As I am appearing regularly on the Wealden website I thought I would introduce myself properly and give my routing background.
My woodworking began as a boy during the war (the 1939 -1945 war) with Hobbies fretwork sets.
I was never any good at school woodwork lessons, and can't remember much about them except that I did not take to a great barn of a classroom with rows of identical benches. Perhaps that's why I only give courses on a one-to-one basis today. I left school at sixteen and woodworking took a back seat to evening-class studies for a degree and professional qualifications, but I found time to build a workshop in the back garden of my parent's house. In the mid fifties I built up a good collection of quality hand tools, mostly Record, as a result of an old-established tool shop, near where I worked,closing down and selling its stock at greatly reduced prices. This was years before discounts became the norm.
After I got married I moved to a new house in Sussex and did a certain amount of rustic woodwork in connection with the garden and general DIY work indoors. I didn't get back into woodwork proper until we had a large extension to the house built in the mid-seventies. This gave me both the room to work and the incentive, since we had four children, each now with their own bedroom, and no money to buy furniture.
I built four wardrobe/dressing table units, largely by hand, and their completion came at the time when the first 'Woodworker' Show was held at the old Horticultural Halls near Victoria Station. I went along and was amazed at the range of power tools and machinery available to the amateur - particularly as I had just slogged through the bedroom units with hand tools. I decided that I would like a Coronet Major machine, with most of the accessories, and took my wife to a demonstration of it in order to get her approval for the expenditure required. This was not entirely a good move. My wife was intrigued by the woodturning part of the demonstration and said "I could do that - OK buy it" since when I have hardly had a look-in on the Coronet, and she has become a skilled turner, pyrographer and general woodworker.
Along with the Coronet Major I bought my first router, the non-plunging Black and Decker HD 1250 of blessed memory to all who owned one. I also bought a De Walt radial arm saw and De Walt planer/thicknesser, both of which are still in daily use. Soon after, I bought a 600W Elu 96 (there was no 'E' model with variable speed in those days) and the accessory table kit that is still available from De Walt. These were used to make articles for sale at Craft Fairs, which we started going to nearly thirty years ago, and where we first met Alan and Monica Arnott.
Woodwork was still only a part-time activity for me since I stayed in my full-time job in the City, but in 1990 I negotiated early retirement to pursue my woodworking interests. I had no intention at that time of giving courses but after a few years' retirement that is what I found myself doing. Nearly twenty years later this is still a major part of my woodworking life but an increasing part is occupied by writing for woodworking magazines. I had written one or two articles for The Woodworker in the 1980's but writing on a regular basis began in 1995 when Mark Ramuz, then editor of Traditional Woodworking, invited me to contribute a monthly article on routing to that magazine. Later, when The Router magazine was in the planning stage I received an invitation to write the 'Beginners guide' series of articles which developed into a regular series on routing techniques.
Soon after this I began contributing reviews and articles on routers, cutters and routing techniques to Routing magazine.
My articles for the first twenty-one issues of The Router were collected and published by GMC Publications, in 2000, as a book with the rather grandiose title 'Mastering the Router - A Complete Course' ISBN 1-86108-194-4. It is still in print.
I have a small but comfortable workshop in which the main items of machinery are a radial arm saw, planer/thicknesser, pillar drill and Hegner fretsaw. Elsewhere we have a Startrite 352 bandsaw, belt and disc sanders, numerous portable power tools and, of course, a collection of routers. My activities put me in the privileged position of being able to get my hands on almost any item of routing equipment, and I am one of the few places in the country where you can find the Leigh dovetail and mortise and tenon jigs, Trend dovetail jigs, the WoodRat, the Incra Jig, kitchen worktop jigs and numerous other commercial devices. I also have a top of the range dust extractor, an Airshield Pro respirator, a Microclene ambient air filter, electronic ear defenders and all the other safety equipment.
I use cutters from most of the major suppliers but the bulk are from Wealden.
Apart from the expensive commercial kit, however, I am a firm believer in making simple work aids to increase the scope of the router. I am not talking about fancy jigs, but very simple things - what the late Roy Sutton called 'gadgets' - such as anti-tilt plates, false bases, small-circle cutters etc. A number of these will be appearing on this website.
Back in 1999 I wrote a booklet of Routing Hints and Tips, including numerous simple work aids, which was banded with a copy of The Woodworker. Many of these tips can be found on the 'Quick Tips' section of the site and they are constantly being updated.
For the past twenty years or so I have given Routing Masterclasses and demonstrations at many of the major Woodworking Exhbitions, including Wembley, Alexandra Palace, Kempton Park, the Midland Showground and the De La Warr Pavilion.
My favourite routers are (still) the Elu 96E and 177E, but to these I would add the De Walt DW 621 and DW 625, the Trend T5 and T11, the Triton 1400 (especially for table use), the Hitachi M8V MkII and the Festool 1400. On top of this, I also get to try many other models as they come to me for testing. I'm really very lucky doing what I am doing.
As mentioned above, my wife is the expert woodworker at our house. She is a woodturner, pyrographer and general woodworker, and has her own workshop with the Coronet Major, which is used mainly as a lathe but also with its 6" belt sander, a Carbatec miniature lathe, a bigger Hegner, a Delta belt/disc sander and, of course, the associated dust extraction. She invariably upstages me at exhibitions.
With my time taken almost entirely with courses and writing I get very little opportunity for making anything. My wife has been known to tell people that I give courses in order to avoid actually having to make anything. This is not entirely true but, I suspect, not entirely false .
