Signing my book

People are passing through the workshop and reading my book. Those that like what they see buy and ask me to sign it, which I enjoy. I try to consider how I can help people who unlike me never had the opportunity or were under guided, misguided, under valued and in essence underprivileged by societal expectations and poor concern in a wide range of spheres.

I met several people from my home town area today. It was a surprise really, to be able to immediately identify that they were from Stockport, based on the first three or four words they spoke. We talked about the places we knew and the people in areas where we had worked. I thought about a man who came with his wife who were taking a couple of days away. Two sons and a lifelong desire to work wood yet never having the opportunity. There are hundreds of thousands of people who would love to work with wood but are intimidated by fear of failure, machines, lack of working knowledge and much more. While many so called power tool manufacturers have produced machines to help with woodworking through the years, many woodworking tasks such as dovetailing and carving, inlaying and so on have been dumbed down to leave much of the work boring and mundane. My book and the new DVDs address these decades of imbalanced perspectives to give real working wood a chance and people skills they dreamed of.