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Buy? Look in skips for starters. Joinery companies often have skips full of offcuts, some burn it during the winter but in summer have nowhere to store it. Auction rooms, what happens to furniture they cant sell? A mate of mine gets some prime mahogany & oak this way for peanuts if he has to pay...

My dad had some Holly in his collection, he just quartered a log took the bark off & waxed the ends, chucked it in the rack in his workshop. It warped a bit but didnt check at all, and it was white.

I reckon its Iroko, it fades light like that in the sun. Plane it down & you will see. As for using Beech outside dont go there, It rots faster than you can blink. Back in the 80's a lot of beech flitches were slid over the wall at the timber wharf in Old Leigh for a few beer tokens. Much of it...

That hull section is standard carvel construction, probably lower half of the hull or bottom due to the close spacing of the frames. Fastening with trunnels has been done since viking times right up to the 18th & 19th centuries. Best way to really date is is a core through one of the frames &...

For steam bending big jobs i used a beer keg with gas ring under it fueled by propane bottle, A wooden box or aluminium mast section was good. On small jobs or on site i often used a 3" steel pipe with wooden plug hammered in the end. Stick the plug end on the ground & open end up on crossed...

Having steamed a lot of ribs into wooden boats, i would make the following observations, bending with the grain flat is easier, flatter sections bend easier than square ones. As said thin stuff steams quick with thicker taking longer. Best thing is to test every ten minutes, there is a sweet...

About 15 years ago my elderly parents who lived 300 miles oop north had some roofing work done, Just picked the first company out of the old yellow pages remember that? AA roofing or something like that. 3 blokes turn up & spend three days up there banging & crashing. Job done & Dad gives them...

I love marmalade especially on Kippers, Proper oak smoked kippers, warm fresh bread & butter with lashings of marmalade. It is utterly glorious!

Shipping machines on pallets can be a real risk. Many machines are top heavy. Bolt it to a pallet might look fine but machines have sticky out bits, Handles, handwheels & tables. Do they overhang the pallet? Will it be top heavy? Are they going to strap it down? Probably not! What happens when...

Every craftmans worry is that somebody will just skip their tools, When i cleared Dads workshop there was so much stuff but i found homes for it. The best i kept, some i sold, some i gave away to the local mens shed. Fortunately my son knows the value of good tools & knows where to offload the...

I learnt from my Dad who built & did up several boats in the garden. When our son came along I did the house husband thing & from about a year old he came with me to my boatshed, not for too long but enough to get used to it, From about 3 he helped me with stuff & played in the woodshavings...

Interesting, But does not surprise me. Lots of stone contains silica & it was a common cause of illness & death in the mining & stone working industry, COPD & other respiratory illnesses,Slate miners & cutters got it, Knife grinders got it, Many other trades too. The common thread is they didnt...

It is good for certain things. It isnt good for big chunks of wood as they will expand & contract & when they do the surface will crack. A big factor with West epoxy is its UV resistance is low, out in the sun an epoxy coating on its own will fail before an oil based varnish does. You can put...

The smell of damp cotton sails in my Dads 18ft National sailing dinghy, actually that was about 1964, Later the smell of hot vinyl car seats always used to make me sick.

All saws go blunt, That little Lidls cheapy powerfix lasted 3 years at school before i swapped the blade for the spare one. Best £6.99 i ever spent.

Talk of bench hooks & saws etc, One thing i learnt in my time as a D&T technician, Tenon saws in schools are often battered & exceedingly blunt. When i started the job about the first practical thing i did in the first few days was regrind & sharpen all thechisels, plane blades & order new tenon...

Before i retired three years ago I was a D&T technician, In our school every pupil did D&T up until end of year 9 then either took it or dropped out. We had a surprising number of kids who were obviously gifted in the practical skills department. I with the teacher i worked with did our best to...

Other options, Lyme Regis Boatbuilding academy is worth a look. Quite a few women getting into boatbuilding today. They do furniture making & short courses too.

I did a pile of teak T&G floorboards last winter much of the 2 tons was covered on the underside with pitch, Didnt appear to have any fibrous material in it at all. I did wear a good respirator anyway as it was a filthy job. I tried scrapers, old chisels the lot. Do not even think of solvents or...

Iroko.