Why does a bloke who spent his career measuring things to the thousandth of a millimetre end up choosing timber for its imperfections?
That’s the question I still ask myself some mornings, standing in the workshop with a length of salvaged timber in my hands, trying to work out what it wants to become.
Long before Wood We Create, I was an engineering patternmaker. If you don’t know the trade, it’s precision work – patterns and moulds made to tolerances that seemed outrageous when I first started. Fractions of a millimetre mattered. There was no room for “close enough.”
I learned to slow down there. To look twice before I cut. To trust my hands only after I’d trusted my eyes. Those habits never left me.
Woodturning came earlier than the trade did, though. It started back in high school – basic timber, basic tools, a chisel and a plane and not much idea what I was doing. But something about shaping a raw piece of wood into something useful stuck with me, long after the school bell moved everyone else on to other things.
It took years of engineering discipline before I understood what that early interest was actually for. The patience for precision. The patience for grain. Put the two together, and you get a piece that’s measured and made properly – but never identical to the last one, because no two pieces of timber are ever the same.
That’s still the whole idea behind Wood We Create. Every piece starts as a tree – often one I’ve walked past for years, or salvaged before it went to waste. It ends up as a bowl, a board, a piece of jewellery, something on your kitchen bench or a gift in someone’s hands. In between, it goes through the same hands, the same care, the same eye that spent years learning not to rush.
Who makes handcrafted timber gifts in Walcha?
I do. My name’s David Barden, and I run Wood We Create from the gallery on Walcha’s main street, up in the New England High Country of NSW. I turn locally sourced and salvaged Australian timber into one-off handcrafted pieces – bowls, kitchenware, jewellery, homewares – using skills built over 30-plus years, starting in engineering patternmaking and carrying through into woodturning.
Every piece is one of a kind, because every piece of timber is one of a kind. The grain, the colour, the story of where that tree grew – none of it repeats. When a piece is shaped and finished, that’s it. It won’t be made again, because it can’t be. That’s not a marketing line, that’s just how timber works.
You can see the work in person at the gallery, browse it online, or follow along here on Timber Tales as I share where the timber comes from and what it becomes.
What’s next
This is where I’ll be sharing the stories behind the timber, the pieces taking shape on the lathe, and a bit of life here in Walcha along the way.
If you’d like to see what’s coming next, have a look through Timber Tales as new stories go up, or drop into the gallery next time you’re passing through.
Cheers, David
