It's been a long day and we've not long got back and settled down. I've spent a good while now aimlessly stirring my tea and gazing in to the pot looking for answers. You see, today's been one of those days when you smash one of your favourite planes. I was just getting ready to start the next … [Read more...]

This week I'm on web design duty as we've decided to make a few changes to the overall layout of the blog. I wanted to let you know as a warning because if you see any strange goings on on screen it will just be because I've played about with something and it isn't quite behaving. Change can have … [Read more...]

Having a keen interest can often come with an ambition to turn it to a livelihood and take it professional. After all what better way to spend your days than doing what you love and being paid for it. I'm not just talking about woodwork here, it could be cooking, painting or maybe a sport. And I'm … [Read more...]

The next job in the clean up process was to address timber storage. Timber for me has to be divided in to different groups by it's its use and for some time it's all become merged in to mixed piles. To make it quicker and easier to access the required parts I've decided to divide it up and separate … [Read more...]

Just a quick follow up to Helen's post this morning. The power of branding today seems to be pretty immense and I think it's fair to say that we judge the value of the product by its brand rather than its true qualities. For me it's a sad truth but its certainly isn't going anywhere. The obvious … [Read more...]

It was a beautiful day on Saturday (read as " Richard and I were dripping with sweat"... typical Brits, never happy with the weather!) when we popped down to the open day at Peter Sefton's Furniture School. As I mentioned on Friday there was a large chance that Richard would get on with too much … [Read more...]

We've been busy this afternoon getting packed up and ready for a long trek out in the morning. Richard has gathered together just a 'few' tools and plenty of timber in preparation for spending tomorrow out at the open day at Peter Sefton's Furniture School. The plan is to demonstrate building a … [Read more...]

As planned we made a start last week at getting on top of the workshop clutter. If you've seen Part One of this saga then you'll be aware we had a pretty big task ahead of us and we've decided to attempt it in bite-sized stages; a little each week. We can only hope that we can get on top of the mess … [Read more...]

I don't know about you but I've always found that if I have anything more than an ample space to work then the extra will just get filled up and cluttered - or as my Dad always puts it 'the bigger the van, the more crap you carry'. When we moved to this workshop a couple of years ago our space … [Read more...]

I've always found that Helen and I make a good team and I'm certainly very lucky to have her many skills at my disposal. She's the sort of person who can put her hand to pretty much anything she needs to learn but her specific training was in design and technical drawing. She's worked on many great … [Read more...]