Landscape
The wood speaks for itself!

The wood speaks for itself!
Simple Machines Blogging takes time and my recent past has involved a sick wife and a new grandchild. Suburban life is rich with texture. It can make blogging take a back seat. Following is a report of a nice afternoon in my shed with my son! My disabled friends haven’t been ignored, the next blog…
The act of making is its own end! My friends may comprehend nothing of the object they have created, but are always richer for having been engaged in the act of making it. With little prior experience of working in disability services, I had no means of judging the progress of a lesson. More experienced people than…
Weddings generate lots of emotional investment. Minute details become important. To make something for a wedding is to buy shares in loaded scrutiny. Here is my response to a request for a box to take cards at a wedding. The brief was relatively open; it sought a white container with a slot for posting cards in its…
My friends wouldn’t stop playing with this toy. For me, that is enough evidence to call the project a success. Most of the workers in my group do not interact easily with other people, so their play didn’t consist of shooting each other. They found enormous satisfaction in the challenge of loading a ball and launching it…
Good Ideas Don’t Need to be Complicated Serving Tray For an object to complete the journey from initial musings to touchable reality requires a certain fidelity, on my part, to the original idea. Discouragements take the form of excessively complex prototypes. It is difficult to let simplicity rule. The journey of the serving tray couldn’t be shorter….
Footstools It is a permanent source of inspiration to me that problems posed to woodworkers have no single correct response. If asked to make a footstool, what would a valid response look like? If a footstool is a small flat platform supported 100 to 300mm above the floor, how many ways could I make it?…