Ppe You Will Actually Wear
I remember a lad I taught back at the college, bright enough, but he spent more time fussing over the brand name on his safety goggles than he did checking if they actually sat flush against his face. He’d bought the most expensive kit in the catalogue, thinking a high price tag meant he was […]
Working Alone With a Machine Running
I remember a Tuesday afternoon back in the nineties, working a solo renovation on a draughty old terrace in Leeds. The smell of damp sawdust was thick in the air, and the only sound was the rhythmic scritch-scritch of my plane. I’d slipped on a rogue shaving, my hand went flying toward a chisel, and […]
A Coiled Extension Lead Gets Hot
I remember standing on a dusty site in the nineties, watching a lad try to daisy-chain three cheap, thin extension leads together just to power a heavy-duty planer. The smell of scorched plastic hit me before the smoke even did; that cord was cooking itself from the inside out. Most people think knowing how to […]
Workshop Electrics and the Rcd
I remember a lad I taught back in the college days, a bright enough boy, but he had this habit of daisy-chaining extension leads like he was stringing Christmas lights. He thought he was being clever, saving time by plugging one lead into another just to reach a router across the bench. Then came the […]
Keeping Track of Hardware
I spent forty years on site and another ten in the classroom, and if there is one thing that drives me mad, it’s watching a young apprentice waste twenty minutes digging through a chaotic toolbox just to find a single brass butt hinge. You don't need some fancy, multi-tiered plastic gadgetry or a subscription to […]
Finding the Right Screw in Ten Seconds
I remember standing on a job site in '84, staring at a half-finished door frame while some lad scrambled through a plastic tub of mixed-up brass screws, looking for a single 30mm wood screw. The sun was going down, the sawdust was settling, and we were losing time because nobody knew how to organise fixings […]
The Offcut Pile That Ate the Workshop
I can still see my old workshop floor from thirty years ago, a treacherous landscape of cedar shavings and jagged maple scraps that would catch your boot and send you sprawling. I spent half my apprenticeship tripping over things that should have been in a bin, wasting more time hunting for a decent piece of […]
Letting Timber Settle Before You Cut
I remember a lad I taught back at the college, a bright enough boy, who spent three weeks crafting a beautiful walnut tabletop, only to watch it split right down the middle two months later. He’d used the best oils and the finest chisels, but he’d neglected the one thing that actually matters: knowing how […]
Storing Boards So They Stay Flat
I remember one particular winter back when I was teaching at the college, looking out at a stack of oak that a lad had left leaning against a damp brick wall. He’d spent a fortune on the material, but by the time we went to plane it, the boards had twisted so badly they were […]
Extractor Airflow and What You Need
I spent thirty years on-site and another ten in a college workshop, and if there is one thing that gets my goat, it’s the way tool manufacturers try to sell you a solution that’s more headache than help. You walk into a shop and see these massive, expensive industrial units with enough bells and whistles […]