you've found difficulty.

Keeping an even tension sounds easy enough, but when you're trying to do that, and wangle long rods around and twist them and keep them in place while getting frustrated with it creasing sharply instead of gently bending, it can all too quickly become an exercise in frustration.

Keeping the work damp really helps.

Best advice ? don't give up, keep playing around with it, and other materials if you can get your hands on them. Dogwood for instance is showing some beautiful coloured stems just now, and brambles are long and flexible and very sound.

There's a rather nice video from Woodlandstv, and it's under ten minutes long, worth a look, just soak up the way the lady uses her hands, etc.,

Best of luck with it and it'd be interesting to hear how things progress.

M

 

[punkrockcaveman]

You are bang on Mary, yes it was cut the night before I made it, so the willow was very green. It was interesting to see the tips with bud on were super pliable, but the rest was quite stiff and would snap rather than bend nicely. I hadn't thought about re-soaking. Is there an ideal time to harvest?

 

[SaraR]

If it holds what you want it to hold- it's a basket!

Apart from what has already been said about using dry willow that has been soaked and using your grip to maintain control, here are three things that would help you make a better basket next time:

1) sorting your willow and using the right thickness willow for the right task
As you've noticed the willow that you use for weaving needs to be a lot thinner than the willow you use for the stakes. You normally achieve this by taking your bundle of same-length willow cuttings and sorting it by feel into 5 piles (thickest, thicker, medium, thinner, thinnest). - this is one of my favourite bits of basket weaving! Even just sorting into 3 piles works and is much easier and faster. An alternative would be to use the tips for weaving and the bottom part of the same cutting for the stakes.

--> Have a look at the photos on this website and you can see the difference in width between the stakes and the weavers: Jon's Bushcraft: How to weave a basket

2) making the slath (= centre of the base)
You have put four sticks on top of the other four, which lets them move around too much.
To make the cross in the centre of the the base, you pick your 6 thickest cuttings and cut them down to size, that is the intended diameter of your basket plus a few extra inches. You then make a short lengthwise split in the central part of three of these (again see Jon's webpage) and push the other three cuttings trough these slits. Ideally these two pairs of three sticks should be orientated alternating tip-butt-tip in one direction and butt-tip-butt in the other.

You then take the two very finest cuttings you have, secure the tips in the slath slit and then start weaving, first around three sticks (each end of the cross) at a time. Then you push the sticks forming the slath apart sideways so that they point evenly at different points of the face of a clock. Secure by starting to weave in and out around each stick.

Carry on adding thinnest weavers until you've got the diameter base you want. You have now have a woven disk with spokes (your slath) sticking out from the edge.

3) staking up (= starting the sides)
You bent your slath sticks and used them as the side stakes.

Normally, what you'd do is this: You take your finished base and insert new thicker cuttings next to those spokes and bend them up to form the side stakes. You then start weaving the sides using medium weavers. You'd also do a special edge (the upset - in white on Jon's basket) in wailing to get the sides started, before returning to a basic back and forth weaving or whatever fancy weave you want to use on the sides. Wailing is a great technique for maintaining control and on my first basket, I used wailing for the whole of the sides, so there's no need to do anything else really.

Happy basket making!

 

[SaraR]

I hadn't thought about re-soaking. Is there an ideal time to harvest?

Yes, once the leaves have fallen but before the new leaves comes out, so December through February/ early March or so depending on where you live.

 

[Toddy]

Round here it's usually February that we cut the willow rods and tidy up the stools. I think it's area and weather dependent though.
If you leave it too long the buds swell and though it's usuable it's not so trim. I know friends further north wait until March to cut theirs.

You can also remove the bark. Not quite so easy at this time of year, but when the stuff is cut fresh when the world is starting to warm up a bit and the sap starts to flow, then the bark almost slips off. That will leave clean, easy dried and soaked inner rods. Commercially they boil them but it's not necessary.
The long strips of bark are excellent for making cordage
I have a bucket load of them soaking outside just now for just that purpose.

If you have a dry place to stack cut willow in bunches, stook them up and make sure they stay cold and airy. It takes a fair bit for mildew to get to them but if it does it really weakens the willow.

Soak once, and the willow will be excellent, dry and soak again, and it's more likely to crack. So, soak enough and leave it wrapped up in damp cloth (or on the grass and covered over) someplace cool while you work.

There are a couple of tools that really help, one is simply a piece of metal wrapped in cloth used to beat the weavers down snuggly into place. You don't want a sharp edge for this, not something that will crush or mark the willow, just something that will thump it down neatly.
A piece of nice heavy oak works too.
Something to use like a fid, or thick stiletto. It not only splits rods to slip others through to help form bases, etc., but it'll spread out spaces for you to tuck ends in too. You can use a plain sturdy slot headed screwdriver for this if you have nothing else. Not ideal, but it lets you get on with it.
The last thing is a decent pair of sharp pruners. Keeps everything tidy

Keep it simple, play with it through the seasons, and it'll surprise you how quickly your skills come on.

M

 

[punkrockcaveman]

Thank you both loads for the very informative posts I'll have another go soon.

Is it a big no no use green willow then? I'll deffo have a go with drying and resoaking. Also, I used crack willow for this one, could that be part of the reason it didn't work so well?

 

[John Fenna]

Another, readily available source of basket making material is brambles. I use them green then add more material as they dry... on willow frames for the Melon baskets but on thicker brambles for the Bucket types. Bramble is surprisingly durable!
As Toddy says - it can get addictive!
My wife has banned me from making anymore as they are taking over the house...

 

[SaraR]

Thank you both loads for the very informative posts I'll have another go soon.

Is it a big no no use green willow then? I'll deffo have a go with drying and resoaking. Also, I used crack willow for this one, could that be part of the reason it didn't work so well?

Frame baskets used to be made with hedgerow materials, so you definitely can do it, but the weave will go looser as the material dries. Not really a problem as you can just add more if you need to! The willow doesn't behave quite the same when it's fresh or if it's collected at a different time of year, but you can still practise your basket making if that's what you've got to hand. As long as you get the relative thickness of the different parts right, it should be more than doable.

 

[punkrockcaveman]

Stocked up on some much finer wands tonight after happening across a nice willow by the river, so I'll be having another crack at the weaving again soon.

On a side note, I had a nibble on my first wild garlic of the year yum yum

 

[spandit]

I've wanted to make a basket for ages but have never really got round to it, despite watching loads of YouTube videos (Hanna Van Aelst is a favourite) and planting/harvesting suitable willow - I think it is the timing of having to dry, then soak/temper etc. that put me off.

My willow harvest is bundled up neatly in the barn and will hopefully dry out over the Summer (if it arrives!) but I have a big pile of cuttings that weren't suitable, because they were branched.

Went out this morning and just trimmed some side shoots off to give me suitable stuff. I know if I ever finish a basket (it's just started raining and I was getting cold) it will shrink and become loose, but practicing the techniques with free/disposable materials is worthwhile (still waiting for a bodkin to arrive).

The OP's basket looks like it's made with the wrong kind of willow - I'm using black maul/almond willow (salix triandra) which doesn't easily snap when you bend it green. Crack willow, as the name suggests, is too brittle/prone to breaking, but good on you for giving it a go and making a functional, albeit imperfect, basket

 

[Toddy]

Looks good

Black Maul is lovely stuff, but folks just use what they can get hold of too. Most willow round here is goat, and it works surprisingly well. I grow a golden jangles one (not sure of that name, it's what I was told that it was when I was given the cuttings to root) and a corkscrew one for ornamental stuff.

The folks who grow and sell willow have a lot of information on their websites. Well worth a quiet read through over a coffee break

Types of willow | A guide to basketry willow | Musgrove Willows

A guide to the types of willow grown on our Somerset farm. Find out the best willow for basketry, sculpture & bank revetment works

www.musgrovewillows.co.uk

Speciality Selection - Basketry

 

[spandit]

I bought 25 rods 6 years ago (for a surprisingly high price, as it turns out!) and planted them in a little patch. With the harvest from there, I planted 120 trees out in an organised plantation, and I have a few more dotted about (that grow surprisingly non-straight)

 

[SaraR]

I've wanted to make a basket for ages but have never really got round to it, despite watching loads of YouTube videos (Hanna Van Aelst is a favourite) and planting/harvesting suitable willow - I think it is the timing of having to dry, then soak/temper etc. that put me off.

My willow harvest is bundled up neatly in the barn and will hopefully dry out over the Summer (if it arrives!) but I have a big pile of cuttings that weren't suitable, because they were branched.

Went out this morning and just trimmed some side shoots off to give me suitable stuff. I know if I ever finish a basket (it's just started raining and I was getting cold) it will shrink and become loose, but practicing the techniques with free/disposable materials is worthwhile (still waiting for a bodkin to arrive).

The OP's basket looks like it's made with the wrong kind of willow - I'm using black maul/almond willow (salix triandra) which doesn't easily snap when you bend it green. Crack willow, as the name suggests, is too brittle/prone to breaking, but good on you for giving it a go and making a functional, albeit imperfect, basket

A good first effort! Well done

A few suggestions that might help:
Do you know about sorting the willow? That is taking a bunch of similar length willow (eg 3 ft, 4ft, 5ft) and sorting it into 5 (ideally, but 3 is a good start) thicknesses based on feel.

You then use different thicknesses for different jobs in the basket, eg using the thickest ones for making the slath and the thinnest ones for starting weaving the base. Doing this right will improve your baskets a lot! But as a rule of thumb, the willow used for the weave should be thinner than the one used for the stakes.

If you're struggling to find really thin ones, you can always use the tips of the ones you've got and save the butt end part (bottom/ lower part) for something else.

If you at all can, I suggest getting some buff (debarked) willow to start with. It is much easier to controll than brown (bark on, dried) willow and is often used in combination with brown willow for that very reason. As a beginner it makes a real difference, plus buff willow requires much less time to soak and mellow.

 

[spandit]

I do know about sorting the willow - the stuff I've harvested will be properly sorted but this was offcuts and green, so a bit thicker than ideal and not as flexible. Managed a functional basket. I know it will fall apart as it dries but helped me practice the techniques I've seen online. Going on a course next month and making enquiries with someone else too...

 

[Toddy]

Looks sound especially since it's made from the oddments.
It can be fun making all those sorts of things. Stars, fish, butterflies, candle wands, etc., are the little things we make with kids on park days. Simple things they can take home, but they're kind of cute in the garden planters too. I use them as row markers for seeds or canes for supports. Not so intrusive as the nerf gun bullet on the ends of canes to make them safe near eyes.

The tension trays use up those oddments very well indeed too. They stack, and are handy when out and about. Nice for ornamental things in the house too at Christmas, Easter, Mayday, Harvest and Hallowe'en.
Fresh is always much nicer to be around than fake scents. Good to stack fruit and eggs on as well.

There'll be a link somewhere on the forum. I'll find it, but John Fenna posted a photo of one he'd made recently.

 

[spandit]

Thanks, @Toddy. One of the reasons I want to learn basket weaving is to make use of "free" resources that I grow myself (I use the inverted commas as I had to initially pay for the willow sets when I planted them) rather than pay to get them delivered, which seems counter intuitive.

I've seen a link to a video for a tension tray - I'll watch it imminently

 

[Toddy]

I think there's a great deal of satisfaction in using stuff you've grown yourself though, and willow is a classic example

Tension Trays, ***Photo Heavy***

These are the simplest of things to make, use up scrap materials, can be made with anything from willow to dockens, and are very useful indeed. The little one that I show being made here takes about ten minutes, and will keep a hot pot off the tent floor, insulate a pot or mug from the chill of...

bushcraftuk.com

Most whippy stems will make some kind of basket, but the ones made from fine split timber are superb too. Things that you just would not suspect make very strong baskets.
The oldest basketry that we know of in Europe was made from privet. The same stuff folks keep tidily trimmed as hedges. Left to grow it produces long fine very flexible stems, and it makes superb fish traps.

M

 

[SaraR]

Thanks, @Toddy. One of the reasons I want to learn basket weaving is to make use of "free" resources that I grow myself (I use the inverted commas as I had to initially pay for the willow sets when I planted them) rather than pay to get them delivered, which seems counter intuitive.

I've seen a link to a video for a tension tray - I'll watch it imminently

Bramble also makes for excellent hedgerow baskets, after removing the thornes of course. If you want to experiment with green (fresh) material, frame baskets are great as you can just push the weave aside and weave in more material if it’s too loose once the basket has dried. You can use willow or similar for the frames (hoops and ribs) and then just about anything for the weave.

 

[spandit]

I have sewn up a canvas and leather pad for removing bramble prickles. I've sorted my dry willow to length and will get some soaking to use in a few days