My First Class in England

My first hands-on workshop in England proper took place at the Wood Centre in Long Wittenham Oxfordshire last Friday and Saturday. It's been just a year since my last workshop in Penrhyn Castle in North Wales, the former temporary home of New Legacy School of Woodworking, because of our relocating to England. It was impressive that all of our careful planning came together on time for the 9am start; I mean fire lit, kettle boiling, tools sharpened, benches set and floor mats down. 80 chisels pristinely sharp and polished out to 10,000, 40 saws hand-filed to impeccable sharpness by yours truly, spokeshaves and planes completed too. Then of course it felt good to once more see people arriving with smiles, tools, notebooks and so on. How do you can excitement, aspiration and wellbeing? Before too long we were well in the swing of things. As we gathered around my workbench I confess feeling something a tad more than just a buzz around me. I'm reminded that others revere what I might take more for granted because I see it reflected in their eyes. They carry a sense of reverence and admiration for the tools I use and enjoy and I hope I can measure up to expectation. Though it is commonplace for me to be in my shop, I hope always to respect everything surrounding this sort of inner-sanctum experience where somehow sanity seems always to survive if not prevail.  Is that wrong? Well, I wish all should have such a place to rest and restoration culminating in re-creation so I think not.

Working towards this point over the past 10 months since moving south has been yet one more period of growth for me. Creating videography and all that that entails has enabled us to develop the vision we have. When I wrote my latest book Essential Woodworking Hand Tools, and then too produced the video series to accompany it, I wrote in the introduction that this was the book that's never been written—meaning that very few books have actually been written about hand tools purely from a working man's background as an artisan. Most likely such crafting artisans past (pre-digital and media age) would never have had the opportunity nor the inclination. In some ways I feel as though I was the last in a line in that I apprenticed with men who indeed used hand tools for a lifetime too. Most of the apprentices I worked alongside in my youth and then those that followed embraced using machines and commercial methods. This led to a generation that eschewed hand methods for several decades. The hole that they left meant the ensuing generations were left out and forgotten. Would-be woodworkers, overly influenced for several decades by the power of downsized machinery of this post-war era, lost the balance between machine and hand methods that works so favourably for those disinclined to full-on commerce. With schools and colleges doing the same, and I mean giving something of more a token nod to past methods, training future woodworkers has mainly become the means by which induction into the channels of industry take place. So we see people are no longer trained for craft and artisanry as such.  I chose to retain hand tools in the everyday of my work. This then is the background from which I teach, write and pass on the skills. Most others come from a background very different than mine. The past few years were quite the challenge. Combining hands on at the bench with videography and presenting have become the new creative sphere from which I work. Just as finely crafting furniture and working wood are my passion still, I now find myself wanting to create ever finer video work. It is always grieving to see that I forced Phil to film a long sequence looking at the back of my hand rather than the screwdriver turning the screw into the hinge. But we are getting there and that's what matters. So I make videos and teach classes because, well, what I do, what I know, what `i love and have loved all of my life has to be passed on.

Of course the class was a wonderful opportunity to help and guide others in taking the essential steps towards future craftsmanship. More than that, I do feel invigorated by having people come into my creative space. I am looking forward to the next two classes coming up. Both are full and people are waiting for more hands-on workshops next year, but we are all doing what we can.