This months meeting we welcomed Simon Temblett as our guest speaker, for those that could not make it you missed an interesting talk.
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Simon gave a talk in two parts, the first part was a demonstration of his technique of preserving deadwood on trees I took notes and images of this method and its with his permission I have added them to our website.
Simon used a superb juniper tanuki to show how he prepares the deadwood useing his method.
To start with the deadwood is prepared in the normal way by useing lime sulphur to achieve a bright white finish and allowed to dry.
After the wood has been lime sulphured he adds coal soot ( few tablespoons ) to water, this coal soot is important as he believes it has ingredients that give wood a more natural appearnace.
This solution is then painted on to the deadwood, advise wearing gloves.
Once the deadwood had been painted with the soot solution and was well and truly black Simon made up a pad of cotton material tightly folded many times and wired to the end of a brush.
He then poured a small amount of lime sulphur into a container it is important to separate the lime sulphur you use away from the stock bottle because if you continue to dip brushes/pads in your stock solution it will contaminate the whole amount and it becomes useless.
Useing this pad he dips it into the lime sulphur making sure it is not dripping wet and then wipes the pad over the deadwood.
This action removes the soot solution on the raised areas of deadwood leaving a darker deposit in the crevasses and a greyer finish overall and a more natural effect of aged wood.
The images do not do justice to the appearance but were were all impressed on how the wood looked and are now trying to obtain soot, bit difficult as none of the club members have open fires or know anyone who burns coal now.
The second part was with members trees brought in for Simon to offer his ideas on styling and development.
Many thanks to Simon for an entertaining evening and his ideas on members trees.