G’day all,
May I say before anything else, what a goldmine of knowledge this place is?
It’s been my morning read with my coffee for a while now, and I’ve only just scratched the surface.
A little bit about me.
What I know about woodworking came from my first F.I.L. He did his cabinet making apprenticeship back in the days before whiteboard when cabinet makers used real timber. Along the way, he picked up qualifications in upholstery.
Upon completion of his apprenticeship he found work in short supply so soon thereafter started another apprenticeship as a wood machinist with a company that made windows, doors stairs etc. He again opted for some extra courses in trade school and qualified as a joiner as well.
By the time I met him, he had a small cabinet shop and was plodding along quite nicely. His shop had a Luna combination machine…(Table saw, sliding table, thicknesser, buzzer, shaper and mortiser)…That, plus a pedestal drill, radial arm and overhead sander meant there wasn’t much he couldn’t handle.
I worked with him whenever I could, for as long as I could and enjoyed some of the best times in my life in that shop. I got to the stage where there wasn’t much I couldn’t tackle, especially with him there to answer the “How do I’s….”
Looking back however, I realize that EVERYTHING we did there was done on one machine or another. I recall very, very few instances of ever picking up a hand tool.
Flash forward several years and I found a niche market in the Dandenong Ranges of Melbourne building decks. There in NO flat land in the Dandenongs, so if you wanted to go outside, you better think “Decking”.
The chippys from down on what we referred to as “the flats” or the eastern suburbs of Melbourne were hesitant to travel to the ranges much less work there on 45 deg slope blocks. There was easier work to be had in the building boom of the 80’s.
So I had the Dandenong Ranges all to myself for a little over 5 years and supported my family in the process. There was no such thing as re-dryed treated pine, and nothing was stress graded so we had to grade it ourselves and work out ways of working with wet timber.
The only span chart available was a small booklet from the Timber Merchants Assoc.
Over time though, I built up a relationship with the building inspectors from the area, and when a particularly tricky application came along, we could usually nut something out between us.
I took a year off to build myself a timber framed house in Montrose before moving to Bendigo.
As it stands now, I have an old 12” 3HP table saw with a bent cast iron table, a 15” thicknesser and a 6” buzzer sitting, stacked up in my garden shed with nowhere to put them.
I’m now making animal enclosures in steel and mesh so my focus is on metal fabrication.
But I yearn to have a woodshop set up once more and reading these pages has given me yet more desire to somehow get one together, someday.
I reckon I’ll start by slowly restoring the machinery I have so they are 100% spot on.
Then figure out where to put them.
Sorry for the long winded intro.
Cheers all
Jim
