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I usually buy mine from either of these two companies which are close to my workshop in Essex (links below). Neither of them are manufactures I think they would probably describe themselves as importers. However, the thicknesses you mention aren’t really recognisable to me. I buy furniture...

I made some ramps in the 1990s for a skateboard company that sold skateboard gear and also rented out the ramps by the hour behind their shop. One ramp was outdoor (2.5m ish high halfpipe) and a smaller indoor one (about 1200mm high and sort of w shaped). I used 2 layers of 9mm marine ply and...

That is great. And it has a mad scientist look about it. Don’t let it get up to 88mph ffs; you’ll rip the space time continuum.

These are absolutely terrific mate. Love them. I think you should be charging the market price for your work. After all, you obviously qualify for this in terms of quality. Furthermore, you don’t want to contribute to devaluing woodworking in general as there are so many of us in this sector...

I am interested if your extraction system made your workshop smell like pears. Pears smell nice. The first cyclone unit I made used a plastic barrel that had held pickled onions. When the extractor was running it used to pong. You could even smell it faintly months later.

This was the first wooden thing I ever made for myself. It was in 1987 a few months into my apprenticeship. I was really keen to make one for myself as the guy who I was apprenticed to had just had me make one for the workshop and I now considered myself a mallet specialist. I found a lump of...

Haven’t seen anything like that before. Love those tables. You must have been constantly sharpening your gear using all that Ipe.

Hi, Came down to the joinery today (Good Friday) as it is in bad need of tidying. In the spirit of avoiding that and more general procrastination I dragged these two items out. I bought both of these on ebay since covid. At the time work was absolutely crazy with all the home offices which were...

I was in the Okavango Delta in Botswana in 1996 and got a leech on me in a tender place that I couldn’t actually see. I had to ask this girl who I only sort of knew for help. So humbling and embarrassing. Anyway, we got married roughly a year later in New Zealand. Our 21 year old son is arriving...

Sorry if I didn’t make myself very clear. I was using the word fortune from a customer’s point of view; “if a customer bought that into my workshop”. I have been in my workshop for 12 years and have only done a handful of similar repair jobs like this where an object was in this sort of state...

I made the birchply bookcase I mentioned above today. Not a very big piece; just one sheet of 18 for the shelves and a sheet of 12 for the back. Called in to the customer’s house at lunchtime to arrange an installation time and because I got a bit paranoid during the morning that the bookcase...

If a customer bought that in to my workshop I would say it can’t be done. Not without costing a fortune; even then I don’t see how you could guarantee getting it flat again for a start. It would be easier and cheaper to make another one from scratch. Maybe if the inlays were stuck in with hide...

When I showed it to the customer who I made the wardrobes for they seemed so uninterested. But the guys at the sawmill had a good laugh. But they didn’t take me seriously when I joked that my next order should be discounted by the cost of one tracksaw blade.

Its nice to know I’m not the only one weird things happen to. Pleased I didn’t find mine while thicknessing.

Pretty sure he means the fire hazard aspect. I did an insurance job in my village in 2013 in the newsagent that was chalked up to rats gnawing cable.

Yea. I think it must have been fired as there is no casing and how else could it get in there but as Beechwood is hard I thought it should be deformed somehow. The timber was completed encased around it; I mean there wasn’t something like a pathway leading to it that I could see. I didn’t...

Bedroom chimney brest joinery. Beech with ply panels wallpapered with a William Morris print. This was actually my first ever go at wallpapering. Took me a while to know what I was doing with the wallpaper; think I’ll stick to joinery. You can read the brief story of how I ruined a sawblade on...

Recently I made some beech joinery for a bedroom; wardrobes and drawers either side of a chimney. As I was trimming the stiles down on one of the larger doors with a tracksaw I could feel that I had hit something. I had previously noticed a very faint greenish discolouration on the endgrain of...

Splinters = occupational hazard. Not to worried about these as your hands seem to be able to do a magical thing where a really deep splinter that isn’t infected just works its way to the surface over the course of several weeks until you can get at it with the stanley knife or chisel. I get a...

Its all just practice mate. You are obviously on the right track. Back in the 80s when I started out my boss used to hate me marking dovetails with a pencil and a gauge and not a knife and gauge like he did. He eventually had to concede that it worked for me. So just stick with the pencil if it...