It has been a long absence from blogging. To explain would take a box of tissues and a patient listener. …suffice to say, I lost my workshop, but am now close to finding it again. A workbench on castors suffers from lack of mobility when small diameter wheels bump into chunks of stuff on the…
Whose work is it? Each project with my friends is really a joint effort. An amount of work belongs to my batch production and an amount to my friends. The components of this project were complex. Sides of the tray were all cut individually on the bandsaw. Each handle involved angles that needed to be…
Work with my disabled friends depends heavily on efficient batch production. For reasons not worth recounting my workshop is out of action for about a year. So, work with my friends has stalled, horribly! To maintain our hands together relationship I need to invent stuff that requires very little wood machining. Here are two pieces…
A workbench is a personal statement. In a concrete way it expresses needs, resources and interests of the person who made it. Many boasts are to be found that an author/woodworker has intelligently created superior responses to the needs of a workshop. Here is another entry into that crowded arena. However, what follows makes no…
All we did was sand it and paint it. Then added a few stickers. This single block of wood gave my mates two whole sessions of relaxed fun. Pictures tell enough of the story here. Simplicity can sometimes be a good option. Every project is different. Every project has discoveries. The discovery here is that…
Stable Work Surface Jobs in wood offer incredible variety. My brief, on this occasion, was to make a strong and serviceable workbench. It was to be big enough and stable enough for multiple workers to use hand planes. It wasn’t to cost too much for it would be disposed of after three days of use….
There is a quiet room where the more stressed of my friends find gentleness. Fixed to the wall is a plywood panel that enables us to stick stuff where ever we feel. The stuff is really a collection of toys that have something sensory about them. It may be a movement or a gentle noise….
I Broke a Promise… …but I also made a discovery. When I began doing wood projects among my disabled friends I made some promises to myself. The promises were a personal, but unwritten, statement of policy. I promise to: do work that is engaging because the thing we make is interesting, never to do all…
Indulging Self and Grand Daughter Every act of making has some self indulgence in it. Here is a response to the gift of scraps of 30mm plywood. The sheet edge is a bold linear graphic. Making my grand daughter’s initials to decorate her book ends indulged my desire to play with mitres in the lines…
Lately, many projects have been created as presents; the latest note pad was a gift to the boss of the house we work in. It is simply time to make something self indulgent. So, here is our toy aeroplane.Some of my friends will not be able to make sense of what we are making. Others…