Lapland inspirations

My stay in Lapland, building log cabins from 'kelo' pine logs was inspiring. 24 hour sun, nature struggling to survive and adapting, quiet, emptiness. Magnificent.

Not often you have to beware of reindeer on a building site!

Blazing hot day and a faceful of sawdust. Heaven! Below, Osmo holds court at lunch.

I love working with the Kelo pine, it's actually dead wood, dry and filled with pitch, easy to work except for cracks. The pine tree grows in a spiral. The beautiful silver-grey colour comes from the fact that the pine tree dies,but stays standing, maybe for 50 years or more. The bark falls off and the wood surface weathers. The tree does not rot because lapland is a dry climate with very short growing seasons. Also it is not a windy place, so the trees stand like old fingers scraping at the sky.

I tried to make some kelo furniture which would fit into a modern home, so I reversed the wood, making a nice clean pale finish on the outside, and kept the natural surface inside, and making a little window into nature just using a 'puukko', a traditional Finnish hand-made knife, carbon steel, deadly sharp.

Raw materials:

Of course I had to have a go at chainsaw sculpting. I finished these with a sanding wheel on an angle grinder. I was especially please with the wolf cub.

And the finished article, with features, grey preserving wax and a home in the garden.

Water features

Finnish slate and granite are wonderful for water features. Here are two I did for my family members. Not a lot of carpentry involved, but plenty of creativity. The whole structure is built on large blocks of carved expanded polystyrene. The stones are fixed with, well I won't tell all my secrets!

The first one was massive, several tonnes of slate and a 2m drop, so the next one was an excercise in miniature, a trickling stream rather than a mountain torrent.  I found the beautiful 'strutsin muna' (ostrich egg) on a beach. I had hunted for a nice round stone for days, and finally found a beauty. Thank you to the ice-age! I drilled it and fitted the pump underneath. The pump has two pipes, the other one to the head of the little stream.