Watts, Torque and Meaningless Numbers
I remember sitting in the staff room at the college, watching a young apprentice stare at a catalogue for a new cordless router. He was mesmerized by a list of "revolutionary" brushless motor stats and "ultra-high torque" claims, looking like he’d just found the Holy Grail. I wanted to tell him right then that most […]
Taking Off Six Millimetres by Hand
I remember watching a young lad in my college workshop, sweating through his shirt while wrestling with a heavy-duty orbital sander, trying to flatten a stubborn slab of oak. He was making a hell of a lot of noise and a mountain of fine, useless dust, but the surface was still wandering all over the […]
Repairing So the Next Person Can Undo It
I spent forty years on-site and another ten in the classroom, and if there’s one thing that gets my blood boiling, it’s the modern obsession with "permanent" fixes. You go into any hardware shop today and they’ll try to sell you a tube of high-strength epoxy or a chemical resin that promises to fix anything […]
Signing Someone Off on a Machine
I spent ten years in the FE college classrooms, and if there is one thing that gets my blood up, it’s seeing a supervisor hand a green apprentice a thick binder of safety regulations and a clipboard, then walk away. That isn't training; it's just passing the buck. If you think you can tick a […]
Measuring Tool Accuracy at Home
I remember sitting in my workshop back in the nineties, surrounded by the smell of fresh pine and the constant, high-pitched whine of a circular saw that wasn't quite true. A young apprentice had just spent forty minutes trying to calibrate a cheap electric table saw using some fancy digital readout he’d bought online, swearing […]
Storing Clamps Where You Can Reach Them
I spent thirty years on-site and another ten in the classroom, and if there is one thing I’ve learned, it’s that a messy workshop is a slow workshop. You can buy all the fancy power tools in the world, but if you’re spending ten minutes digging through a pile of scrap wood just to find […]
Flattening a Board by Hand
I spent thirty years on-site watching young lads reach for a power planer the second a board looked a bit wonky, thinking they were saving time. They weren't; they were just making a mess and burning through expensive blades. I remember one apprentice, back when I was teaching at the college, who nearly ruined a […]
Going Back to a Tool After Twelve Months
Most of the "experts" you see online will tell you how to judge a tool the moment you unbox it, raving about the weight or the finish like it’s a bloody piece of jewelry. That’s nonsense. A tool isn't truly tested when it's shiny and new; it's tested when the seasons change, the grit gets […]
A Hood That Catches Most of It
People will tell you that if you want a clean workshop, you need to go out and spend a month's wages on a high-end, industrial-grade extraction system. That’s a load of rubbish. I spent years watching young lads at the college try to solve every problem with a bigger motor and more electricity, only to […]
Reviewing for Someone Starting Out
I spent forty years on-site and another ten in the classroom, and if there’s one thing that gets my blood up, it’s the way modern "experts" try to teach you how to review tools for a beginner by reading off a spec sheet. They’ll talk to you about torque, RPMs, and battery voltages like those […]