sutton046

Amid the usual array of workshops on offer during my last series of public workshops in March, there was a couple of new ones, including: Making a Small Picture/Photo Frame. We used hand tools only. It was a great process and it's a fantastic little project. This project will be offered again in the coming public workshop series I'm offering in June. Nice job, Jenny! I reckon this will be a popular workshop. Get in early to secure a place! To tantalize you, here is a bit of a look at the process: It all starts with the materials. I regularly obtain some beautiful timber from packing crate material. This comes either from the UK or from USA/Canada. I wish I knew what the timbers were. I just refer to them generally as "Northern Hemispherical Softwoods". Much nicer and closer grained timber than the introduced softwoods grown here in Western Australia: Pinus radiata and Pinus pinaster.  So much potential! That could be a lot of picture frames... Although I am an...

Today I was involved in a fun Earthcarers activity at the Karrinyup Community Centre. All around the idea of making Christmas presents, there were a range of workshops to chose from, with people making soap, dukkah, dream catchers,  tea-light holders, and more. I was running the workshop on recycling pallets and wooden crates. It was a hoot. With ute and trailer loaded up with pallets and crate material, I arrived on site. My demo piece : A "folded pallet" garden seat. The seat pictured above was a demo that I had made a couple of days beforehand, just to help convey some the wonderful potential of pallets for making stuff. This pallet was from the Czech republic. A folded pallet, as I call the method, required one pallet and just  couple of other pieces of timber pulled from another pallet. Making a pair of Stilts. Wheel chocks from a pallet which once shipped a ride-on mower. What better use for them? Those wheel chocks nailed to the sticks just screamed of stilts. They jus...