Happy New Year for 2010.
I really can not remember not having something to do with woodworking. Even as a youngster, six seven years or so, there was an undertakers workshop just up the road from where I was brought up and I would go watch the men at work (not digging holes, making the boxes). This must have inspired me to try my hand and a small workshop was established where I tried to develop the required skills, in what had been a laundry. Naturally this included essentials like how to cut fingers with the correct size chisel, the different pain induced on fingers by a Warrington as opposed to a claw hammer and all the patterns that could be made on your hands with a tenon saw; if you don't hold the wood tight. That was the handy thing about being in an old laundry, running water to wash wounds. I must have made a top job of teaching myself because at sixty four I'm still really good at all three and I have added many more to the list like using pliers to make blisters and manicuring finger nails with a belt sander (for too long). There were even some periods when I didn't have Band Aids and I manage to make 50 or so string puppets and a portable theatre, used to put shows on at the local kids Christmas parties and the like, even got invited back to some.
This came to an end when at 15 I joined the RAF Boy Entrants as a Radar Mechanic. The RAF must have been told about my woodwork experience, within the first week I was set to work polishing red ceder wooden floors, this being a special privilege allowed to be undertaken in addition to learning electronics. During my 25 years RAF service there was always something to do with wood that needed doing. The boss wants a shelf putting up/taking down, office door will not shut/open/lock/unlock, new equipment will not fit on existing benches/shelves. Living in tents in Malaya had to make up your own duckboards or get wet when the rain washed under the tent during monsoons.
Then I married, she who must be obeyed had me making furniture. This is when I really found my old interest in wood, also enjoyed renovating older furniture.
I now have a double length garage and have built two benches, a general purpose/metal workbench and a machine bench for a drill press and bench grinder. An existing bench built in the UK to fit into a bike shed has been doubled in width and a cupboard added for power tools on the new side. It has an additional end wood vice. My current project is a mobile bench/stand for a cut off saw.
