Replies

1. 
   lat_axe | Nov 13, 2020 04:39am | #1

   Hello Josh.

   Your intended style and focus in wood working on Old Norse things suggests that you would be best served by acquiring the tools and associated skills of what's nowadays generally called green woodworking. This includes many older woodworking traditions that employ basic edge tools on green wood - wood recently cut down and not yet seasoned.

   In Britain there is a long and wide tradition of green woodworking known as coppice work. This employs the numerous smaller tree trunks that grow up from a tree stump of various species. A very wide range of wooden utensils, furniture and implements were made from coppice wood - and also from the tree trunk initially cut ("the maiden") to encourage the coppice growth.

   It's likely that a lot of the tools, techniques and even the products of coppice workers in Britain (at their height in the C19th) have been inherited and evolved from the tools and techniques of various waves of continental migrants into Britain from Europe, including Danes, Norse, Saxons and various others, all with variations in a possibly larger woodworking tradition prevalent across the Old World of the time.

   The Vikings are often thought of as naughty raiders doing only rape&pillage here and there. In fact, the Viking culture, in many variants, was complex, highly developed and contained a wide range of what we would now call technologies - traditions and skills for making many things, not just ships and armaments. Their wide travelling habit also meant that they imported all sorts of techniques from the wider world of their time.

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   So, I would look at getting or making, first, some work-holding tools - a shave-horse, a brake, saw horses and a basic bench (very basic). Edge tools would include a froe (for riving tree trunks and the chunks resulting) with a beetle (heavy wooden maul) to hit it with; a carving axe; a drawknife or three (of various edge profiles and sizes) as well as spokeshaves; some knives to carve (look at the sloyd knives of Sweden, perhaps); some adz (large for surfacing, small gutter adz for shaping bowls, seats and other curved surfaces); a brace&bit drill and some augers; a frame saw or two; some wooden planes (you can make your own surprisingly easily, as I've just discovered by making three & a spokeshave).

   I once spent a lengthy period learning green woodworking techniques and tools within the woods of South Cumbria in England, with a bit of ladderback chair making in Herefordshire. It's very pleasurable. Such woodworking is relatively rare, these days; but a hundred years and more ago it was the source of a vast range of goods now made of plastic.

   If you're interested, I have many photographs of those periods of green woodworking, including tool use and the things made .....

   Lataxe

1. 
   Jglaude41 | Nov 13, 2020 05:53am | #2

   Thank you a lot for the info. Yes. The Viking, or old Norse as I like to call them because they were not all what we think of as Vikings, were raiders and pillagers. They had many trades. Anyway, I'll look into the things you mention. I have a great antique and flea mall nearby that has a lot of these tools for relatively cheap. They need sooner cleaning and sharpening, but the planes and spoke shaves look to be in relatively good condition.