With children growing up quicker today (in many ways) a guiding milestone is probably pubity when dexterity is better. Of course woodworking with sharp-edged and heavy tools is a dangerous activity and requires discipline. Many young toddlers will likely experience using a mallet to drive in pegs into a block of wood use a toy peg locating block dowellig block. This is probably the earlist inroduction which is relatively safe. A lot depends on the environment and the most natural entry to woodworking is to learn from a parent. It also depends on the nature of woodworking and tools first introduced. One of the gentlest tools is a powered fretsaw used to cut shapes in thin wood such as plywood. A powered fretsaw is a safe and satisfying entry into woodworking for a child aged six. I have had requests over the years from manyyoung people to give tuitin quite part from my teaching jobs in secondary schools. I would say the age of 3/14 is when skills can be quickly developed. A 3 year old uses a router for the first time Of the course the penknife is easily disregarded as a useful tool and one that can be mastered for carving or whittling away wood at an early age - maybe around 10 years of age. I recall using ne much younger but also in the Boy Scouts when camping. It is sad to think that such tools need supervision. When using a pen knif always cut away from the hands - safety first. Whatever tools are used, whether the be a sa, chisel, plane or drill, saafety always comes first and that is why it is best to first start learning woodwork under supervision where safety is taught.

I suppose referring to the art of the luthier as custom guitar making is a bit like calling Quiche Lorraine ham and egg pie. Let's stick with the latter as it might have more purchase with the woodworking beginner wbo wants to build a guitar that he/she can play. A radically lowcost Acoustic guitar build offering a quality sound Purchase is a consideration as traditionally there are many specialist guitar building tools and jigs that are expensive. This is not to mention the variety of fancy woods in an acoustic guitar such as Balkan spruce for the top, mahogany or maple for the neck and the back and sides, rosewood or ebony for the fingerboard and bridge. Anatomy of an acoustic guitar But you do not have to follow tradition to make a traditional guitar. Instead of steam bending the rosewood sides you can cold bend usingf a 2mm thick model making birch ply. You can use off the shelf prepared pine for the neck, laminating in strips to increase stability and you can purchase a pre-fretted fingerboard as that is probably the most skilful task involved. Selecting a good quality sound board (joined in two matching halves) can cost as little as "20 and the tools used can be basic lowcost woodwoodworking hand tools as well as a router costing under £60. The basic guitar making jig to form the body can be made from a piece of chipboards and using the same prepared wood strip sources from B & Q or similar. Very simple body former for cold bended thin ply sides ccccc

In an age when mistruth and deception will increasingly bombard our consciousness and cloud our judgment and our almost unconcious belief that AI will be beneficial in enhancing all mof our lives, it is wise to remember that wood never lies. Anyone working wood, our oldest renewable natural resource, will quickly learn that wood has a character and identity. In fact there are estimated to be over 15,000 timber species on planet Earth of which a very small percentage are commercially used. Wood tells you what you can or cannot do; it sets rules or boundaries and if you do not respect these rules when making something the wood will likely tell you and bow, twist or split. So the most fundamental rules are that wood is a fibrous material stronger in one direction than the other and so 'short-grain should be avoided. Wood shrinks and expands across the grain, how much depends on the timber and the moisture in the environment. Wooden artefacts, especially furniture should be designed to allow for timber movement which includes twisting and bowing. Working wood involves a relationship, a rapport between maker and material and an enlightened woodworker seeks 'truth to material' - to do what timber wants to do. A furniture maker who influenced me and many others and who demonstrated a close rapport with wood was Alan Peters (1933-2009). A bold yet understated design of his was the dished table with the grain of all the sections of the wood running in the same direction. This means the table shrinks and expands as one. Bowl Table by Alan Peters

Many years ago when I first set up a workshop I knew a man called Ken, also in his late twenties and who also was self-employed as a joiner/furniture maker. He was self-taught and I remember thinking at the time, impressed though I was with his work, it seemed a very slow way to learn and in my experience (which included working in a furniture factory), method and speed were just as important as accuracy and crucial for making a living from woodworking. In those days we rented rooms at £5 a week, in fact Ken took over my room in a shared house when I found a property to renovate. Obviously anybody can teach themself almost anything; I am self-taught as a guitarist and have such engrained bad habits that limit my lead performances because I learned the wrong way. High Backed Rocking Chair in ash by self-taught designer Jeremy Broun If you teach yourself you still need to read books which of course today have been largely replaced by YouTube videos, but which videos are good and deliver sound knowledge? Some videos demonstrate unsafe practice and others painfully slow, backwood looking practice. But the choice is yours. Somewhere along the line it helps to be inspired, which can be a matter of luck and timing. It would be wrong to suggest every woodworker should receive tuition. You certainly dont need a university degree to become a cabinetmaker although the trend is for that status. But in my own case I received the best possible training in cabinetry on and Advanced wood course at Shoreditch College (now long gone of course). When I set up my own workshop I survived as a self-taught designer developing my own style that was no artistic whim but evolved from my limited tools and resources. After three years I decided I needed a professional design training so I took a year off on a post-graduate course at High Wycombe college (late Bucks college). It was a course designed for the mass production industry so I was an oddball as a solo designer maker. I had already sold numerous rocking chairs (that were to become my trademark). I took one to the college to show my tutor (who probaly had not earned his crust from making) and he negated my style. So to cut a long story short it was a disastrous year but with a silver lining to it which I will expand on in a future blog. Follow my unusual story on my YouTube channel:

Let's assume you want a versatile starter kit of essential tools and equipment to enable you learn basis woodworking skills and make things to see how much you want to commit to woodworking. If we include a basic bench in your budget I reckon we are talking somewhere between £100 and £130 (buying online). I have researched and bought new lowcost tools and tested them myself as part of my groundbreaking course ' 'Design and make in wood'. Lets first dispel the myth about cheap tools. If they were badly made and did not fulfil their function they would not survive long on this overcrowded marketplace. A DIY cordless drill costing under £15 £100 (in 2025) might only be used a few minutes a month and will last for years. a 36 hour integrated enabling course for total beginners Here are extracts from 'Tools needed' from my proposed online course and whilst the Silverline 1/4" router cost £67 a Trend T4 router currently sells for £50. Three chisels cost under £10, a smoothing plane for around £20. A lowcost smoothing plane is adequate for a beginner Of course you can buy tools second hand tools from Ebay or find a local market that deals with old tools. The truth is there is a feelgood factor to owning a plane that is top quality and costs in exccess of £200 but there is no guarantee it will make you a better craftsman. For the first few years of my professional practice in the early 1970s when I could not even borrow £50 from my bank, I used limited handtools. A cabinet I designed and which, by invitation was shown at sold at Sotheby's auction house I used mostly lowcost tools. Who would know or indeed care unless I told them! Corner Drinks Cabinet designed by Jeremy Broun and sold at the Sotheby's First Sale of Contemporary British Crafts in 1980. Lowcost tools and power tools including a 16" drum sander were used. Now when it comes to materials, its best starting off using a soft forgiving wood such as pine. Despite rises in timber prices and sanctions on Russian pine being imported, it is still a relatively low cost material. Plywoods on the other hand are expensive. You may well be advised to look in skips at the valuable timber many people throw out or sourcing offcuts. Its hard to put a price on it but if I answer the question bluntly - to get started making something in wood - £20 will go a long way for a first basic project such as a shoe rack, shelving unit, birdhouse or plant stand.

In 1966 John Cleese in his 'Schoolmaster' sketch said 'Welcome back to school boys, now this year I want carpentry to be taken more seriously. in fact I want the gymnasium finished by Easter'. Wow, haven't we come far today! In my day being good at woodwork at school meant you were stupid and paradoxically today getting your hands dirty at school is still looked down upon, yet out there in the adult professional world being a furniture designer maker is the stuff of high status second career professionals including ex city bankers and marketing executives! A cartoon by Jeremy Broun in 1989 for Woodworking International magazine Not taking carpentry or woodworking seriously is also about not taking oneself too seriously. A magazine editor more recently wrote that many woodworkers today consider Jeremy Broun to be a router maverick. But hang on, I was the guy who wrote the pioneer book (The Incredible Router in 1989) and established the rules that I thought mavericks are supposed to break! There were no rules then because the router was a tool that was used for cutting grooves, rebates and profiling edges! I discovered the tool could do virtually any woodworking task and even offer precision that traditional hand methos could not achieve, not to mention open up a new vocabulary of joints! Revised hardback edition of the bestselling pioneer book For most of my furniture making career I was considered to be at least a decade before my time, promoted as the designer maker to emulate back in the early 1990s (eg. The Guild of Master Craftsmen Publications Careers Guide) and designing low cost simple items even before Ikea arrived in the UK. And then suddenly in this online revolution one is perceived as 'old school' (with a bit of fresh thinking thrown in)!   Simple lowcost clock designs a decade before Ikea arrived in the UK It does worry me though that furniture making (which I refer to as 'The Art of Carpentry' in my hardback book) is becoming increasingly expensive for anyone wanting to start up. Workshop space can be expensive to rent and you need a lot of tools even before you decide to commit yoyrself. Or do you? Watch this space for Lowcost entry to woodworking! Hardback book published by Jeremy Broun in 2019. Signed copies available. A perfect coffee table companion

February 2019 I passed out of Shoreditch College, the leading UK Handicraft Teacher training college in 1966 - with a Distinction in Advanced Woodwork. I went on to teach in numerous schools and leading colleges including Bristol Polytechnic where I trained CDT teachers and more recently (2009) I was invited to become an inspector for The British Accreditation Council (for Independent Higher Education) based on my vast and varied experience in Education. I didn't apply for the job but was invited and to this day don't know who put my name forward. Added to that I have run YTS courses where the Government of the day sponsored young people to work alongside practitioners serving as a valuable stepping stone in their career path. I have also run successful private courses and taken on young people for informal but intensive work experience programmes and in particular from Finland.  Jeremy Broun was the fitrst visiting lecturer at the Connemara West Centre in Ireland (1987) that has since become (Letterfrack Furniture School) a centre of excellence for furniture making talent It disturbs me that whereas I was priviliged to have by chance an exceptional and inspiring school woodwork teacher who set me on a path I would walk again today if I was 17, the opportunity for most young people to engage in practical education today is diminishing .  This is little short of scandalous because the skills go way beyond that of training someone to become a carpenter or plumber.  These are enabling, transferrable problem-solving life skills and I have documented them fully elsewhere (eg RSA Comment: Practical Arts in Education and Society. A 6 minute video showing work experience opportunities offered by me  in woodworking,   CNC, vehicle restoration and video production.  The opportunity is not just diminishing because the focus on secondary education is away from engineering, manufacturing, making - in fact for jobs we don't know will exist in this rapidly changing technological age, but there is almost a deliberate and systemmatic block under the name of 'political correctness' that is shooting us in the foot.  Not long ago schools claimed it was too expensive to maintain workshops and lacked the imagination that quality materials can be found in skips for young people to create things with. That kills two birds with one stone as it addresses the serious issue of the throw away society. Health and Safety became another block and devoid of flexibility and common sense risk assessment in a case-by-case scenario and whereas the term 'apprenticeship' has been banded about by politicians when it suits them, in reality offering an apprenticeship today is full of expensive deterrents and now we have a situation where only the well-off can afford a craft training post secondary school.  A fellow furniture maker friend of mine and prominent in the field, today told me his experience of once considering offering an apprenticeship. Despite his large efficient workshop he was told his machines were not far enough apart and when he said the youngster wouldn't be using his machines but would start off loading timbers from outside he was told that the youngster would have to be issued with sun cream. Silly me I forgot that today we have a generation of over-protective parents and some of them in Education who insist (if it isn't already law) that to play conkers you must wear safety glasses and a helmet.   Not that long ago local schools were keen to send their sixth formers to me for short periods of work experience. One young lady assisted me making a documentary film about the late Alan Peters, the foremost British furniture craftsman of the late 20th Century and she later gained a job as a researcher with the BBC.    Recently I tried engaging with schools but they never answer emails or are in tea break when you try to phone a key person. My own generation, many of whom enjoying their leisure time must surely be aware these valuable skills will be lost. Maybe they don't care but I have always been committed to education and passing on the skills I was advantaged to learn. Who knows what jobs or skill demands there will be post-Brexit in a decade from now?   When I taught my   highly successful Intensive Design and Make in Wood courses in my small studio to adults a few years ago,  several of my students commented that actually what I was teaching were life skills. As it stands many of the state furniture making courses have been closed down and the vacuum filled by elite and very expensive schools.  Is this a society of equal opportunity? Please read my short essay for The Royal Society of Arts in 2009: The Value of Practical Arts in Education and Society:   https://www.thersa.org/comment/2011/01/practical-arts-in-education-and-society

September 2011 A few days ago I did a stupid thing and whilst using a portable metal grinder the molegrips slackened, the metal moved and the rotating cutter went quick walkabouts over my hand ripping through a layer of flesh around the base of my thumb. Fortunately no nerves or tendons were severed as this is my right hand used for guitar playing and my thumb is very important. The last time I damaged a hand was also whilst working on a car project in 1989 and I drilled through the bodywork with a half inch drillbit, forgetting I was supporting the material with my fingers the other side. In fact it was the same thumb! Complete stupidity and a reminder how valuable my hands are.     I often lie awake at night silhouetting my hands against the moon shining through a skylight above my bed. I still have beautiful hands, strong working man's hands but also well proportioned hands with guitar player's fingers. I don't think its vanity but a sheer appreciation of the wonder of how the hands interpret what the brain commands. I exercise my hands whilst doing my full moon ritual, making the fingers move in every possible way. Learning guitar chords (or any instrument probably) is an excellent workout for hand and brain. Some guitar chord shapes take tens of hours to master from the initial careful placing of each finger on each string, often awkward to hold the position, then months later the chord shape is executed at speed.  I'm lucky, although I used to be able to site read, I play totally by ear and once the muscle memory kicks in the chord sequences are automatic and I can then concentrate on expression. I am amazed at how many jazz players read off the manuscript. I thought jazz was supposed to be free and improvised. I am an improvisor and my wonderful hands are the greatest gift I could ever ask for, linked to a brain that fires on four cylinders most of the time. I am very fortunate, at this moment in time I have no aches and pains in my limbs and in particular my hands and it is surprising I have not worn my hands out.     I have made a living from my hands, renovated three houses and made countless pieces of furniture. On my rocking chairs alone I have drilled nearly forty thousand holes through which eight miles of sailing cord has passed to create the upholstery (although many of the chairs were woven by others) but I drilled every hole.     Over five decades of using my hands since building my first guitar at school, I reckon this represents between 30,000 and 50,000 hours of creative hand work and still they are almost as agile as when I was 17 years old. This takes into account a fair percentage of my life immobilised by depression. Perhaps the price I pay for such wonderful hands.

October 2024 Its been a while since I posted and probably no bad thing as there is so much opinion out there bombarding our senses daily. But I hope when I do write a blog I have something worthwhile to say, even if only a few people read it in this new wold of online woodworking gurus!  Do people still read blogs?  An issue that cropped up during my judging of The Alan Peters Furniture Award this year (2024) and again in a video on Instagram is short grain and its inherent structural weakness.  This diagagram demonstrates the X Y rule I taught back in my esarly days of school teaching. It is a very simple rule; X should be longer than Y in a construction. Of course this was back in the last century when woodwork was taught in school. Fast forward to today and YouTube and Instagram is where most people learn woodwork. Certainly there are major iunfluencers in the USA and UK and a new mindset of cancelling history and re-inventing the wheel as books and magazines are no longer the stalwart of curated information. But Nature does not lie and wood has no interest in history or fashion but has its own truth. The first instance that came to my notice (and the other judges of the Alan Peters Furniture Award) was a striking looking immaculately veneered table. It had cantilevered legs as in the schematic cross-section diagam below: The leg acts as a lever and where it joins the top you can immediately see the short grain and where the main stress point is. Strong woodworking joints rely on long overlapping fibres. So these fibres are further weakened by the large wooden dowels that are presumably used to re-inforce the joint!  It reminds me of the antique chairs I used to repair in my early days as a furniture maker helping pay the workshop rent. The mortice and tenons had long since loosened by the detereorated fish glue and subsequent attempts to repair the chairs would be to insert steel screws or wooden dowels. This involved drilling through the joint weakening the fibres and further weakening the chair. Below is a schematic sectional diagram of a beautifully crafted small table leg joint, video filmed on Instagram with mouth watering closeups of the joint being squeezed together and the dowel plug shaved flush with a chisel. So one presumes a steel screw has been inserted to strengthen the joint. Now this diagram is a cross section through the middle of the joint, whereas the table top female joint receives much of the short-grained cantilevered leg but the effect is the same. The strength of the joint is always at the weakest part.     I was not going to mention names but I did in fact engage in a friendly but critical conversation with the maker a rising star - Tom Addison. And of course he defended what he described to me as a 'controversial' joint by saying it had been thoroughly tested by him and his wife sitting on it. Reminds me of my radical cantilevered rocking chair design!     Anyone following my own furniture making career would know I was the first to challenge tradition and was quite a rebel, paying the price sometimes when I broke the rules and did not respect that timber moves. I am passionate about innovation but in the back of my mind I always ask - how will this piece of furniture be abused as well as used and will such a joint withstand a really sudden jolt or somebody standing on the table to change a lightbulb.     What came out of this risky taboo breaking convention of oine furniture maker not challenging another was a friendly off-topic exchange as I looked at Tom's website and discovered he was 2014 Fell running British champion so I spilled the beans on his Instagram feed that in my youth I won my school record for 440 yards at 51.3 seconds, clipping .6 of a second off the then Women's world record. But it was a meaningless story as I was nowhere near British male champion standard!  I gained insight into the struggles of today's young makers, many ofg whom have young families to support,a stark choice I had to make as a young man that I could not earn enough as a designer maker to support a wife and kids.  Wood is a curious animal, sometimes we can get away with pushing the boundaries and sometimes with modern adhesives but the fundamental fibrous character of wood hasn't changed. If my half century of experience is worth a dime to anyone perhaps my suggestion would be don't re-inforce the joint, you are cutting into/severing essential fibres that give the joint strength. Using steel re-inforcing rods with epoxy glue should be controversial in that some very famous and very expensive chairs have featured this but what happens over time? Wood and metal have a different co-efficient of expansion. I am not going to mention this particular name but I will pass on what Alan Peters once said to me 'You would do well to visit a museum and see how wood behaves over time'.        Advice from those who came before.

October 2011  I think it was the year of 1973 and I was working in a converted cattleshed workshop on the outskirts of Bath. The rent was £5 per week. I called myself 'The Bath Carpenter' and took on a variety of work ranging from trimming the bottom of doors (fitted carpets had made their debut then), to building fitted wardrobes and kitchens which paid the way for me to speculate on my individualistic contemporary furniture designs. I used an anonymous title as I felt good design should sell on its own merits rather than rely on a name, a rather naive view.  The converted cattleshed workshop in Milton Avenue, Bath (1973) There were no outlets for my furniture. It was too modern. I did manage to persuade the owner of a local Persian Carpet shop to put one of my rocking chairs in front of one of his expensive carpets in the window and he took just ten percent. There were two craft galleries in Bath at the time; Coexistence and Centaur Designs. I remember the tall female owner of Coexistence looking down on me and asking whether I had been to the Royal College of Art. I had more breeding in my little toe! I politely withdrew from her exclusive gallery and walked across the road to Centaur Designs with my portfolio. I showed a picture of my rocking chair and said it had been selected for a major London exhibition called "Wood". In his put down I recall the proprietor saying 'Let's wait and see what happens from the London exhibition' which in effect was code for 'come back when you are famous'. An early rocking chair in pine which sold in 1974 for £40 for sale in 2023 for £4,950  A few years later a gallery owner in the north of England telephoned me invited me to show my work at an exhibition. I asked her didn't she want to see my portfolio. 'No she said' reassuringly 'That's not necessary, we know your work'. Did they?!

August 2012 Andrew Varah died in July 2012, delivering something of a shock to the British bespoke furniture making community where he had become a distinguished figure; the bloke I recall from my student days, who always sat at the top table, could charm the girls and where after a late start in the furniture making world, he arrived. John Makepeace OBE (speaker), David Pearce, Jeremy Broun (speaker) and Andrew Varah (speaker) at the Irish CREATE event in 2005 It was little surprise he was ambitious as he was the son of Chad Varah, the founder of the Samaritans suicide telephone line, member of MENSA and his mother, head of the Mothers Union Europe. Andy was a triplet and identical twin.         I first met Andrew in 1963 as a fellow student at the legendary Shoreditch Teacher Training College in Surrey. In our second year Andrew got me a room in the sought after old college building alongside his close mates Geoff Buckland, John Eustace and Max Carter. I suppose the obvious thing we all had in common was that we spoke without an accent and so it was probably a class thing. I guess in retrospect we were an elite group although I saw ourselves as different rather than better than the main core of trainee handicraft teachers. We tended to be more independent minded. Shoreditch College was a fantastic training ground not just in woodworking skills but in other craft disciplines such as metalworking, basketmaking, pottery and bookbinding and we had the very best practitioners in the country as tutors. My  God those were the days and I shed a tear on the very last day of my training looking over Runnymede from the college campus, thinking it will never be as good as this again. Shoreditch was renowned for supplying not only the best teachers but the pranks that went on at the college were legendary. From one of the towers in our residential building I recall being persuaded by an errant third year student to spray one of the college tutors on duty with a fire water hose and later hiding in Andrew's wardrobe while the search party sifted through the study bedrooms. Andrew was sitting in bed wearing a nightcap, reading a book, innocently pointing to the open window which happened to be four storeys up and telling the tutor 'maybe they went that way'. I was nearly kicked out as an example to other students but I went on to gain a Distinction on the Advanced Woodwork course while Andrew became social secretary and was out with the girls rather than pushing his cabinetmaking skills.  Andy helped me buy my first Morgan three-wheeler and we drove out to secluded pubs in Virginia Water in it and even attended a party in Surrey held by John Gregson the actor. The three-wheeler had no reverse gear and on one occasion we plunged through somebody's garden fence in Bagshot. We shared many fun experiences lasting into our thirties.  The first 1937 Morgan three-wheeler arrives on the Shoreditch College campus in 1962, causing a sensation amongst students and staff.   I took Andy salmon poaching on wild Scottish rivers (my home was in Scotland) and on our last day of the trip I said  'I can't send you back to London empty handed'. While my older sister stood lookout for the bailiff, I hooked the salmon and Andrew landed it.        I hooked the salmon and Andy landed it  - an apt description of our furniture making careers. (1968) On a furniture travel scholarship abroad my car was stolen and he offered to drive over to Holland to pick me up. I managed to get an old banger and arrived back from a 24-hour drive straight from Italy to his barn workshops near Rugby and he was the first to see all the exciting items of innovative furniture I had been given. The old banger loaded with gifts from Artek, Cassina Artemide etc  - first port of call Andrew Varah's pad 1979 At the beginning of our careers Andrew and I taught in tough London schools and met up in our respective school workshops after school hours to brainstorm designs for school projects. We were pioneers of design in schools a decade before 'Design Craft Technology' became officially part of the curriculum. We both left teaching after two years and Andy went to work in Zambia running a furniture factory. He invited me over to be his designer but my phobia for injections stopped that. He returned around 1974 but in preceding years had written to me many times asking what it was like to be a 'designer maker' and saying he wanted to do what I was doing back in England.  Andy set up as a solo maker and so our contact was much closer. I visited him many times at Little Walton, mucking into the renovations of his barn workshop. He had a fantastic pad while I was working in a tiny underground city workshop without natural light. A strange contrast as at the time he was an unknown and I was well acknowledged in the field by galleries and magazines.  Around 1979 I introduced him to the Prestcote Gallery and remember his very first exhibit there, an inlaid table in ash. It was a electric time as the new boys exhibited alongside the old boys; A Fred Baier chair sitting next to an Edward Barnsley table. A table by Andrew Varah circa 1976 Perhaps ashamed of my own somewhat tiny workshop I turned down an opportunity in 1989 to be filmed for a regional television craft documentary and introduced the film director Trevor Hill to Andrew Varah who at that time had just taken on the genius woodworker Andrew Whateley from John Makepeace's workshop. I think it was Andrew's first television exposure and at that time a rare insight into the work of furniture designer makers. Jan Leeming, ex News reader was the presenter.  A chair by Andrew Varah around the time of the first television feature   Andrew delighted in pleasing his clients and working to their needs, often adding whims drawn from different architectural periods making his actual designs somewhat derivative and overplayed in clever craftsmanship in my opinion. I felt he became a bit of an 'untouchable' in terms of design critique but then there are no  critics of bespoke modern furniture! If it were a West End play the performances would be torn apart by ruthless critics (Kiera Knightly playing Anna Karenina)! But design apart, Andrew Varah became a formidable maker and guiding light to a new blossoming generation of furniture designer makers. It was the late Alan Peters (who also trained at Shoreditch College) who said in 1974 this is surely the most difficult craft to sustain.   I still have some prime quality flitch cut English oak Andrew sold me at cost price in the year of the drought in 1976 and some Rio rosewood veneer he gave me on the same occasion. In our halcyon days Andy would often get to meet the girls I dated and would say 'I can't believe how you can pull the most beautiful birds' yet he could pull the most prestigious clients and was really in a different league running a furniture business and employing talented young craftsmen, many of whom stayed for decades. Above all Andy Varah had an astute business sense in what is a very difficult business to sustain There was obviously rivalry between Andrew nyself. Even as students he once told me he could run as fast without training as his identical twin brother Mike who was running 800 yards for Britain. I told him he was arrogant and challenged him to run around the college track. He beat me after 26 laps and I was in the college athletics team and he wasn't! Curiously as my furniture 'career' suffered because of depression in my life I once admitted to Andy I had often phoned up his old man's outfit the Samaritans. I got the impression Andy did not get to see much of his father in his youth. Despite our more recent fall outs, we exchanged an amicable conversation at our last chance meeting at an exhibition in Cheltenham where we were both judges for different awards.  I made a film including him called 'Five Ways to Fashion Wood' in 1989 In 2006 Irish furniture maker organized an event call CREATE and invited John Makepeace, Andrew Varah and,and a light-hearted clip called 'Three wise men' in 2005:       A light-hearted view of two different versions of history at the at the Irish CREATE event Q & A session in 2005 Inevitably Andy and I followed different paths, but nothing can take away our early formative and fun years.   Varah RIP.

December 2012 One of my missions throughout my woodworking career has been to encourage as much as I can young people to use their hands and minds at school. I originally trained and taught as a Handicrafts teacher in London. Over my career I have seen the demise of the practical arts in schools yet the creative practical arts generally are a huge national asset. Early in 2010 I received an invitation to teach a Saturday masterclass at Eggars comprehensive school in Hampshire. It was a very successful day involving a team effort of staff at the school with yours truly heading the project I had devised. The mostly 15 year old boys and girls took home to mum a useful artefect which embodied equally useful woodworking and life skills.    Jeremy Broun teaches a woodworking masterclass at a Hampshire comprehensive school  It is vital young people develop their potential fully through using the incredible gift of hands irrespective of whether they get a job as a carpenter or brain surgeon. That is not the point. 'Education through the use of materials' is what a few of us called it in the 1960's and served as a vehicle for fostering self determination, acountability, stamina, visualisation,  interpreting abstract ideas into three dimensional objects, numeracy skills, not to mention motor skills involving the senses of touch, sight, and sound, muscle memory. Despite throwing 'craft' out of the curriculum the most enlightened teachers in the 1960's were doing all of this in an integrated way, (teaching design as part of making) but the now established Design Technology curriculum, passes over many of the essential 'making' skills, not least through a basic misunderstanding that the prime purpose of teaching eg. woodwork at school is to train carpenters. That is the role of post school specialist education.   With the increasing uncertainty of what jobs we are training young people for (and questioning whether university should be the default route) there is ever more need to teach them resourcefulness through making things and designing what they make. Anybody daring to claim it is too expensive to provide practical education, go raid a skip and use some valuable secondhand wood that is thrown out daily! I am course honoured (in 2010) that my skills have not been dumped on a skip and that a school like this invites someone like me to pass on my skills and experience. There are plenty of exclusive and very expensive masterclasses for older people, many switching careers from 'The City' and encouraged to use equally expensive tools but our obligation is to future generations and give all young people an equal opportunity to develop through their hands. The last time I worked with young people (before the Eggars masterclass) was at my local technical college teaching acoustic guitar making to a group of errant 16 - 19 year olds, some in trouble with the Police and all lacking in any numeracy or literacy paper qualifications from their secondary schooling. It wasn't easy and only three survived out of a group of six but they made their guitars and will probably always look back on this achievement with pride. A simple leaning bookstand exploiting a dovetail designed by Jeremy Broun and presented to 13 year olds in 1963 made by 15 year olds at a Hampshire comprehensive School in 2010. Teaching acoustic guitar making on an 'Education to Employment' course in 2005