The rag-jacket-making process starts with an awful lot of shopping for material, and the tailoring of hand-made black waistcoats. This takes a while.

Once the party convenes and stops drinking tea, the first step is to take the carefully-purchasing material and reduce it to rags.

Eddie demonstates the cutting process.

The cut strips after then pinned onto the waistcoats following a carefully designed sequence.

Susie instructs Eddie in this mystic art, while Jane and Diane do some more cutting-up.

Vera quality-checks Isobels pinning.

Then the happy workers in the machining department sew on the layer of pinned rags.

Pam telling Alison how much she enjoys her work.

Meanwhile, out in the garage, something stirs.

Jenny, Doug, MikeG and Joe are whittling, shaving and sanding the sticks that we coppiced a year ago.

Dave Y, DaveK and MikeG on the final strokes of sanding their sticks.

DaveK seems to enjoy this.

The end product of the stick-making.

I think we made about 40 sticks that day - nearly enough to last us a year.

The lubrication that keeps the wheels turning.

Chris with some of the tea consumed during the day.