Ali and Jesse made a cheeky unannounced stopover at The Bower’s Woodworks Repair Centre at 107 Projects in Redfern today. While we missed the Woodworks Manager Luke Mitchell, we had a great yarn with Brian Driver from Marrickville Men’s Shed, and Louise Fisher from Go Girl DIY. Brian was making his own wax paste at the time – he’s a chemist so he was experimenting with a variety of mixes to get the balance just right. They showed us some of the furniture repair projects on the go, and we talked about tools, self-taught skills, steam train boats, and the challenge of getting the focus honed in academic projects. We passed Brian’s ‘tests’ by successfully naming several tools, knowing who Christopher Dresser and Charles Rennie Macintosh were, and declaring our key teaching goals for encouraging design students to think about repairability and product lifecycles.

Drawers refurbished by Brian Driver for the Bower