Woodruff Industries was born out a desire to honour two incredible elderly gentlemen in the early years of my life. As a child, likemany people, I had two grandfathers – one paternal and one maternal. My paternal grandfather was a master craftsman in wood and my maternal grandfather was a die marker and engineer, who was a master at working with metal.

These two elderly gentlemen loved to impart their knowledge, know-how and skills to me during school holidays and weekends in their respective workshops. Their forerunners of the modern “man caves” were places of endless amazement to me: ancient looking tools, a plethora of boxes withpeculiar bits and pieces, nails, hooks and old bits of rope tied to rafters of the roof with bundles of stuff dangling from them, all covered in decades of dust and cobwebs. It was a world of fascination for me at such an impressionable age.

To be honest with you, I think my grandfathers spent so much time in their sheds and workshops to avoid the demands of their respectivewives, my grandmothers asking them to do “just one more little job”.

These “Old School” craftsmen taught me how to select the correct tool for the job and how to think the job through. They then taught me how to use that tool, in the manner it was intended to be used, so that I could make the most of that tool and to do a good job.

I am forever grateful to these wonderful gentlemen for their love, guidance, sturdy advice and the gift of teaching to think through things and the value of doing a good job every time; thank you so much Horace Charles and John Francis - I dedicate Woodruff Industries to their memory.