Meet April Wilkerson, from woodworking novice to YouTube sensation.

In the ten years since the launch of YouTube, the video-sharing website has become the go-to destination for guides on how to do just about anything. Woodworkers are generous folk and many are taking to YouTube to share their skills and help us all improve our craft. Tool reviews, shop tours, project ideas and tips of the trade are all available online for anyone looking for woodworking news and information.

There is a growing community of woodworkers with their own specialist YouTube channels, some of whom make their living from doing what they love, sharing projects and ideas with viewers. One of the woodworking YouTubers is April Wilkerson  Triton Brand Champion for the USA who also provides valuable feedback on product development. April is the first to admit that she is relatively new to woodworking but with a passion for making and a determination to learn and share her knowledge she has gained a committed following for her YouTube channel. 

Triton Tools caught up with April at her workshop in Texas, USA, to find out more about how she has turned her woodworking hobby into a successful YouTube channel that is now her full-time job.

We also filmed an exclusive project build with April which will be posted here on the Triton blog early in the New Year so don’t forget to come back and see how it went.

To see more of April’s work, read up on her project or download some plans, check out her website www.wilkerdos.com  and her YouTube Channel  www.youtube.com/user/AprilWilkersonDIY   

Making Lewes Festival – Kinship 2 - Creative Design-and-Make Challenge

Lewes is a small but ancient town in Sussex, England that has a rich tradition of craft, design and local manufacture that is still very much alive today. In September 2015 Triton sponsored a unique event hosted by Studio Hardie in their workshops as part of the Making Lewes Festival. 

Making Lewes is a community organisation that promotes the exchange of knowledge in the fields of Making, Architecture and Design & Sustainability. The Festival is now an annual event that hosts exhibitions, symposia, workshops and more.

Kinship is a design-and-make challenge within the festival that pulls together people from a range of different backgrounds and sets them a three-day challenge. Some are involved in craft, whilst others are designers, architects, sculptors and students. They are ably assisted by the skilled team at Studio Hardie, who help them to realise their concepts.  The process is very much a learning experience for those who attend, and explores concepts of design as well as the properties of a diverse range of materials on hand.

The Kinship project has a lot to do with the journey of discovery and collaborative thinking, as well as working together as a team. What is produced is more than a simple build project, it’s the collective output of many minds and hands working together. This short film illustrates some of the highlights of the project. If you are interested to find out more, check out the Making Lewes website: www.makinglewes.org

How to build a wooden custom bike frame with bamboo

Back in August we visited the guys at In’Bô in France, a great young team making some really exciting products using innovative techniques fused with traditional materials.  

In this film, Pierre Thomas LeClaire talks us through the process of building a high-performance custom geometry bike. Using bamboo as the main frame component together with flax fibres bound by an organic resin, the end result is a truly unique sculpted-looking frame that is lightweight while at the same time shows amazing resilience in high-performance environments.  The process pulls together advanced design and construction processes with an intimate knowledge of the properties of their organic raw materials.

See this earlier post for an introduction to the team In Bo Introduction