Wooden handicrafts around the world

The popularity of wooden handicrafts is growing in the world from year to year, which is especially noticeable during the holiday season. Increasingly, we meet creative and courageous people who express their ideas in their own work. We admire their development and support them.

The first stage is the preparation of the material. It is interesting that the harvesting of birch bark, unlike the harvesting of wood, allows you to save the resource - with the correct removal of the upper layer of the bark, after a while it grows again. You can make blanks at other times, but more effort will be required, and the result will not necessarily satisfy the manufacturer. Birch bark is removed in strips or layers. To obtain a tape, a vertical incision is made on the trunk at the maximum achievable height, then, moving in a spiral, the tape is cut to the very bottom. If layers are needed, an incision is made for the entire width of the future layer, its length will be the circumference of the trunk. Sometimes you can get the so-called skoloten - that is, a solid cylinder of birch bark. This is possible only when harvesting from felled trees. The removal technique is shown here. In both cases, a healthy, even tree is chosen with a minimum number of knots (preferably without them at all), and without cracks. After removing the birch bark, it must be prepared for storage - and properly stored. Masters recommend immediately, on the spot, peel off the white top layer on the trunk of a nearby tree, and only then fold the layers or twist the tape into balls. If this is not done immediately, you can clean the layer with a stiff brush and / or knife immediately before work. On fresh material, you can simply pick up this layer and remove it, as shown in the video. How to store birch bark is shown here. Of course, these are not all possible options - each master chooses the storage method that is convenient for him. The main conditions are coolness, lack of bright light and dampness, good ventilation. However, dried birch bark can be soaked and used as fresh. Often the material is treated with oil (especially tapes) so that they do not dry out. To do this, with a soft cloth moistened with oil, simultaneously wipe the tape on both sides. Before work, the fragile top layers are peeled off directly from the birch bark or stratified until the desired thickness is obtained. For weaving, it is also necessary to cut the material into ribbons - the so-called stripes. One of the preparation and cutting options is shown in the video. You can also cut the material with a knife or scissors. For tuesks, skolotni or layers are better suited. An example of connecting a layer of birch bark into a cylinder for a tueska The sequence of making a tuesa from a skolotn Interestingly, for some types of products - for example, typesetting knife handles - the birch bark is dried after cooking. The process is described in detail here. The result of pressing "boiled" birch bark, blank for the knife handle Unfortunately, it is impossible to describe all the nuances of working with birch bark in one article - and probably not necessary. Below are links to interesting resources and photographs of original work.