At the bench with woodworkers

I’m back in North Wales with blue skies, a few puffy wisps of cloud and the same essence of inner contentment I get when I’m on the verge of finishing a new piece of furniture or carving a spoon or building a shed or something like that. I demonstrated to several hundred fellow enthusiasts all of whom I managed to assuage from cynicism and replaced it with sponge-soaking enthusiasm for the first real woodworking they’d seen in years. Watching my 50 pence car boot saw slice the mahogany with the ease of the best persuaded them gently to really consider the art of hand tool woodworking. I thought to myself what a privileged, after 25 years of such demonstrating on two continents, to have spent my life working wood every day and at the same time training the new genre woodworker in the art and craft of working wood.