In June, I submitted a design to be carved as a waymarker post as part of the The Wharf Stream Way, a new footpath into the fields east of Eynsham, Oxfordshire. I had already designed the interpretation panel for the walk so I thought I’d take some of the motifs from that and compose a carvable design to fit on an oak post.
To my astonishment the design was accepted by West Oxfordshire District Council. Today I went to meet Rodas Irving, woodworker and carver of Oxford Oak to transpose my design onto the post before he carves it.
The giant timber post is of locally grown oak from a tree which once grew on the Eynsham Hall estate. It measures 8 inches by 5 inches and is I don’t know how many metres long!
Rodas loved my design – big, bold shapes curving and sweeping around the post. The blue section you can see represents the flow of the Wharf Stream and will be carved in a different texture to the incised and sunken shapes shown on my design in grey.
The next job was to transpose the design on to the post, which we did using carbon paper. Once an essential item in every office, carbon paper is rarely used these days, but for this purpose was absolutely perfect, making light work of the design.
Rodas examined my transposition efforts for accuracies and made sure that the bits he’s going to cut away are the bits I want cutting away. There’s no going back once he’s applied the chisel.
He carved this small rough example to show me what the finished article will look like. It’ll be ready in a few weeks.
Update: The post is now in place near the Talbot Inn, Eynsham.
