Hand Crafted

In recent months I have reflected on the very raw beginnings of our opening videos. It was building the workbench in my then back garden on two saw horses that intrigued everyone. I think we used eight hand tools. No tablesaws, planers, bandsaw and mortise machines. No clever tricks with cameras rolling, just down to earth woodworking with handsaws, planes, auger bits and braces but I did use a drill driver. In the background helicopters flew over, seagulls screeched and children in the playground next door obliged us with shouts and laughter as well as school bells ringing time for class.

My blog, the videos we make, the schools I've started, all provide the surety that woodworking with hand tools is a progressive, living, vibrant way to work with wood. It's also protected and safe now for future generations of woodworkers because of the work we've been able to progress. But it wasn't at all that way in the beginning. Even tool distributors have double and tripled their turnover with resultant profits because of what we've been proving for a third of a century.

I have often told how difficult it was and in some cases still is going against the grain of some and then the giants through the past three decades. Those early days when people like me were just a change of wallpaper for show promoters, magazines (which are indeed advertising corporations), and so on. I recall the days when I was the only actual woodworker at woodworking shows where mostly it was machines and related equipment being shown and sold. Everyone there was selling something off of the show floor. My niche had become so specialised yet we were only window dressing for the show to begin with. In the beginning I went mostly to promote hand tool use in woodworking, promoting it as an alternative way of life. My ambitions never changed; it was always about getting people off the conveyor belt of woodworking that woodworking had become. There was no razzmatazz with my work and neither were we at all challenged by the big boys and that's because we became so accepted and established by you. You were the ones that supported me. Sought me out at the shows, sat in the chairs at the venues waiting patiently for the appointed time. It was just a matter of time before we started with a serious online presence and now look at where we are.

What made everything shoot forward for me was the questioning. You had so many of them along the way. Unanswered and even unanswerable issues of wonderment, not dissimilar to children asking for answers to what they didn't know, but I answered one after another with the same honesty I had been shown by George in my early days of apprenticeship. I loved the innocence of it except at one time in an audience of 300 a man asked, "What's the main difference between using a handsaw and a skilsaw then?" The question was loaded! I said, 'In my experience, if you slip with a handsaw, you always stop before you hit the bone!'

In the 80s and 90s, with so few hand toolists around, the mini machine era slid seamlessly into place from the new era 'industry providers'. The result? Everyone came to own the magical alternative woodworking. No longer would anyone need to master skill and of course the microwave version of instancy came into the world of woodworking except now anyone anywhere could own their own router and tablesaw, bandsaws, belt sanders and even chisel mortising machines too. Times changed in seemingly irreversible ways and at points I did feel overwhelmed by the effort it took to reestablish what I truly loved in the lives of others. It was an incremental work and when I felt completely isolated something would happen somewhere to encourage me to keep on keeping on. Yes, I was on my own in the quest because I really never met any woodworker then that felt in any way the same way I did. With those that trained me having passed on one by one, I decided to then take on the mantle as best I could. Back then I was just coming up to 40 years of age, still quite young. I saw my craft to be more than a merely intellectual pursuit for the then new intelligentsia of the age, those that approached it with a dynamic of some kind of superiority, my craft though was and always will be clearly for the ordinary and every day working man and woman...

...those who want the art of hand work in their lives at a level that exemplified true artisanry. It was here that I discovered how open the people I was reaching were to the possibility that they could become a new genre woodworking striving for the skills of the so-called professional woodworkers but including the quest for the highly skilled working hand skill demands. It was a most amazing time for me because I sensed a most serious switch. It went beyond woodland crafts and folk art even though pole lathes for turned toadstools and making ancient coracles had their place, I saw fine woodworking emerge into musical instruments like violins and guitars, the best furniture and then too the the inclusivity of simpler rustic aspects of woodworking as the revitalised woodland craft scene. For me though, I wanted others to have what I had always enjoyed from day one and that was the true experience of working in the worksop garage without the clutter and cluster of machines. I wanted others to see how the workbench and using hand tools that have been proven through a millennia of hand tools for woodworking could be more than enough when you owned skill. Today I have my dream realised. It is my belief that there are enough people out there following the traditions of hand woodworking for it never to be lost and buried again. The internet may have millions of faults, but in the absence of the ancient masters the skills live on through the films and videos and an online presence.

As I reviewed the different series of videos about to be released over the coming weeks and months, videos that we have pulled together for teaching as well as entertaining, I became aware of how our videographers are carefully crafting their footage. The awareness they have to capture what counts is remarkable.

They are young, ambitious, caring and kind. The sensitivity they have for both videoing and editing is to me remarkable. It is no less a craft skill than my own in woodworking. What a privilege it is for me to see the young and new engage with the ancient of crafts in such sensitive and complementary ways.