This is my second school to start from scratch. I would that I could say I launched New Legacy from the freedom of excess money, you know, disposable income and such.
I remember clearly the cold snowy January I chose to make my benches with no real workshop and very few tools. My budget was practically zero and grants people told me about from local sourcing where they had millions to give away were not for something as flaky as starting a woodworking school in the middle of North Wales. After all, isn’t that what college night school and evening classes is for?
It seems a long time ago now, setting up machines outdoors, tarps at the ready, awaiting rain to stop and seeing snow come in. My hands froze cutting the wood and planing it. I recall one time wiping two inches of snow off the planer/thicknesser thinking that it was shavings. My deadline was a month away and ten benches to make is no mean feat even for a lone ranger like me.
I had bought ten benches on eBay a couple of years earlier. I bought them for the vises and also for the wood, knowing they were too small and too low for my use. Woden vises are the best and these were all Woden so the 4 hour trip and the van hire was worth it.
I bought wood from B&Q, 3x2s in spruce. Inexpensive but straight grained and dry believe it or not. I bought 200 sticks 8 feet long and replaned them for laminated bench tops.
The leg frames came from 4x2s (US 2x4s). Every day I worked in the cold and fought against the rain.
Each bench completed got wrapped in purple plastic ready for transporting to my new Penrhyn Castle home and the first workshop. I remember carrying my own three-foot by ten-foot bench up the slate stairs of the castle and feeling my age.
My first class arrived and the students took to their new benches not realising that the week before their benches were standing in an old farm cottage yard buried in snow and waiting for a dry day to become so I could paint them. This is how most of my businesses started. It’s tough but I am glad there were never any grants. You can’t buy the kind of feeling you get when you dig up your first spuds and carrots and taste the fruit of hard work. Don’t look for a cosy start if your going to start working for yourself. The birth canal begins the fight for life. It’s worth it.
