It’s always dangerous when Terry goes away and leaves me in charge of a newsletter – who knows what I may talk about or secrets I might share! Sorry to disappoint this time, but no products I can/will tantalise you with on this occasion. As usual, I am not answering questions this week, but just giving a little insight as to what has been going on at base over the last few weeks.

As you are all well aware now, We have the great pleasure of having Nathanael on our workforce now, and his introduction to our team has brought new ideas and methods as to how we carry out our day-to-day work here at base. The factory floor has been completely re-laid and a new dispatch and packing area created. I feel that these changes have made the area for the preparation of stock, and area for order packing work in a more efficient way. He is also getting to grips with the preparation of foreign orders, and at some point in the not-too-distant future, will be doing the Dangerous Goods course, and Forklift training. His addition to our team has meant a slightly different role for me as I get him up to speed on the processes and rules we follow day to day (although sometimes I feel that he is overtaking me-perhaps I am just slowing a bit). European orders have been really busy since the start of the year, and the work that Terry undertook at the beginning of last year to get our products (hazardous and liquids) into the various European languages is now beginning to come on-line. There is something quite satisfying in packing and order destined for Spain with labels printed in Spanish or danish etc, and we are hopeful that this will lead to more orders from the continent.

Our Studio is now up and running also, which for me has meant learning how to use the Box of Tricks that manage the cameras and sound. Those of you who have experienced one of the live demos presented by either Terry or Nathanael will have seen that this is still, for me, very much a work in progress. I will crack it one day, but me and tech have never been the best of buddies!

On a personal note, I have finally begun to develop a love of the lathe, and have started to produce one or two items and an awful lot of shavings and dust (that’s what I am best at)!. Nothing as grand to be shared with you all, but it is fantastic that I now have a great teacher on hand to tell me where I am going wrong and giving plenty of encouragement to keep practicing. He has also rescued the grind on my gouges a couple of times, even though I have purchased a Tormek system!! I have also joined my local Woodturning Club – West Suffolk, and had the pleasure of seeing some great live demos. They are a lovely bunch of people and just rubber stamp how great  the Woodturning community is. The scary thing is, I have become a searcher for any bit of wood that I can find and now have quite a stack in the garage-no room for the car any more – what am I like!

That’s all for now from me. The last few months have been quite exciting and very full on. I hope that we have always been able to get your orders out efficiently, and been here if you have needed some help.

Until next time.

Mel