I keep a dated diary of one small hand-tool workshop on the Norfolk and Suffolk border, recording what I cut, what the timber did afterwards, and which of my own habits was responsible.

The workshop is a brick outbuilding behind the house, about four metres by three, with a cement floor and one window facing north. It holds a bench, a wall of hand tools, a rack of boards, and no machine except a cordless drill and a small bandsaw for ripping curves. I started keeping this diary in 2021, after a winter in which I made the same mistake twice and could not remember the first time. Every entry is dated, and the dates matter a good deal more than the opinions attached to them.

This corner of the Norfolk and Suffolk border is damp for half the year. The shop is unheated, so between November and March the air in it sits near eighty per cent relative humidity and bare tools take a film of rust within a fortnight. Most of my timber is air-dried oak, ash and a little elm, bought as sawn boards from a mill two villages over. Working local hardwood in an unheated room means the stock, the shop and the house are three different numbers, and the finished piece has to survive all three.

I am an amateur and I work slowly, usually two evenings a week and a Saturday morning. Nothing here is instruction. These methods suit one bench, one pair of hands and the boards I happen to own, and I have left my errors where they happened rather than editing them into competence. I do not name the mill, the tool makers, the person who taught me to sharpen, or the neighbour who lends me the long clamps every time I glue up something ambitious.