About

Who writes this

I'm Ewan. I work wood by hand, mostly at weekends, in a shed at the bottom of the garden and, when it is too cold out there, a corner of the spare room.

I started with a second-hand jack plane and a book from the library, and for years I have kept notebooks: cut lists, sketches, angles that worked, and an honest record of what went wrong. Those notebooks are where everything on this site comes from.

I am writing them up properly here in the autumn of 2026. So the site is new, but the projects are dated by when I made them, from 2024 onwards, using the notes I took at the time.

I am not a professional and nothing here is the only way to do it. These are the methods that work in a small space with a modest set of tools, written down so I stop relearning them, and in case they are useful to someone in the same position.

Why Birchwren

A wren nests in the hedge by the shed every spring and is the loudest thing in the garden. The birch is the tree it sits in. It seemed better than naming the site after myself.