Just over two weeks to go for my first fair to show my work.
A little nervous indeed !
My main concern is transporting my work to Hever Castle. As all my work contains glass in one form or another, I will need to be super careful . It might sound a bit odd that glass is the main concern for someone working with wood !

I was heartened recently, when after chipping a piece of glass, I was able to get the chip polished out- good as new !

I am particularly interested to know what feedback I get on the work. To date I have found that everyone I have shown my work to has a different favourite !

I hope you can make it to Hever Castle, I look forward to meeting you.

The workshop is now completed and fully functional and equipped. I have skipped this bit in the blog, but am very happy to go into detail any aspect that may interest anyone. Choosing the correct equipment is a minefield, and again I can discuss my experiences further if anyone wishes.

The last few months I have been getting ready for my first woodwork show, which is at Hever Castle 5-8 September 2019.

I have designed and made a number of different types of table lamp and small side tables. All are unique, hand made and are made from natural wood veneer and coloured wood veneer. All are vacuum formed and individually hand cut.
The lamps are all tested and certified and made from BS rated components. Different bulbs are fitted including, blue tooth loudspeaker and dimmable bulb, LED multi coloured, LED standard, retro rustic, and standard. Some of the lamps have bespoke multi coloured glass lamp shades hand made by a local artisan.
The tables have vacuum formed multicoloured veneers forming unique shapes. Laminated toughened glass has been paint sprayed to complement the colours in the table legs. The glass tops are bonded to the wooden legs using  a personally developed technique that is both very strong and minimal size.

Some of my experiences and techniques can be seen on Instagram.

They are  slightly irregularly posted as in between making my new workshop and starting on my small furniture I have been doing things like re-building garden furniture, rebuilding a garden shed, making a pizza oven, staining garden furniture and painting over redwood. All requiring research and work on what best to use. Again, anyone wanting to discuss any of these things further-please do.

I hope to see you at Hever Castle !!

I had a neglected vegetable patch at the end of the garden and decided on balance it would be more useful to put a workshop here than search for premises to rent.
Having no experience at building something this size I started doing some homework, and got a friend to help me with some design ideas.
The workshop needed to be simple to build and as a result I was able to do most of the building work myself.
I had help from friends and family for the heavy stuff.
It took 14 weeks to get it ready, despite some of the wettest weather we had seen !
I had the help of an electrician friend to check all my wiring and connections, and all went well.
​Great fun doing it, and physical work too.

My rather cramped shed

Having woodwork as a hobby has been most enjoyable over the years, but with the opportunity of me having more time available I decided to commit  to trying to expand my knowledge and ability in this field.

I attended a furniture making course and loved it. I decided to try to select more short courses in specific disciplines. I learnt about small furniture making techniques and materials, veneering, box making, veneering, inlaying, and many more things .I realised that my teachers had years and years of experience and so I wasn't going to become an expert over night !

I realised pretty soon that all these courses were well and good and most enjoyable, but what were they preparing me for? I was able to do all these wonderful woodwork things because they had lovely workshops that were fully equipped. I did not. I had a small shed which was rammed with what I thought were the most important machines. unfortunately I did not have anything like the facilities that i was being taught in . I presumed talking to other course members this was not unusual.

I could not see that I would progress my ideas to develop my woodwork skills without some changes.

My plan, was as follows,

~build a new  larger workshop dedicated to making small furniture items
~acquire equipment essential for this purpose
~develop and design some unique small furniture items not available elsewhere
~ spend time practising making them
~explore different avenues of selling my works
~continue attending courses to keep up to date
~build a website and keep records !
​So here goes .....................