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I left school in 77 & trained as a boatbuilder, built a few wooden boats & restored a lot more! Lots of people look at the trade as some kind of ideal fantasy vocation i know i did to some extent! The reality is it can be a seasonal trade that is notoriously poorly paid, you cant eat karma & it...

I love the smell of pine tar, otherwise known as Stockholm tar, to me it is far nicer than Creosote & its safer too. I use it on boats occasionally. With creosote you just got to leave it until it stops stinking, some weeks.

Paul King has a small workshop at Crag Foot near Carnforth, seriously knowledgable bloke.

On the bright side i just purchased a 30kg pack of West System epoxy for an ongoing boat project, local supplier wanted £479 plus vat, East Coast fibreglass price £391 plus vat. Big saving! To be honest though GRP prices are changeable they havent gone mad like timber & metals, Just yet!

A few years ago i met a furniture restorer / cabinetmaker in Lancashire, Paul King, this guy does a lot of old furniture from rebuilds & restorations to occasional new stuff. Seeing how he made invisible repairs was fascinating, He had a big stock of old wood & veneer sourced from old furniture...

Backwoods Dentist?

"Premium" hand tools? I never bought any, I have an eclectic range of chisels & planes sourced over a lifetime of boatbuilding & woodworking, chisels by more than a dozen long gone makers, planes by stanley, record & others. Many are as good or better than any so called premium tools of today...

Luan & Meranti will vary hugely in hardness & colour depending on where it grows, I have two old 18ft boards of 14"x 2" Dark red meranti that are hugely heavy & as hard as Oak. The softer stuff can resemble pink balsa wood & often has many thundershakes in it.

It is Luan loosely known as Philipine mahogany, soft pink stuff used for window frames etc. True mahogany it is not. The mouldings look to be a type of oak.

Grinding sparks can go a long way, I saw a bloke in a boatyard ignite a container of acetone fortunately not large & easily put out with a burp from a Co2 extinguisher. Grinding sparks will also ruin glass & plastic windows as they melt into the surface leaving a rusty pit for ever more. Sparks...

Watch the lawn isnt dry, you might set fire to it!

I had a similar wolf drill years ago, proper wrist breaker, I used to use it for drilling keelbolt holes on boats. Extremely well made. however 50 or 60 years on from the production line there is a potential problem with all of them. Metal case & dodgy wiring, Anyone who owns one of these would...

I was a boatbuilder from the late 70's onwards, I regard the angle grinder as one of the most dangerous tools to use. In 81 a guy in the yard i worked at was cutting a scupper in the side of a ferro cement boat, Disc burst & a large segment went between his ribs & punctured his lung. He...

My dad had a Hale bros paring chisel, It was his favorite & is now much shorter than i remember it as a child. It is now one of my favorites & easily the equal of a Mathesion. Enjoy!

I sold a Union graduate on here a couple of years back, iirc correctly it finally went for £850 after starting at £1200. That lathe went with a host of faceplates, chuck with 4 sets of jaws & more tooling & a large box of chisels. They are a quite big machine, lot of them about & more being...

You tell this to the young people of today & they wont believe you.

I often use recycled timber, nearly always free & makes me feel good! I cleared my late mums house 18 months ago & there was a mix of furniture. Some went to charity (St Johns Hospice Lancaster) & they came round with a large van, they would only take what would sell & large brown stuff was...

I recently sold my mums bungalow in Lancashire with .56 of an acre of land, (Came under Lancaster City Council), due to restrictive covenants there was no development allowed on the big paddock at the end of the garden, mores the pity! It is worth looking at the planning portal & planning...

My Dad used to use it on his boat on the rubbing bands & toe rails, (bits round the edge of the deck!) He was a skilled boatbuilder & very good at varnishing. He was extremely particular about keeping his yacht looking good. He started using Deks Olje back in the mid 70's, It is very thin & goes...

I have spent my career sticking things together (mostly boats) & have used a lot of glue. My dad swore by Aerolite & i still use it occasionally for spar work. I have used resorcinol but its critical & finicky hardener ratios are a pain. Mostly i use West epoxy today for boat work & the ability...