Hand tool school is cool

If you read back to a previous blog you’ll learn that my first hand tool workshop Discovering Woodworking was held in Kerrville Texas and was hosted by The Texas Arts and Crafts Foundation at Schreiner University. That seems in some ways to be a lifetime away and a lot has happened since that time. I still get surprises from that first workshop and one of them happened a couple of years ago when I was judging The Texas Furniture Makers Show with Asa Christiana, editor of Fine Woodworking, the world renowned furniture designer and maker Michael Fortune from Canada and Mike Sauder who I have known for a decade and who owns all of the Woodcraft stores in Texas. Anyway, it was at that show, again in Kerrville, Texas, that a man came up to me and told me that he had been an attendee at the first Discovering Woodworking workshop and that it had inspired him to become a woodworker full time. He was an entry in the competition and had won one of the prizes. Thankfully I didn’t know it. Subsequent years have led to the same discovery and I have met people who have gone on to be recognised woodworkers in their own right.

Last night it was hard for me to get to sleep. My mind kept going back to times past when I demonstrated for groups of people in dozens of different situations. I have demonstrated for thousands of school children and also thousands of adults around the world. The demonstrations I developed I still use today and so I thank those in the late 1980′s who helped me discover and develop the wealth and breadth of my skill through demonstrating. Look what’s happened since those early days.

Today we made housing dadoes, dovetails and mortise and tenon joints. Most had never done any before and so I felt the same joy I felt over 20 years ago when I saw the results of the early work. Tim and Kathryn worked at the same bench and laughed and encouraged each other.

Paul cracked on with his work quietly and really wants to master real skill in woodworking while Tobyon the adjacent bench was putting into practice the things he has seen on DVDs but has had minimal opportunity to to try out. His specialisation is digital graphics for video filming and such so this was a very different sphere for him.

Of course John, my apprentice, you already know. He has taken to this like a duck to water and he never fails to respond to a new discovery with joy and excitement.

Claire is an old (young in years) woodworking friend of mine and she loves wood altogether. She too works with computers in her real job and woodworking is therapy for her as it is for me and the others.

Raymond flew in with his wife from Northern Ireland for couple of days woodworking with us. He is rediscovering aspects of woodworking he knew existed and wants to help others discover it for themselves also.

I will see you all at 9am in the morning.