Dafydd Eveleigh from “Handmade: Britain’s Best Woodworker” on his passion for woodwork (BSL)

Hello, my name is Dafydd “sign name hammer.” I was born and raised in South Wales. I grew up communicating orally and used some SSE (signed supported english) with my friends in school. I didn’t use BSL until I was 25 when I had the opportunity to go on a BSL linguistics course. My life began at that point when I realised that BSL is a proper language and not just a communication tool!

I currently work in the civil service in south wales and have done for the last 15 years however this blog is about a hobby which I am passionate about; woodwork. Growing up I always saw neighbours doing DIY or having builders around the house and I would always spend hours just watching them and working out how they did things. There were only 3 TV channels in those days with little or no subtitles!

I suppose from a young age I was fascinated by how people could get raw materials and produce amazing works. Even the construction of a brick wall would fascinate me because of how the walls were vertical using a spirit level.

I would then build flat packs for my parents and always felt a sense of pride in my accomplishment. Then in around 2014- 2017 when YouTube videos became automatically captioned I saw a video by Steve Ramsey, an American doing woodwork on a channel called Woodwork for Mere Mortals.

Steve made everything look simple with few power tools and pocket joinery and after one video I thought “I can do that!” I looked for a British woodworker and I found Peter Millard online and saw how he was producing cupboards and crafts out of a tiny workshop in London.

Getting work as a deaf person is tough, to overcome the barriers you have to work ten times harder than anyone else, but you also have to work smart and grab the opportunities as they appear.

I honed my skills in woodwork by making mistakes and learning from them. In woodwork there are hundreds of ways to do the same thing. So I would start off with small projects like boxes, small toy planes, things I could give away as gifts.

At the same time I would keep watching Youtube and watch any video related to woodworking. Most importantly I would just do it, give it a go and learn from the experience. Everything I have made has a flaw somewhere, sometimes the challenge of woodworking is how well you can recover from your mistakes, or adapt the mistake to so it looks like it was intended.

With woodwork I am motivated by making people happy whether it is family, friends or strangers. If I can make people’s world that much little better then I will have made a difference! Whether it is by providing a hand made product as a gift and seeing a smile on people’s faces or being involved in the civil service.

Or by supporting and providing a service that makes a difference to people’s lives or simply volunteering in my local deaf club – trying to make a difference no matter how small it what keeps me going.

My Favorite project to date is the clock I made on the Channel 4 TV show “Handmade: Britain’s Best Woodworker”  as there were so many story levels in the clock that I thought was clever. For example, the material I used is OSB which is considered to be an inferior wood, but people don’t realise how strong and water resistant it is.

The clock also used the Welsh regional variation of numbers in sign language , but I moved the clock face 90 degrees anti clockwise so the number 12 is where the 9 is so if you don’t know the numbers in BSL then you won’t know the time.

Woodworking gives me joy and is important to my well-being. The feeling of creating something with your own hands gives me an immense amount of satisfaction. What gives me more pleasure is the faces of people when I give them a hand made gift made by me.

Being on the TV programme meeting the other contestants and receiving recognition from other woodworkers has shown me what a lovely woodworking community is out there who are always willing to share their craft skills and tips.

YouTube has made the craft very accessible, but it does depend on whether the person is able to follow and understand the subtitles. So I would have to say learning online is not completely accessible.

The biggest barrier for training is the colleges as they still use CSW’s (communication support workers) who have limited BSL skills. I really don’t understand why colleges work hard to get the best lecturers they can afford, only to provide a sub standard communication support.

For clarification, for me a CSW is someone who has level 1 or 2 BSL which is nowhere near enough to know how to translate the technical jargon in woodwork. I know professional BSL/English interpreters who struggle with the technical jargon and use all their experience so how can you expect someone who is level 1 or 2 with no interpreter or translator training to give deaf people the quality they need.

However, woodworking is a visual craft as with just a hammer nail and a saw you can create some amazing things, there is no need for all the power tools and machinery. But having the power tools does make life easier and more fun 🙂

Building an 8ft by 7ft bespoke fitted shelf with adjustable shelves for a friend was amazing and extremely stressful as I had over estimated how time consuming and complicated it would be. I will forever appreciate my friend for the patience and taking a chance on me when I had never done anything like it before.

I think there are three main misconceptions about woodworking. The first is that you need a workshop full of power tools. If you look at what Lauren Woods does, the winner of series two of Handmade, she has one of the smallest workshops and very few power tools, but she is able to make some of the most amazing products!

Secondly, people assume woodworking will save you money. Yet it can actually be a very expensive hobby and some of the things you make you could probably buy cheaper in the shops!

People also tend to underestimate the costs of asking someone to build a one off bespoke product, even for small items. They need to consider not only the materials, but the utility costs of the workshop, the wear and tear on the machinery and their own time too.

I have met a few deaf people who do woodwork, one of them is my best friend! There isn’t a community of us at the moment, but I do hope there will be an opportunity to build one one in future.

My advice to a deaf person who wants to start in woodwork but doesn’t have any experience is as follows:

1. Just do it, grab a hammer, a hand saw,  some nails and knock something together.

2. Look at flat packs, look at how furniture is put together, nearly all furniture construction follows a similar process.

3. Watch lots of YouTube videos.

4. Get a friend involved and work together to build things for each other.

5. Just do it and learn from your mistakes, don’t be afraid to make mistakes, it is how you learn.

6. Take your time and enjoy the process, if you feel you’re starting to get frustrated then walk away and come back tomorrow.

To find out more about Dafydd’s woodworking projects take a look at his Instagram page: https://instagram.com/thedeafmaker?igshid=NzZlODBkYWE4Ng==