Mark Hennebury Designer / Maker
and professional Tinkerer
Born in The South of England where my
interest in making things began early: I built bicycles out
of scrounged parts, I made slingshots, knives, long- bows ,
crossbows even made my own bolts and arrows which I fletched
with turkey feathers from the local turkey farm and arrow
tips that I made out of tubing hammered and filed to
points. The crossbows were not toys; with 100LB pull
bow-prods purchased from B&P Barnet they could put a bolt
tip through 2" of solid pine. The trigger mechanism was all
hand made at the school metal-shop and the wooden stock I
made at the school woodshop. I made a tin can launching
device for slingshot target practice. So I guess making
stuff is in my DNA.
I have been a woodworker since I was a kid
playing around in my father's workshop. I have worked in my
own shops since the seventies, mostly designing and building
solid wood furniture. In the early seventies I did some work
on boats both wooden and fiber glass, I took a lofting
course and made wooden plugs and moulds for fishing boats up
to 42" long, and outfitted yachts and refurbished the
50ft long racing boats for the St John's Regatta in
Newfoundland.
Since then I have done furniture, doors and
windows, some of my design and some pieces designed by
others, I have made pieces in the style of some of the
famous woodworkers of the time, such as James krenov, George
Nakashima, and Sam Maloof, Edward Barnsley I have been
influenced by their passion and approach and have learned a
lot from experimenting with their styles and methods. I
particularly like the Arts and Crafts style and the
Traditional Japanese approach to joinery.
I have tried
to pass on my passion for designing and building by
teaching, and have taught over 400 students, mostly
hobbyists in a night-class setting at my own shop usually
with 8 students per class. I have also run a few training
programs for up to 20 or so students for employment
training. My classes were always based on imparting a
thorough understanding of wood structure, tools and
referencing procedures so that students had a good basis to
proceed in their own direction.
My interests were in understanding wood,
joinery, tool design and efficient machining processes. I
have devoted a lot of time to studying these elements and
the relationships between them. My knowledge of wood
structure and engineering principles has led me through much
experimenting to design exceptionally strong and unique
joinery.
My fascination and constant experimentation
with cutting tools has given me a deep understanding of tool
geometry resulting in many improvements to standard tooling.
I have owned and used many metal shop machines including
milling machines and tool and cutter grinders. Progressing
from bench top hobby shop machines to top of the line high
precision Hembrug tool and cutter grinder from Holland and
Marunaka straight knife combination grinder/lappers for
producing true mirror finishes on cutting tools. As I
progressed to better machinery I needed better grinding
wheels, when I couldn't find fine enough wheels available I
had them custom -made, ultra-fine 10 micron diamond and
boron wheels made for the Hembrug grinder, this gave me the
ability to put incredible edges on my router bits and in
turn produce incredible finished surfaces on the wood.
I have spent a lot of time fine tuning and
rebuilding various machines, including designing of
electrical control systems and pneumatic / hydraulic
systems. I have designed and build several fully automated
machines for production of wood and metal components. These
machines are original designs that comprise of mechanical,
electrical and pneumatic components. The machines are fully
automated and operate on an electrical relay controlled
sequential operation that I designed.
I am a tinkerer at heart and have been
designing and modifying all manner of things since I was a
kid. I am constantly doodling and sketching ideas for new
designs of a wide range of things that interest me.
I enjoy the challenges of figuring things
out and found the computer a particularly challenging
environment. Being used to working on mechanical problems
where I could see what was going on, the computer was out of
my comfort zone, but none the less intriguing so I
persevered and have become quite comfortable working with my
computer. I have installed and run hundreds of different
programs and do maintenance and troubleshooting on my
computer. I built my own website from scratch in Front Page
and have embedded video players, links photos etc, and
currently have over 20 videos on my YouTube channel.
I really felt like I was at home when in 2003 I first
got to use Solid Works 3D mechanical design program. I was
able to take ideas and designs that all my life I have
worked on in my mind and easily translate them into 3D
models on my computer. It was and is a fascinating
experience. For the past eight or nine years I have been
using solid Works and have designed or re-designed all many
of things from woodworking joinery , router bits,
saw-blades, machinery, wind turbines, razors, knock-down
furniture, physical rehabilitation equipment, mechanical
lock-out safety switches, snow dams for commercial roofs.
etc.... and I now have thousands of 3D models on my
computer that I hope someday to start turning into real
products.
www.solidwoodmachinery.com
mark@solidwoodmachinery.com
