The Woodworker Sessions Q & A

A lifelong woodworker and extremely active member of the Woodworkers Association of Pretoria since 1992, Neville Comins recently retired from the position of Director of Material Sciences at the CSIR and founding CEO of The Innovation Hub.

In issue #22 of The Woodworker Sessions, we are extremely grateful to Neville for welcoming us into his workshop and his woodworking world!

I am constantly fascinated by the historical methods of furniture construction, the unsurpassed beautiful lines of pre-industrial furniture and the tools that were used.

I love designing, building and teaching. I believe that I am a good student of the craft and the more I learn, the more I realise just how little I know! For me, it is a constant process of challenging myself. I always use traditional joinery methods, proportioning methods and hand tools wherever I can.

Leaving school, studying graphic design and moving into my own home, I didn’t have money for decent furniture and became despondent at what was available quality wise.

Further down the road, this led to me making a Wenge dining room table which rekindled my interest in working with my hands and my love for design. The rest is history!

The next craftsman in The Woodworker Sessions Series of Q & A Interviews is Anthony Berry of Cape Town.  He has become a good friend, an up and coming luthier and he is starting to create some truly beautiful musical instruments.

Anthony has a wonderfully lateral and sensible approach to his craft and is slowly kitting his workshop out with very high quality, very specific hand tools and machines.