returnable woodland skills

I am reminded by the response I received over the posting, which I put on my other blog, on coppicing and in finding another helpful site for Tim Noble , who sent in a comment on this subject, that one good place to start an article on design of furniture and its construction is right there in the woods. The art of tool making and the inicial use of tools was clearly a hunter gatherers art and skill, that desire to refine and tune tools is the essence that drives us now, it would of been first a need to help in hunting but that desire to embellish with design seems to have started very early on. The bow and cross bow are weapons and also means of producing motion for lathes, the simplest of lathes is the pole lathe and was still in use during the time of my grandfathers youth, he often remarked about the work done on such a lathe. They had the benefit of mobility, it was possible to use the branch of a living tree to give propulsion and the bodger, turner who uses green timber for making furniture, would work in the open very much a local rural craftsman. The art of drying timber was a later move to stop wood splitting when used inside a house, the bodger's furniture was more likely to be in poor folks houses and therefore had very little heating.