How did you first get into wood work?

[joiner_sim]

:?: How did you first get into woodwork, and whats been the highlight of it all so far? :arrow:


I started getting into woodwork before I left school, my mates dad was a carpenter and he had a small workshop at the back of his garden, full of timber tools and half made stuff. I never acually saw anything finished though! :lol:
The highlight of woodworking for me so far, has probably been only recently actually. There's a few to name but I've really suprised myself at handcut dovetailing, and feel that it's made me more positive in using my hand tools. >I'm just happy to be making furniture it's more skilled and hands-on!

 

[Chems]

I sort of liked it in school, but you never got to do anything engaging. So I picked it up again when I was 20 via necessity to make a desk. The discovery of cheap power tools was a downward slope.

My highlight was making the chestnut TV table as I still can't get my mind around the fact it was my second project, and I turned rough bits of sawn tree into a bit of furniture.

 

[CroppyBoy1798]

Hmm, this one has me thinking.

I guess you could trace it back to my early years if you wanted to go back that far . I was always interested in playing with stuff and seeing how things worked and went together. Lego was the first love, then I moved onto pulling electrical things assunder and putting battery power motors and little lights into my lego pieces :lol:

I moved onto model making then, like most teenagers (of a number of years back) I got into them when I was 12 or 13, but unlike most teenagers I stuck with them for years and acquired a skill at making them, patience, attention to detail and pride in the finished article.

I'd always been a sort of 'hands on' kid anyway. Helping out with tasks around the garden or in the home and watching what carpenters or plumbers etc were at while they were doing work in my house 8) .

Once secondary school came along then I was introduced to woodworking as a subject and I guess it naturally took off from there. Instead of buying kits and making things in minature I was learning to use my own imagination and use my two hands to create objects that were practical and stylish, something 'I made'.

Highlight so far, hmm, I suppose it'd have to be having something that I could almost call a decent workshop, and thats only come about in the past few months (at the cost of a lot of money ) but it gives me immense pride, after all the years of woodworking, working in a damn dark shed with no power and working with hardly any tools to being almost able to do anything.

 

[Night Train]

I have always been into making things.

When I was about 5 my dad would take me on to building sites when he was working on restaurant contracts and leave me in the wood shavings to be looked after by the 'chippies. They would then entertain the boss's little lad by showing me how to make toy cars from the bits of wood off cuts on the floor including cutting wheels for me with a hole saw. Have been making stuff out of wood on and off ever since. That would make it about 37 years of sawdust under my finger nails.

My highlight was walking out of a senior management level council desk job one day and 'going back on tools'. The best thing I ever did. I eventually fond a furniture course at Burnley college and enrolled. I now teach the subject.

I even got into the papers again at the end of last year.

 

[wizer]

Took a night class, joined this forum. No cure has been found. Try as they may, they just can't get rid of me :lol:

 

[white_sw]

Was school for me. There were only 3 things I was any good at while at school. Rugby, Woodwork and Computing.
Well, computing is my profession and rugby was my weekend sport. I'm only just getting back into woodwork again
now some 15 years later. I moved house a couple of years ago and now have the space. A double garage, which I
am still converting into a workshop. Always lived in flats before that.

Sam

 

[woodbloke]

I had a Standard 10 motor (first car)...anyone remember them? I wanted to fit an elliptical radio speaker in the glove shelf area (no such thing then as glove box...very posh) and I got hold of a bit of old ply and bought a coping saw from the local hardware shop. That's how it all started for me and I've been at it ever since - Rob

 

[BradNaylor]

Woodwork A level followed by a B Ed specialising in Design & Tech. I then abandoned hands-on woodworking in a bid to make my fortune in a succession of businesses centred round the furniture trade.

In 2001 I was running a big pine furniture emporium (remember pine furniture?) and discovered Norm on the telly. I set up a workshop in my warehouse to make one-off pieces and within a year was employing 6 blokes knocking out everything you can think of.

As the market for pine fell off a cliff shortly afterwards I ditched the business and the staff but kept the equipment and went into bespoke cabintmaking.

I wish I'd done it 25 years ago!

 

[JonnyD]

. >I'm just happy to be making furniture it's more skilled and hands-on!

I dont necessarily think furniture is more skilled than joinery its just needs a different set of skills. Someone who is skilled at furniture may well struggle with joinery.

Jon

 

[Doctor]

Never made a window in my life. But I can make furniture

 

[Rich]

Back in 2003, our kitchen was overhauled by the council, my wife insisted I take a week off to "oversee" the work, apart from making tea for the "fitters" I watched the tv, Norm was on for 5 hours a day, THAT'S what bit me, I now have a workshop and all the tools one man could want and "wood" away like mad, I have not made anything of substance yet but my construction skills have vastly improved as you can see from my workshop and greenhouse, I just love the feel of wood and wish I had turned to it years ago, it also introduced me to this marvellous forum which is an education in itself.

Rich.

 

[MikeG.]

Poverty!

I was so short of money when I bought my first flat that when I needed a bit of work doing to the kitchen the only way it would happen was if I bought a hammer and a saw and did it myself.

Within 6 months I was mass producing pine Welsh Dressers and Bureaux in the spare bedroom of the flat, (on a Workmate!!)..........and entirely self-taught (ie learning through ****-ups) I am still at it 30 years later.

Mike

PS as for the highlight.......well, selling some free-form ash furniture to Liberty of London for a fortune. I think I can claim to be the only County Cricketer ever to have done that.

 

[Paul Chapman]

As a young lad I used to help my Dad (who did DIY before they invented DIY) with various jobs. Then fell in love with woodworking when I did it at secondary school in the 1950s. Bought our first house in 1971, couldn't afford to buy furniture so I started making it, including a fitted kitchen which I made on a Workmate. Been at it ever since.

Most satisfying job was probably making new legs for one table from a nest of three. One leg had broken but I decided to make all four so as to ensure they were all the same and the new wood matched on all legs. Achieved such a good match that nobody ever noticed that the legs had been replaced.

Cheers :wink:

Paul

 

[Anonymous]

Morning All,
Way back in 1972, as a vehicle mechanic in the British Army, I was posted to Bielefeld in Germany. Working in a large command workshop meant I had a great diversity of vehicles to repair and maintain at one time or the other. One day I was ordered to the Carpenters Section to assist them overhauling the unit’s Scammell recovery vehicle, a “D” Day veteran of WW2. Well, the rear half of the bodywork was all in wood. Decks, sides and storage lockers had to replaced due to wood-rot. Not much fun demolishing with all the rusty screws and bolts that needed removing, but when the time came to replace the lot with beautiful new pine, I couldn`t wait to get stuck-in. Not a powertool in sight.

Koolwabbit

 

[billw]

Did an evening course in basic joinery whilst living in London, but had to curtail it when I moved up north. Found a furniture course and now in my third year of doing it.

I started because I wanted a hobby that had a physical end result, my job involves creating reports, spreadsheets, and numbers - not the sort of thing you can proudly show off to people!

 

[Steve Maskery]

I was born with a wooden spoon in my mouth.
My dad was a cabinet maker in a psychiatric hospital for 29 years and my grandad was a pattern-maker. My dad always told us that if we became woodies he's chop our hands off.

I was into magic as a kid and magic props are very expensive. So I made my own. Magic boxes, magic frames, even a guillotine.

When I started work and asked him what tools I should buy, he said just buy one tool every week, it doesn't matter whether it's a carpenter's pencil of a combination machine. Just buy one thing. Before you know it you will have a tool collection. So that's what I did. I bought a house 9 months later and my first piece of furniture was a refectory-style coffee table in mahogany. It couldn't have been too bad as a friend asked me to make her one.

I'm rather hoping the highlights are yet to come!
S

 

[billw]

Ahh - just remembered the OTHER reason I got into furniture.

My great-grandfather (I think, will have to nag my mum to explain this again to me...) worked with Robert Thompson. From memory they had a bit of a falling out and went their separate ways. Thompson kept the use of the mouse, and my great-grandfather started using a bee.

My mum's got a solid oak adzed-topped kitchen table which is absolutely gorgeous, and is marked with the bee on the top of one of the feet. I'll try and get a photo next time I'm down there and also get my facts straight!

Anyhow - that's also why I became interested in furniture, revival of a family skill.

 

[archersam]

Enjoyed it at school, but decided too cold outside in winter to a manual job.

Mid 90's moved out of mum and dads. but no cash to buy furntiture for my gadgets so made my own and it was all downhill from there.
Sam

 

[frugal]

I enjoyed woodwork at school (but then again I also enjoyed Maths). My dad was an Artificer in the REME, so he did all of the DIY and fixes around the house as well as making cabinets to fit into odd spaces. So the concept fo building things you need has always been there.

When I got my first house he helped me build a study out of veneered MDF and biscuits. I still have the bookcases and the cabinets 3 house moves later so I must have done something right.

After the last but one house moves the garage became a dumping ground and with two small children time became scarce. Since then I met Peter Llyod at acraft fair with his beautiful boxes, then my wife bought me Andrew Crawfords book of boxes (with a view to going on a course with him). That rekindled my enthusiasm for woodwork.

 

[Digit]

I am still at it 30 years later.

That's a lot of **** ups Mike! :lol:

In my case I was the only boy in the class who didn't want to work in wood, so what happened, I ended up as an apprentice jig maker!
After the government attempted to destroy the RAF I was transferred to tool making, meantime I was taking a degree course in Electrical Engineering.
Never touched a piece of wood then till after I was married, and like Mike found that poverty forced me into DIY.
It was downhill from there! :lol:

Roy.