I have always loved working with wood.

Collage of handcrafted projects

At the age of seven I started carving timber and balsa with pencil sharpener blades and razor blades. ‘Ouch!’—and I still have the scars.

My children grew up with wooden toys and many relatives had to suffer wooden puzzles as presents. I have designed several small boxes and everyone I know now has a hand-carved sugar spoon. Much of our house is filled with functional, original, strong, hand-made furniture with straight, simple lines.

My greatest love, however, is still woodcarving on a small scale—mainly dozens of small animals. My latest major project is a Noah’s ark automata, with 20 moving animals and objects, which took thirty months to complete.

I consider myself fortunate to have my own “den” and a modest collection of small power tools and hand tools.

I have combined my interest in writing and woodwork to produce several articles which have been published:-

A LOADER FOR ALL SEASONS

The Australasian Toy-Maker – Issue N0 6

Christmas 2003—and having obtained some old shelving scraps of 21 mm meranti—I decided to design and make two front-end loaders for my grandchildren. The front end-loaders combined an original design with elements of other loaders I had seen. These included the large stationary yellow scoops children sit on in the shopping-centre and the smaller machinery with articulated bodies that clutter the shelves in every toy shop.

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WOOD IN MOTION

Australian Wood Review  – Issue N0 81

Welcome to my world of automata. Three years ago I stumbled upon these intriguing marvels. My dictionary defined an automaton as a mechanical device operating under its own hidden power—a modest example is a cuckoo clock, however, complex automata have entertained for eons.

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Other published articles will continue to be posted so check this page for updates.

MY FAVOURITE WOODWORKING QUOTE COMES FROM AN ESSAY by J B PRIESTLY

“… I never go where wood is being worked, never stand near a joiner, carpenter or cabinet-maker, without feeling at least a tickle of delight. To handle newly-planed wood, even to look at it or smell it, is to receive a message that life can still be in good heart. The very shavings are a crisp confirmation.

There is a mystery here. Atavism will not explain it. Our remoter ancestors, winding back into the mists, were chippers of stone. I have seen their flints, inside and outside museums, and have never yet felt a quiver of sympathy. Woodwork as we know it, needing sharp metal tools, must be one of man’s newer activities. Is this perhaps the secret? Is this stuff still so excitingly new? But light alloys and plastics are newer still, the discoveries of today, and yet no message comes from them. Is it because wood, no matter how chopped and trimmed and planed, somehow remains alive? I put my hand on the desk on which I am writing now, and it is almost as if my palm fell on the shoulder of a brother. Into this patient material have passed rain and sun, steely mornings in March, the glow of October: it has lived as some secret part of us still lives.

And notice how few men who work with wood seem unhappy, defeated. When we write a book about a Carpenter, we call it the New Testament.”

J B Priestley, “Delight”, published 1949