The Spurtle Times

I have just finished an upgrade to the leaflet that comes with my spurtles. The Spurtle Times has lots of historical information gleaned from old newspapers  and books, dating back as far as 1829.

The mystery of lumpy porridge

The Telegraph have just published an article about porridge by Clarissa Dickson Wright. Clarissa, the co-chef of the TV show 'Two Fat Ladies', sadly passed away recently.

She tells how her grandfather witnessed the use of the porridge drawer in tenements in Glasgow. She goes on to tell how the porridge would be reheated, and the lumps broken down with the spurtle. Now, I have always read that the spurtle is good for dealing with lumpy porridge, but it has always been a mystery to me how anyone could cook lumpy porridge. Maybe the use of the porridge drawer is where this legend comes from?

Don't forget that you can purchase spurtles from my website, seafoamwoodturning.com, or in person most Saturdays at Halifax Seaport Farmers Market. You can also learn more about spurtles, oats and porridge on my Facebook page dedicated to the subject.

Dibbling in the garden

If you are planting a really big garden, the tractor towed dibbler these folks are using may be the way you need to go:



If your gardening ambitions aren't quite so large, one of my handcrafted wooden dibblers will probably get the job done.

Winter wonderland

Winter seems to be largely passing us by here at Seafoam. Ok, we have had some cold snaps, and a few snow storms, but by and large this winter has been quite kind to us. In the workshop, this is a season to regroup and prepare for busier times in the year ahead, so there are no big stories to post about, just a lot of bits and pieces.

We will get the bad news over and done with right away. After many years of no price increases, I have had to put my flat-rate shipping charge up to $8.00. Canada Post have been pushing their prices up a little every year, so now I have had to follow suit. Don't forget that this is a flat rate, and no matter how many spurtles or wine stoppers you buy, you only pay $8.00, so it pays to buy multiple items in one order - many of my most popular products make great gifts and you will be sure to find a home for them sooner or later.

I have also had to push up the price on the wedding favours. This is largely due to using a better grade of cork. The quality I was getting from my previous supplier was becoming very poor, with lots of splits and voids, so I am now using FLOR grade cork. This is the highest grade of cork when inspected visually for the amount and size of pores (lenticels), bark, belly and cracks found on its surface.[1]    However, I currently have a sale on, and you can save 10% by placing your order before April 30. I hope that this will encourage early orders, since I often have to turn down orders during the busy summer wedding season.

The Google car toured Pictou County last summer and Seafoam Woodturning Studio is now on Google Street View. You can find us at 45.788618,-62.999807. It looks like Pat and I were outside enjoying a cup of tea when they went by.

(For those that haven't used Street View, zoom in on the map as far as it will let you, then drag the little orange man until his green circle is over the green arrow. That will show you a picture which you can pan around and zoom in.)

It isn't often that I take on commissions, but when I was asked to make a mock ceremonial mace that would be used in anti-prorogation efforts, I decided to have a go. The mace is in two parts. It started off as one piece in Halifax, and went on to Yellowknife. It was then divided, one piece going to Fredericton and the other to Vancouver. Its amazing to see that they have daffodils in flower out on the west coast.

Tomorrow (Saturday, 20 February 2010) I will be at Dartmouth Farmer's Market in Alderney Landing, so if you happen to be in Metro, do come and say hi. I shall probably be back there occasionally for the next few months. Now that I go to so many markets, I usually post them to twitter to avoid filling this blog up with posts about markets.

On Tuesday I have a TV crew coming to tape a little piece for Eastlink. I shall probably be turning a bowl. Guess I had better go and tidy up the workshop!

2009 Craft Shows

I have two shows lined up this month;

This coming Saturday and Sunday, November 14–15, 2009, the 21st Annual Festive Craft Market at the NSAC, Bible Hill, Nova Scotia.

The following weekend, Friday - Sunday, November 20-22, 2009, the Christmas Craft Expo at Acadia University in Wolfville. I have a few customer appreciation tickets to give away, to save you the $5.00 admission fee. If you would like one or two, drop me an email with your mailing address and I will pop them in the post.

Some new weedpots

The farmers market season has already begun. Most weekends will find me at Antigonish on Saturday morning between 8am and noon. I just started a twitter feed, so you can get more uptodate information of my whereabouts at twitter.com/SeafoamWoodturn.

This week I made some weedpots. Some are quite unusual, having natural edges and the like. The large ones are Black Ash, the ones with the bark still on are Striped Maple.

Fall 2008 markets

I have a quite heavy schedule this fall season for your Christmas shopping pleasure. I have three venues in Nova Scotia, and one in New Brunswick - Antigonish Farmers' Market, Moncton Market, Festive Craft Market (NSAC Truro), Sunnyside Mall Craft Market (Bedford).

October 11 - Antigonish
October 18 - Moncton
October 25 - Antigonish
November 1 - Moncton
November 2 - Sunnyside Mall
November 8 - Antigonish
November 9 - Sunnyside Mall
November 15/16 - Truro
November 22 - Antigonish
November 23 - Sunnyside Mall
November 29 - Moncton
November 30 - Sunnyside Mall
December 6 - Antigonish
December 7 - Sunnyside Mall
December 13 - Moncton
December 14 - Sunnyside Mall
December 20 - Antigonish
December 21 - Sunnyside Mall

Market schedule

Here is my schedule for the markets I will be at for the next eight weeks:

June 14 - Moncton
June 21 - Antigonish
June 28 - Antigonish
July 5 - Moncton
July 12 - Antigonish
July 19 - Moncton
July 26 - Moncton
August 2 - Antigonish

Moncton Market is open from 7am to 2pm, and Antigonish Farmer's Market from 8am to noon. After August, the plan is that I will be rotating alternate weekends. I have teamed up with Mary from Fibrepalooza so that between us, we can commit to take a space at these markets on a regular basis. This makes it easier for the market managers to assign a permanent spot for us, while we get to go to different locations.

Pictou Weekend Market opens for the summer on 21 June and you can visit my booth there on Saturday and Sunday from 10am till 5pm.

An audio-visual presentation

I just love free stuff online. Don't you? Here is a neat little service that made it easy for me to create an audio-visual presentation of some of my work. Enjoy!



The service is called Animoto, and the music is Coquetry by McKenzie Stubbert.

The latest crop of dibbers

Many people believe that I spend hours working at the lathe, but the reality is that woodturning is more like gardening. Here is the latest crop of garden dibbers emerging from a bin full of wood shavings.


I'm just about to go and harvest this crop and treat them with linseed oil, then they will be ready to go to market.

May markets

This coming Saturday (May 17, 2008) I will be at Moncton Market again, and the weekend after is the opening of Antigonish Farmer's Market, so I hope to be there for that.

I'm not sure how the rest of the year is going to pan out. Ideally I would like to be at Antigonish every other weekend, then alternate between Moncton and Tatamagouche on the other weekends. This takes a fair bit of co-operation on the part of the market managers, and although they always do their best to accommodate my requests, I will have to wait and see how things work out.

I also hope to get the studio open at Seafoam this weekend. It's a bit of a mess at the moment, cluttered with product packed in boxes ready to go to the market, and boxes of part finished salad bowls. Still, I hope to find space for it all somewhere very soon, and can clean the gallery and put some work on the shelves.

See you soon I hope!

Tatamagouche Farmer's Market

Last weekend's gig in Moncton was a great success and I hope to be back there again soon. This coming weekend I am staying closer to home and going to Tatamagouche Farmer's Market on Saturday. It is open from 8am - 12pm at Creamery Square. See you there!

Moncton Market

This Saturday, 19 April 2008, I am setting up my booth at Moncton Market, my first ever show in New Brunswick. Parlez vous Englais, sil vous plait!

It seems to be a very busy place, and I look forward to making lots of new acquaintances there. The hours are 7:00 a.m. – 2:00 p.m. so it's going to be an early start for me, considering that it is a two hour drive. Please excuse me if I'm a bit bleary eyed if you drop by to see me.

The market is the L-shaped red-roofed building in the middle of this map.


View Larger Map

See you on Saturday!

Carving bowl rims

One of the most common questions I get asked about my kitchen-safe bowls is how I make the decoration around the rim. Many think I use a machine, and woodworkers sometimes think I use a chatter tool.

Neither are correct. I use a traditional woodcarving gouge, which when properly sharpened will cut nicely through hardwoods like maple and yellow birch. Normally I have the bowl mounted on the lathe with its outside surface facing me. But the three big bowls that I mentioned earlier today were only ever mounted the other way round, meaning that I had to work from behind the lathe. The easiest way I found to do this is to perch myself on top of the lathe. I felt somewhat like a gargoyle up there, but it gets the job done quite comfortably.

Bowling along

Cyndi left a comment on my last post asking for an update on progress with all those bowls that I am working on. I 'm pleased to say that I have been busy, too busy to blog apparently, and they have now all made it through step two of the process. They have now all had the outside of the bowl turned, sanded and the decoration carved around the rim. Here they are, stacked in boxes in my gallery, the only space I seem to have available at the moment:-

As you can see, there is quite a range of sizes here, from 4" to 17" diameters. So whether you want a bowl to snack on peanuts while you watch tv, or a salad bowl for a big dinner party, I expect to have something soon that will suit your needs.

You have probably noticed that the very small bowls and the two large bowls in the picture above have had their inner surface turned and sanded too, which is the third step in the process. I did all the small bowls one day when I had the lathe set up for another job (a fridge door handle shaped like a rolling pin!) and while the chuck had a small set of jaws installed, I decided to go ahead and turn all the bowls that would need that setup. You see, I like spending my time turning wood, not fiddling with machinery.

The three big bowls had to be dealt with slightly differently in that they were big enough for me to screw them to a faceplate, skipping step one, and doing steps two and three at the same time. Here is the last of the of the big bowls which is on the lathe at the moment, ready for final sanding and carving the rim decoration. It is a whopping 17" diameter and 5" deep, one of the biggest bowls I ever made.

Death row at Seafoam

This month I have been doing little else but turn bowls. I had accumulated over one hundred roughed out bowl blanks and they were beginning to swamp my storage space, so I thought it would be a good idea to take advantage of this quiet time of year to get them turned into finished bowls.

Unfortunately they didn't all make the grade. A couple had split while drying; possibly I had left them too thick, and they weren't able to warp as they dried, and the stress caused them to split apart. Another was an error on my part and the bottom of the bowl was too thin - so thin in fact that it was translucent. So these three bowls ended up on death row:

It is a shame that these bowls didn't make the grade, and I hate to destroy them, but when you consider the total number of bowls that I am working on, I don't consider it a bad loss rate. Some woodturners might salvage these bowls by filling the cracks with epoxy and decorative materials, but most of my customers are looking for practical bowls that can be washed in the sink and will last a lifetime, so I use robust materials and only permit minor defects in the wood.

That is the pile of bowls which I am working on. They have been roughed out and left to dry, and then go back on the lathe four times before they are finished. In the picture above they have all had the first step completed. I have turned a recess on the inside of each bowl's rim. This will allow me to grip the bowl securely in a chuck so that I can shape the outside of the bowl.

I am working on these bowls step by step, putting all of them through step one before moving on to step two. This makes for more efficient working, since each step requires a different set up of the chuck, and a lot of time can be wasted changing the jaws, so while I have it set for one job, that is all I will do, even if it does take a week or more to get through them.

Winding down at Antigonish

This coming Saturday, December 22, will be your last chance to come visit me at Antigonish Farmer's Market until it re-opens again next spring. Dress warm though, because even with the space heaters, it is still very cold in the barn. Last Saturday moisture was freezing in the roof space and falling as showers of tiny snow flakes. But even so everyone was very cheerful and busy buying produce and gifts. One lady turned up with a basket of kittens looking for new homes and it wasn't long before they were all adopted. Not a bad way to get rid of kittens, but it would have been better if the mother had been fixed before the accident happened.

I have to say that I have been very pleased with both the way the market is run, and the support shown to me by the people of Antigonish, and I thank you all very much. It is very encouraging, and I will be looking at ways to show my wares at other markets around the province next year. The new market that is planned for Halifax looks very exciting in terms of its "green" construction. I hope that one day I might be able to show my work there. Here is a short video presentation outlining its construction:

Fall Schedule

Last weekend I started taking a booth at Antigonish Farmer's Market, and so far it has been very successful. Here is a picture of my set-up this weekend. The market is open for only three hours on a Saturday morning, so I built some new displays which are fast to set up and easy to fit in the car.

I have two craft shows coming up.

October 13/14, Hogmanay, in New Glasgow at North Nova Education Centre, which is in support of their music program.

November 17/18, Festive Craft Market, Langille Athletic Centre, Bible Hill, Nova Scotia.

I will be back at Antigonish on 20 and 27 of October, 9am- noon. I hope to be able to join them in November and December, but they haven't decided on a venue and there may not be space. So stay tuned news on that.

At other times I am usually in the studio and welcome visitors, but it is best to contact me before travelling to arrange an appointment in case I am out.

New work

I have been working on the third set in my Triplets series for several months. They are made from a block of really interesting elm which has some nice figure and huge area of bark inclusion. They turned out really nicely in the end, but the twisted grain of the wood made it a real pain to work with. I had to spend a lot more time than I wanted with a knife cleaning up cuts, texturing some surfaces with carving gouges, and sanding. I called this set The Bothersome Brothers.

But they surprised me by selling within a week of going on the shelf. I hadn't even had a chance to take proper photos of them, but their proud new owner was patient enough to let me take this shot before they left for their new home.

I have also started making pendants:


These particular ones are turned from various burl woods. They are strung on a soft nylon cord which is adjustable in length. They are selling very well and I am exploring other design options and ways of stringing them. I have some clasps and other stringing materials on order and look forward to trying them out. I also ordered some findings to make matching ear rings.

Stay tuned. I hope to be able to offer these from the website very soon.

How important are handcrafted items in your life?

How important are handcrafted items in your life? This is the question that will be addressed on the Maritime Noon phone-in, tomorrow, Friday, July 13th.

In a world that's awash in mass-produced products, certain individuals still devote themselves to making things that are unique. Artisans around the Maritimes create everyday items like coffee mugs & breadboards, accessories like earrings & shawls, and fanciful objects that blend various media and defy description.

Maritime Noon is the lunch time radio show of CBC serving Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island. It can be listened to live from the links on the Maritime Noon homepage, and will be archived for one week from their Phone In page. The phone in starts after the one o'clock news (Atlantic Standard Time).

I will be listening. It will be interesting to learn what my potential customers have to say. If you can't get on the phone-in, why not leave a comment here and tell me what you think about handcrafted items, or what you think of the comments made by the phone-in participants.

update: (Due to special coverage of the Lord Black trial, this show was shortened to about 30 minutes and started at 1:30 or thereabouts)