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105665 "Peter Williams" <peter.williams@h...> 2002‑04‑15 Biography
I have been here a while and I don't think I have posted
a biography up till now. So here goes.

My first woodworking memories and experience were as a four year old,
I would use a hammer, handsaw and nails to make simple ladders, and
aeroplanes of recycled hardwood from machinery crates that my father
would bring home from work. These were large crates from Massey
Ferguson mowers and similar. The wood was usually of excellent
quality in boards up to 6" wide and probably 7/8" thick and as long
as 6'. It was smoothly sawn and would be considered top grade if it
was on the rack at timber yards today.

During my primary school years I did some carpentry type work on a
number of cubby houses and made some other wooden things of varying
quality standards. I love to read and have always enjoyed technical
books as well as non-fiction material on all sorts of topics. Some of
my earliest woodworking inspiration was from the Stanley book "How to
work with tools and wood", as well as many, many library books on
woodwork.

One book in particular was my favourite:
I used to borrow it from the town library and must have just about
worn it out sigle-handedly. I was between 5 and 12 years old at the
time and it would have been from 1965 and 1974. The book looked old
then. It had a brown cover that was like a stippled/textured leather
(but was probably just cardboard and it was about 8" tall and around
7" or 8" across, I think it was probably about 3/8" thick. The book
was most likley British and was aimed at young people, it was kept in
the childrens non-fiction section. I must have borrowed it 100 times,
I loved it so much. The one project I remember from it was shoe shine
box/stool. I know this is all very vague, but I wonder if anyone else
might know the book I'm talking about? I would dearly love to get a
copy of it.

At high school I jumped at the chance to enrol in the woodwork
classes and they were easily my favourite each week.
I made all the compulsory projects and many more of my own choice,
including my first real workbench. I continued on with hobby level
woodwork after leaving high school for a couple of years until I
left home.

Living in a variety of flats, units, etc for many years meant I
could do very little woodwork of any kind. I spent about ten years
doing things like making bookshelves from chipboard that I had cut
to size for me so that we had a place to store things around the house.

Recently at age 40 I have got more serious again, I made a decent
workbench and have been fleshing out my handtool collection and
starting to work on better quality projects again, so far mostly
things for my workshop and so on. My workshop is in a two car garage.
I have a few portable power tools, but tend to mostly use handtools.

I work as a computer systems manager for a manufacturing company
and find woodwork and fiddling with tools to be a good antidote
to a hard days bit bashing.

Peter Williams April 2002

Peter Williams            | Tel +61 3 5279 7456
Network support/Webmaster | Fax +61 3 5279 7414
Hendersons Industries     | peter.williams@h...
PO Box 4 Nth Geelong 3215 | http://www.hendersons.com.au/
 



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