I am late to this news, having strayed a bit from woodworking this year.
We all go, but some departures hit home hard. I cut my teeth learning how to sharpen plane irons and chisels from David’s first edition videos from Lie-Nielsen. I have found his methods to be brilliantly simple, flawless, foolproof, and exceptionally effective. As I puttered in my shop I would fondly imagine his jovial face and inimitable voice each time I whisked a blade over an 8000 water stone. David became an icon to me, and since he made an otherwise mediocre craftsman a reliably capable sharpener, he grew over time into a hero for me.
You can thus imagine my delight as I embarked in January 2019 for a week with him in his Hartland workshop, for his tool tuning course. As it turned out, I was his only student that week in the dead of a Devon winter. Five days of one-on-one study with my hero. What I learned that week was that David has the benevolent soul you see in his gentle and trenchant videos. Generous with his knowledge, patient (but honest) with my skill shortcomings, he unspooled wisdom about the craft that I captured in a treasured notebook. I’ll go read that notebook after I post this.
On the last day David gave me a copy of one of his out-of-print classic books.
Today as the news has reached me is a sad one now. There was only one David Charlesworth.
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Originally Posted by Bob Jones 5443
