MAKE AN ENGLISH LAYOUT SQUARE

As the world adopts unprecedented strategies to mitigate the spread of the coronavirus, taking on a new woodworking challenge might just be your best social-distancing tactic.

THERE’S NO ESCAPING IT; life has been turned upside down for all of us. Everyone has been affected by the global pandemic, some more than others. Woodworkers, by nature, are reasonably solitary craftspeople. We self-isolate with ease in our workshops, tend to enjoy our own company, and typically don’t experience that overarching desire to be entertained 24/7/365. Many of us have used the national lockdown time to tend to DIY jobs around the house, some have tidied and upgraded their workshops, while others have embarked on wonderful woodworking projects.

Although a large proportion of my time involves assisting, guiding and teaching woodworkers online and by phone for toolcraft.co.za (this service has been incredibly busy during the lockdown period), I did manage to accomplish a few projects of my own. Because my workshop is now also in regular use as a woodworking photographic studio – over and above being a functioning workshop – I needed to knock up a few items to make the photo shoots easier. I also managed to add extra facilities to my dustextraction system, and make a few more weighted mallets and thin pin dovetail marking knives for friends.

In this series of woodworking articles over the next three issues of Popular Mechanics, I’ll take you through three simple tool builds that I accomplished during lockdown, step by step.