How I got into woodworking

As a little boy I watched my grandfather working with wood in his shed. Creating a furniture for his home, or one of his children, repairing his green house at his allotment, or building a bee hive to collect honey –  I could watch him for hours, fascinated by the process of making and how at the end of the day there was always a tangible result. 

Having something tangible at the end of the day, inspired me in my adolescence to go to art school and study Graphic Design. I have burnt many litters of the midnight oil honing my design skills, creating posters, booklets, typefaces with pen, paper, tape, glue and a precision knife – but I also explored the possibilities digital layout tools like QuarkXpress.

Right after graduation, my career took a first unexpected turn. Curious about this new medium called the "internet" I rode the waves of the dot-com hype – and crashed landed when the lead ballons started to fall.

I hadn't realised by then, that a website, or computer interface lacked the material substance of paper, but as a designer I was intrigued how to give meaning to all the information out there, and make it accessible to the intended audience.

I got into teaching about this new form of design and slowly got involved in other forms of design: curriculum design, learning design, organisational design. Forms of design that produce very few tangible outputs (mostly schemes and documents) but nevertheless it did impact the lives and careers of many students.

I was reminded of my love for making and creating (with my hands) when I did my masters in Industrial Design Engineering, where we had workshops and built prototypes of cash machines, snow shovels and experimental 'provotypes' to support group reflection.  

 

Shortly after earning my degree I moved to London joining UK's innovation agency as a learning designer. Again, much of my work was about designing intangible outputs or outcomes like learning experiences and journeys.

But things changed when I joined a boat club in my home borough at the banks of the river Thames. Apart from rowing, we also built our own boats (under the supervision of a master boat builder). I became one of the 'bosuns' together with a master violin maker. Working with these craftsmen helped me hone my rudimentary woodworking skills and reignited my love for making things with my hands.

Fast forward 4 years... in the Summer of 2021 me and my partner bought a house, a listed monument from 1750 – and only a stone's throw away from Rembrandt's birth place. It came with a little shed, a really tiny one... but it has been for years a big dream to have my own wood workshop.

This became start of a journey: making a built-in wardrobe, a workbench, restoring my fence from wood rot and various other smaller DIY projects. This blog is about my journey as an amateur woodworker.