Coppicewood College Courses
There are two types of course offered by Coppicewood College.
Woodland Skills 6 month course starting October 2010
see students comments below.
places available!
New Scytheing course just added.
Applications welcome now for 4 day and 1 day courses, October to March 2010.
We will be open for prospective Students and Volunteers every Wednesday throughout the Winter see details on home page, or simply email us on bslark@aol.ocm for more information.
Please contact us if you'd like some more information on any of our courses.
Students diary soon to become a blog:
Woodland Skills Course
Month 1 Week 1 The very first day of the course began with a bit of health and safety in the woodland(don't stick a bill hook in your eye) and also being shown the proper way to sharpen and maintain our tools. The tools we will use most are bill hooks, slashers and bow saws I think. So with these tools the first few days were spent going over last years plot that was coppiced and sorting and moving suitable wood for charcoal, firewood, craft or any other use the wood may have. The main point being that every thing that the wood has grown will be used for something, even the shavings are useful as fire lighting material. It was a really insightful thing to do in preparation for cutting our own plot as it showed us the advantages post coppicing of having neat, small, sorted piles of wood instead of larger, messier piles.
Week 2 Charcoal! Before I came to coppicewood, I had never thought about where charcoal came from and how it's made. It is a great way of using up smaller diameter bits of wood that have no other use, not even as firewood.
charcoal originally was used for metalworking, giving a hot smokeless flame heating up the metal to be worked, but now most of the charcoal in the UK is used for recreation. Why all of the charcoal in the UK is not UK sourced is beyond me but it all very easily could be allowing people to earn an income and saving the rainforests at the same time. We also made our first craft pieces! We made a couple of things called "beetle" and "wedges" which will probably mean nothing to you at the moment but it will soon. The beetle is basically a mallet type device for beating just about all you'll ever need to beat, hence the name; beat-all.. beetle you can! and the wedges are pieces of wood(a fruit wood such as hawthorn) that help you split open a large trunk. Photos will follow shortly!
Week 3 The next week we moved onto the new plot we were to coppice this season. Coppicing is, as i understand it, the process of cutting a broadleaved tree as far down to the ground so that multiple new shoots can grow from the old stem. These new shoots or poles will grow straighter as a result of competition from surrounding shoots and therefore be more useful than previously many branched twisted tree growth, particularly to a skilled green woodworker who can work the wood to give it added value on site. The plot we started on is your typical over grown under managed woodland that exists which has not been coppiced or managed for decades. As a coppice student this is a plus as it means we learn how to create a coppiced woodland from scratch so to speak.
Week 4 Back onto the plot for week 4! Bill hooks come in an amazing different array of sizes, shapes and weights, depending on the job and personal preference. It's a tool whos specific purpose is for coppicing and it takes time before you learn to use it amazingly accurately like nick! It is very satisfying to slice through with the grain branches that are pretty chunky. 
We also as a team made a saw horse this week!
Week 5 Coppicing week! This week we were joined by 2 additional students on the 4 day coppicing course! I learnt a great deal of tree id this week and really feel good when im walking about and can identify the majority of the trees I see! (while they've still got a few leaves on!). We also did bits on tree biology which were interesting and a nice contrast to doing practical work which we also did some of with the new coppicewood invention the 'A-frame' making life easier for sawing up larger logs.
You can book next years 6 month course now.
Congratulations to Alice in being accepted on a work placement with the Sheffield Wildlife Trust as a Trainee Ranger. Alice has told us that the fact she had taken our 6 month woodland skills course played a major part in the criteria for her succesfull application. We wish Alice evcery success in her placement and her future woodland career.
What do our students think !
First term: A perspective from Alice, who was one our first students to complete the 6 month course for season 06/07.
"I have found it deeply satisfying and rewarding to be able to work with hand tools and learn the traditional methods of coppicing and green woodwork, skills that have been handed down through generations and are quickly disappearing. Whenever I tell people I am doing a coppicing course, the usual reaction is… “What is that?” to me this shows the general lack of public knowledge on coppicing and is an even greater reason to do coppicing and educate people about its benefits.
This term I have been getting to grips with using a wide range of hand tools. I thought I could use an axe before I came on the course… I couldn’t! I have been using bill hooks, bow saws, axes and 5ft singing saws (!) to manage an acre coppice plot with other people on the course and volunteers. I have learnt how to process the wood, snedding and sorting into piles for faggot making and potential craft items. I have progressed greatly during the term in my competence to use tools, to care for them and to make and asses decisions on woodland management. By the end of this term, myself and Martin (a fellow student) felled a large tree using axes, a task I wouldn’t have thought I’d be capable of at the beginning of the course.
Along with learning how to manage the woodlands, I have been learning some green woodworking skills. I have learned basic techniques to process wood such as cleaving, splitting, using a shave horse and making joints. This next term I will be putting these skills to use to complete a personal craft project.
I have also been on a couple of field trips to visit local areas that also coppice. It’s been really insightful to see how other areas are managed and for what reasons, whether it be for biodiversity, for firewood or for crafts."