Phil Pascoe
Established Member
Reprinted from The Times 15/2 -
Put away those pots and pans and reach for the saws and planes, because woodwork is taking over from baking in the latest reality TV show.
Channel 4 is to present a carpentry competition this spring in Good with Wood, hosted by Mel Giedroyc, the presenter and comedian, and tapping into one the big winners of pandemic lockdowns.
“Woodwork has proven to be extremely popular in the past 12 months”, Chris O’Boyle, trading director for everyday repair and maintenance at Homebase, the DIY retailer, said. Its sales of wood clamps have risen by almost 68 per cent this year compared with a year ago, and sales of chisels, files and planers have jumped by 50 per cent. Robert Dyas, the hardware retailer, has recorded a rise of more than 300 per cent in sales of chisels over the same period.
According to Helen Welch, founder of the London School of Furniture Making: “Armed with no more than a penknife you can whittle a wooden butter knife. Whittled spoons can be made out of fallen branches or even bits of firewood.”
Sophie Yeo, 31, an environmental writer from Cardiff who recently started woodworking, said: “I got a whittling tool called a sloyd knife and watched YouTube videos to learn the basics. I found it very easy, almost like knitting.” She has carved mostly spoons, using wood from local forests.
Applications to the London School of Furniture Making’s core skills course rose by 30 per cent between June and Christmas.
“I’m not just seeing more demand for classes,” Welch said. “There’s YouTube videos on almost every woodworking technique and huge appetite for instruction books.”
Paul Sellers from Cheshire runs YouTube’s most subscribed UK woodworking channel. Each week he uploads tips for beginners. More than 100,000 people have watched one of his videos on how to make a small storage box. “I’m getting a million views a month,” he said. “I’ve had worries that my craft was dying. But my online popularity reassures me that there are lots of new people coming to woodworking.”
In the US, Steve Ramsey, from Chicago, has 1.6 million subscribers to his YouTube channel. “People are getting fed up with scrolling through Netflix,” he said. “Many of my followers have good jobs at tech companies, but what they’re missing is the satisfaction of building something with their hands. That’s why woodworking is so therapeutic.”
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/topic/television
Put away those pots and pans and reach for the saws and planes, because woodwork is taking over from baking in the latest reality TV show.
Channel 4 is to present a carpentry competition this spring in Good with Wood, hosted by Mel Giedroyc, the presenter and comedian, and tapping into one the big winners of pandemic lockdowns.
“Woodwork has proven to be extremely popular in the past 12 months”, Chris O’Boyle, trading director for everyday repair and maintenance at Homebase, the DIY retailer, said. Its sales of wood clamps have risen by almost 68 per cent this year compared with a year ago, and sales of chisels, files and planers have jumped by 50 per cent. Robert Dyas, the hardware retailer, has recorded a rise of more than 300 per cent in sales of chisels over the same period.
According to Helen Welch, founder of the London School of Furniture Making: “Armed with no more than a penknife you can whittle a wooden butter knife. Whittled spoons can be made out of fallen branches or even bits of firewood.”
Sophie Yeo, 31, an environmental writer from Cardiff who recently started woodworking, said: “I got a whittling tool called a sloyd knife and watched YouTube videos to learn the basics. I found it very easy, almost like knitting.” She has carved mostly spoons, using wood from local forests.
Applications to the London School of Furniture Making’s core skills course rose by 30 per cent between June and Christmas.
“I’m not just seeing more demand for classes,” Welch said. “There’s YouTube videos on almost every woodworking technique and huge appetite for instruction books.”
Paul Sellers from Cheshire runs YouTube’s most subscribed UK woodworking channel. Each week he uploads tips for beginners. More than 100,000 people have watched one of his videos on how to make a small storage box. “I’m getting a million views a month,” he said. “I’ve had worries that my craft was dying. But my online popularity reassures me that there are lots of new people coming to woodworking.”
In the US, Steve Ramsey, from Chicago, has 1.6 million subscribers to his YouTube channel. “People are getting fed up with scrolling through Netflix,” he said. “Many of my followers have good jobs at tech companies, but what they’re missing is the satisfaction of building something with their hands. That’s why woodworking is so therapeutic.”
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/topic/television
