Titan in the midst

160 bpm of steel, steam and canvas. The womp of rushing flame sucked through sooted iron.  Rows of swaged teeth tearing lignin at 110km/h. Hissing and rocking and whirring. The immutable rhythm of some industrially domesticated dragon, bent with fervour and might in to work that she meets with such. determined. power. She – yes, she – ‘ol'Steamy'. Maybe transcended to the ranks of the phoenix, or just lumps of expensive metal riveted together. Either way, she perches now, back and home with us, in her Engine House. She of Tinkers Bubble. The beating heart.

The urge to personify is hard to deny when you work closely with her. The relationality is defined by the subject. When we have need for her might, to coax her from torpor she requires a conducive environment (provided by us) – sufficient water and food, and a good amount of heat, not to mention a fair understanding of all the twiddle bits, and when to twiddle them.

Being her guardian suits the intrepid of us, for the assignations happens in the pre-dawn. Like lovers, we cast fire in the still, liminal hours before light. It alights in the waiting belly, a flicker and movement of nascent life. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, a susurration begins, but one of steam rising as she warm and stretches. No clanks or groans, but power starts emanating as her body warms and heats. Like a team of oxen on a winter morning gently chewing hay as their steamed breath rises to meet the first bird calls. From this frigid balk emerges a living body. You feel her warmth as you walk to and fro, feeding, cleaning, oiling, preparing her. The warmth turns to heat and the whisperings turn to hissing as she moves towards 10x atmospheric pressure. At some point around 8.30, like Helios’ stallions bent to the morning sky, she takes over the milling barn, devolving your role from guardian to subservient. A high pitched scream from the pressure valve heralds her clamouring need to thrust power in to work and you scramble to ready the last bits before letting her rip. Within seconds of throwing the throttle, 600kg of metal is flying round at what-ever mad speed, amidst a convulsing maelstrom of steam. She throws her whole weight in to her yoke and with the power of the demi-god, she gives life to her counterpart – the Sawmill. As the mill whips up and settles in to its happy place, Steamy settles in to her rhythm too, with soft nutations of her comely derriere she calls for water and wood. Oil me feed me, oil me feed me...

Now begins a day in the life of a thrush with a cuckoo chick in its nest, you are bidden by an unquestioned need and your vociferous charge to keep this being alive and well. You are constantly balance her vitals as work demand, pressure, temperature, water levels and fire-size all interrelate in a subtly technical equation to keep her balance between her raging banshee, and sinking in to exhausted lethargy.

Maybe I’m taking this too far, but the point I’m trying to make is that despite the sensory bombardment, it is necessarily a visceral experience being Steamy’s colleague. You are constantly listening to the layers of sound to discern the slightest changes. Because the tempos of the mechanisms are in the human range of rhythm you are able to tune in and know and respond, whilst clambering all over her to check the oilers and the nuts and the gaskets and all manor of vital elements. She gets in your ears and up your nose and in between your fingers and secretes oil all over you. And like fresh ducklings, she imprints her mysterious smoky ways on us.

The plume of smoke in the chill dawn heralds in this new era for Tinkers Bubble. Four years of silence in the mill barn. Now shuddering awake the drowsy machinations of light industry, and we are so deeply relieved and thrilled to once again be joining up the complex dots of woodland management, ecology and livelihood here. The mill is a lynch pin for so many activities and so much potential. It offers such an amazing opportunity for us to earn an integrated living from the land, provide resources for our own needs and support our broader community with ecologically sound timber and products.

We are in the process of re-learning and re-establishing the business, ironing out creases and making sense of the flow from identifying trees to fell, though to timber or products leaving the yard in customer’s hands. Much of the investment currently includes a lot of fine tuning of the work space and the machinery, to increase efficiency, organisation, accuracy, safety and accessibility.

That said, it is crucial that the business can function financially independently again. We have spent around £32k to get Steamy back, and have needed to borrow money to make that feasible. We are regaining a flow of orders and are really pleased at our progress, and we are very welcoming of further orders and commissions.

The areas we are currently providing for include:

Construction - timber for all manor of structural building work, beams, stud walling, cladding, boarding and framing, all provided in Douglas Fir.

Boards - we are building up stock of interesting and beautiful timber for furniture making and crafts. Apple wood, hornbeam, sycamore, hawthorn and elm for example.

Furniture - we are ready to produce agricultural and domestic furniture: gates of all kinds, benches, picnic benches, trestles etc.

Structures – we can provide small structures like sheds, compost toilets and pergolas.

Over the next couple of years we will be re-establishing our planer-thicknesser and constructing a solar-kiln. This will allow us to provide dimensioned, planed, products at stable moisture levels as well as a broader range of furniture. We will also be rebuilding our timber drying barn and racking to provide more storage for stock products! Lots going on…

For more information and orders contact Richard on 07594 506084 via WhatsApp or phone. Or email us at tinkersbubble@riseup.net