Q: How did you get into woodworking?
A: Believe it or not, I used to be a crop duster (well, Ag pilot really, but no-one ever knows what that is). I wasn’t very satisfied with the work and I was moonlighting as a tour guide when I came across the Bungendore Wood Works Gallery. I’d always been good with my hands, but I didn’t know you could make things like that for a living. I was instantly hooked and demanded they give me a job. The rest is history, as they say.

Q: Who are your woodworking heroes/gods/gurus?
A: Not James Krenov! He’s a great bloke and a wonderful craftsman but I think his methods are very personal and should not be taught so actively. My heroes are Alan Peters and Richard Williams from England, Finn Juhl from Denmark and Brian Boggs from the USA. Closer to home, I think Tony Kenway has shown us how to play with the big kids, and I greatly respect Dr Rodney Hayward. Of course, Rodney would probably take to me with a stick over my Krenov comments, but I’m sticking to my guns (or should I say chisels?).

Q: What do you mainly make?
A: Whatever anyone will pay me for! Actually, my first love is chairs (honey, if your reading this we are only talking furniture), and we make a lot of chairs. These days we make just about everything.

Q: Your thoughts on traditional vs ‘new’ and digital?
A: I’m not sure what you mean by digital, but I am against it on principle. Furniture is a ‘practical art’ and a piece must make a visceral connection with people to be successful. Originality for the sake of it is misguided, while reproducing designs that are no longer appropriate for our lifestyle is equally weird. Who these days really needs a traditional breakfront desk with a gazillion pigeon holes? My philosophy is ‘find your voice as a designer and maker by doing beautiful work that responds to a need’. One of the reasons I like chairs is because sitting down will never go out of fashion.

Q: What are you pet woodworking hates?
A: Our collective hang-up with hand tools and traditional methods. Good work is good work which by definition reflects the maker’s intent and skill. The great makers are driven by results, not technique. Eighteenth century makers would have sold their firstborn child to get our modern equipment, because it would have freed them up to be even more expressive. This is not an argument for de-skilling, quite the reverse—I’m simply advocating that we focus on the piece and not the process.

Q: What is your desert island hand tool/ machine/ timber/ woodie book?
A: The book would be Alan Peters Cabinetmaking, the Professional Approach. If I couldn’t take my whole workshop, then I think I’d just take a fishing rod.

Q: The best thing you’ve ever made?
A: That’s like asking ‘which child do you love the most?’. I am proud of the originality of The Dancer and I am very pleased with just about ever aspect of the Cascade rocking chair. I also think the Seren Dining Table is fully resolved. The Tamar is my favourite dining chair, but I am more proud of the Clearwater chair because it is a much earlier design and represents a real breakthrough for me. If I could only keep one piece of my furniture, it would be a Cascade rocker (I don’t have one yet).

Q: Your best excuse for not getting something quite right?
A: I’m struggling to recall something I didn’t get quite right! In truth, I am notorious for getting things for home wrong. A good excuse would be handy, because then I could explain it to my wife. She now writes orders for home in the orders book and makes sure that one of the boys makes it instead. That way she has a better chance of getting a piece that works.

Q: Your most often-made mistake?
A: I’m a repeat offender at gluing-up too early. Many’s the time I’ve glued up a cabinet or chair only to realise I’d over-looked some detail that would have been a lot easier and better to deal with prior to glue up.

Q: Your biggest woodworking disaster!!?
A: Early on in my career I made a set of chairs in blackwood for a client using a new chair design. At the time I was very pleased with myself, as I had finally charged (and received) a realistic price for the work. I thought I was on a roll. Six months later they rang to say they had a problem with some of the chairs. I went to their house and was horrified to discover pretty much all the joints were failing. I brought the whole set back to the workshop and was able to pull most of the joints apart with my bare hands. I had used my normal chair making PVA glue, but something had gone horribly wrong. It might have been too cold the day I glued up, or the glue might have gone off in the bottle. Strangely, other work made before and after those chairs with the same glue under similar conditions was sound. To this day I don’t know what went wrong.

Q: The thing I would most like to change about wood is…
A: The dust. If only there wasn’t quite so much dust! We sand to 400 grit and extracting the dust is a constant hassle. Hand tool nuts will point out that a plane makes a shaving not dust, but I use red gum and the like, so planes are not an option.

Q: The thing I would most like to change about woodworkers is…
A: Their obsession with tools. I love my tools and I want to get the best performance out of them, but my first passion is the finished work. So many woodworkers have an amazing amount of beautiful tools that they hardly ever use, or worse, use badly. I have seen some very ugly work made with wonderful tools and some very beautiful work made with the most basic equipment. For me, it’s all about the furniture.

Q: The thing I would most like to change about my own woodworking is…
A: I wish I had a better knowledge of and feel for upholstery. I am confident with timber as a material but have no similar empathy for leather or fabric. Several of my chair designs have an upholstered element and I am at the mercy of my upholsterer (who is very good) to interpret what I want. I get frustrated when I can’t get the effect I want because I don’t have the technical knowledge to instinctively know what can and can’t be done.

Q: My final word on woodwork is…
A: It’s a really tough way to make a quid but I love it. I particularly enjoy the relationships I’ve built up with my clients over the years. I recently sold a Cascade rocker to a little old lady who really needed it. She was in her eighties and said ‘I have to do a lot of sitting these days, so I may as well sit in style’. There’s job satisfaction for you.

Write to Evan at: evan@dunstonedesign.com.au
Website: www.dunstonedesign.com.au