Day one on Robin Woods Bowl Carving course

This is something I wish I'd done 10 or 20 years ago,  Learning how to carve wooden bowls from green timber using nothing but very sharp traditional hand tools.  Even though I trained as a cabinet maker my skill set was mostly modern hand tools and small power tools and apart from whittling there was a gap in my knowledge working fresh green timber.   If you are thinking of starting out yourself then the Spoon carving course is an ideal introduction with minimal outlay.  I was interested in bowl carving specifically as I am branching out into carving out Harps, lyres and Nyckelharpa from logs that are green so I can get a clean smooth interior( cutting into 4" deep kiln dried timbers, and especially the end grain is very hard without using a lot of machine work and sanding)
Robins Woods Bowl Carving course is over three days in the Village of Edale in the Peak District.  One of the locations of the recent BBC TV series "the Village"   I was camping a short walk away.

Edale, from the Campsite

Wearing my old Barbour jacket!

First stages of carving the inside of the bowl after initial axe work.  

Here I am using a lovely adze made by Hans Karlsson

The Simple Bowlcarving benches developed by Robin Wood over the years. Very effective.

My evening video blog, taken with the front facing camera of the Nokia 920 Windows phone

Thanks to Nokia Conversations for the loan of the Lumia 920 Windowsphone