Working with wood

Woodwork has been a life long (so far any way) hobby for me. It all started when as a small lad I watched my grandad working with wood in his garage/workshop.

Along with other machinery grandad had an Emco Star woodworking centre. That machine fascinated me, with it's inbuilt Circular saw, lathe, Band saw, Belt & Disk sanders. It also had a planer thicknesser-attachment. He certainly made some amazing things with his Emco.

After he passed away all of his tools and the Emco moved to my dad's shed where they sat rusting for several years. Then one day (aged about 7) I decided to try wood turning. That was my first tough woodworking lesson "use a rest when woodturning ! " else the chisel will try to break your fingers and go wizzing past your head. Anyway I survived that and have so far made it into my 40's.

In fact that has been the theme for all of my accumulated woodworking experience, teach yourself and learn by error. When I was a child we took woodworking as a class at school, but sadly 30 unruly kids to a class meant I learned very little there.

In my early 20's I moved to Australia and on the various properties we had there I always had a shed. Some of them were I suppose in hindsight quiet big. I have always made pretty much all of our household furniure, with in my opinion varying degrees of success, but i'm told it's all been very useful. I have also sold a few items.

I'm now back in the UK for at least a few years and things are proving a bit more limited space wise, but woodwork is in my blood or is that my blood is on the woodwork...........

Please enjoy these pages, any suggestions for amendments or additions will be welcome.