Getting back to woodworking... A bit about me, and my hobby

An introduction...

G'Day,
I'm Tom! Earlier this year our second girl was born growing our family to four!. We now have R, aged 3, and L who is 8 weeks old! and of course, my beautiful wife Corinne who amazes me everyday.

All my girls bring me much joy and happiness. I can't imagine a world without them now.

With the pressures and challenges that having a family brings and finding that all important work-life balance, I think it is important to find something that gives me some downtime.

This blog is about that downtime, and how I have re-discovered my love for working with wood!

Getting back to woodworking!

As I was growing up I had a real passion for wood work. I remember when I was younger, going out to the"Timber and Working with Wood Show" show each year and being amazed at some of the things people had made with wood. Timber is such a beautiful natural material and looks amazing when polished up well.

During our Design and Tech lessons at school we carried out a few small projects - a wooden pencil case and the like, then started to work up to a chair. During the later years of school after a knee injury put me out of sport for a while, I joined the 'after school sheds' group. During this time I decided to build a kind of 'futon' style bed. This was a bit of a stretch, and didn't quite match up to what I had imagined. However, me got a mattress made (as my measurements were a bit out, and a standard mattress would not fit - oops!). But it lasted me a good number of years. But it made me have a much greater respect for those projects I had seen at the working with wood shows!
After leaving school, I didn't have much access to the tools required to continue my passion, and other things filled up the time pretty easily. And so until recently, I haven't really made anything substantial.

I still have a great respect for working with timber, and will always ensure that I visit the timber exhibitions at the easter show each year.

Recently I heard about a Men's Shed opening up in Mosman. When I went along to an open day at the Shed and saw all the machines and tools that had been donated, I realised the opportunity that was before me - to get back into woodworking. Everything I needed in terms of tools were in the shed, as well as helpful advice from a bunch of friendly men with similar interests to chat to and work with.
I should also thank the Men from the Mosman Men's Shed for their help with some of these projects, their encouragement, support and advice.


And so, my passion for working with wood continues...
This blog is a way of sharing with you some of the projects I work on and I will try and upload some of the plans I used.

I hope you enjoy them and would love your comments, feedback and suggestions (or links) to other projects I might take on.

Thanks

Tom