Woodworking

Jack Brennan says playing the Irish bagpipes helped him through the stress of a 39-year career investigating crime. Now retired, he's making the complicated pipes, with a very Australian flavour.

"You walk around the log and ask it what it wants to be, sometimes it talks back," says Kevin Duffy, who is busy carving a "seat of reflection" from an old giant sequoia in the north-east Victorian town of Beechworth. 

It's the only program like it in the southern hemisphere — where people who are blind or have low-vision are learning woodturning with unmodified equipment.

Hundreds of blue gum plantations growing across Western Australia could go from paper pulp to high-rise supports as experts look to unlock a vast native timber supply.

The volunteers from the Woodturners Society of Queensland work all year to handcraft wooden toys to give to children in need during the festive season.

Malcolm Lowe wanted to be a rock star. So he gave up furniture making and started making guitars. 

Peter Trott, one of the few Australians making high-quality hand tools for woodworkers, furniture makers and other artisans, is encouraging others to take up the dying trade.

Musician Tony Newport is the proud owner of a harp made entirely of precious Tasmanian timbers from the West Coast, donated by the Bradshaw family.

Queensland carpenter Jason Porter is giving precious pieces of farming history new life — and new jobs — as glass-topped dining tables.

Two Sheds aims to address the entrenched gender gap in the building industry by providing community-based women's and children's woodworking and carpentry skills programs.  

Tommy Besant wakes up every morning in a messy work shed surrounded by tools, timber and a stable of elaborate rocking horses he's brought to life with his own hands – and he owes his obsession to a childhood gift from his father.

Woodworking clubs around the country are seeing more women getting involved in what has traditionally been a male-dominated pastime.

Riverland resident Liz Bull was not allowed to study woodwork at school. Now she is part of a growing group of regional women falling in love with the craft. 

Tim Anson has been creating walking sticks since he was a child, having started after his father gave him a penknife on his eighth birthday.

Michael Watson has been an arborist for almost 15 years, so working with a chainsaw is second nature to him. But the self-taught chainsaw artist is new to woodwork.

A year after a goanna sculpture was stolen in the southern Flinders Ranges, a new statue has returned in its place. Now the artist hopes to create an art trail in SA's Mid North.

The Marie Kondo-inspired tidying-up craze has pressured us to de-clutter, without much consideration for where those items end up. Here's how to repair the things you might usually throw away.

The table's ornately carved woods panels depict early colonial life in Australia and was purchased with donations to the institution.

Free woodworking courses were offered to women in the 1980s to get them in trades, childcare provided. Nowadays Patt Gregory is teaching women from her home to get them involved.

When Kristine bought her first home, an old Queenslander, there was no money left to convert the inside. She's learnt how to use power tools and upcycle affordable materials to transform her old house into a long-lasting home.