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If you look carefully you can see my attempt at carving a head from ’memory’ - can’t believe I think people look like that!! Practice needed I think! Thanks for the comments though; very pleased with the flower. I started with a circle divided into ten equal sections and added a central circle...

Well I bought a selection of Ashley Iles and Ray Iles carving tools in the end and this is one of the first carvings I tried. Wasn’t really sure what i wanted to end up with! Started as a relief carving and ended up as a stand-alone sculpture I guess. I am really enjoying carving caricature...

Osmo Polyx should be applied as thinly as possible. Better to apply two or three coats than to try to get one nice thick one on first. Last year I sanded some oak to 320 grit and that was too fine for Osmo. I have to remove the wet and start again reducing the grit to 180. As far as I remember I...

Only one experience of buying from Banggood - a 45 degree router bit that wasn't.

I have two cheap digitals which I tested and are accurate. They do go through the batteries so I buy 20 LR44 from Amazon for a fiver which are good for a couple of years. I often find using the calipers easier than putting on my glasses to read a steel rule so they are always to hand when I am...

The devices I have are no longer available on Amazon but I did have a look and there are many listed there if you search there for ‘electronic pest deterrent’. Important to find one with random/variable frequency.

Paul Sellers or Rob Cosman both have great designs (Cosman’s is more involved with convex plane bed). I have my own simple design offering only 90 degree cuts and will be making Sellers’ 45 and 90 version. Enjoyable to make these things anyway!

We have dogs and they happily sit/sleep in one of the rooms with one of the electronic deterrent devices. I bought them on Amazon and will see if there is a current link. It has a random frequency which apparently is vital as otherwise they get used to it and ignore it.

We have a very old house with no way to have blocked mice from entering. So four or five years ago I bought three or four of those plug-in pest deterrent devices and set them around the house, with one in a cupboard which always gad droppings appearing. The nightly scratching in the attic...

Thank you everyone. Plenty of info and advice. Something to practice in lockdown!

The sun delivers more energy to Earth in an hour than we use in a year

Thank you guys. Definitely don’t want to go down the Dremel route. Great advice given.....good idea to start with lettering as plenty of fonts on my computer that I can enlarge and print out. I will take a look at Chris Pye thank you. Good advice to polish bevel etc to make for smoother progress.

Anyone please?

I want to try carving, having never tried it, as I can see how it may be another string to my bow in my woodworking. I want to carve patterns, letters, rope borders, etc. but not carving figures. I would like to start in a small way in terms of hand-tools, starting with the basic essentials and...

Thank you. Well explained. It does make sense.

Why do timber merchants refer to their joinery grade timber as ‘unsorted’? Surely if they have selected the best timber for joinery purposes then they have ‘sorted’ out the good stuff? Or am I missing something here?

Thanks for the comments guys. Nicer than an engineer friend who told me it had ‘firewood written all over it’! So I obliged him!

This was my trial piece

I inherited a lathe from my father. He was a Windsor chair maker for many years following his retirement from the RAF. It is a Turnstyler with a 55 inch bed. It has sat in my workshop along with all his turning tools for several years untouched save my regular maintenance to keep rust at bay...

No more Chinese tools for me. Recently made a router sled to cut mortared sides for small boxes using a 45 degree router cutter. Bought one from China which sadly wasn’t 45 degrees. Much fiddling to get the mortars to fit! I have a Knew Concepts saw which is brilliant and worth it for me. I cut...