Home: Can you learn basic woodwork skills in four hours?

We sign up for a Saturday morning workshop in Cork where local tutors teach all ages, from school leavers to retired learners

Carol O'Callaghan practises her wood drilling with a pillar drill at Benchspace, Marina Commercial Park. Pictures: Larry Cummins

I've taken up woodwork, and no, it’s not an April Fools’ joke but my fetish for kitchen boards, from hard grafting chopping boards, to the more evolved serving board, or charcuterie platter if we’re being really posh.

In total, I have nine propped on the work surface, segregated according to purpose. Outsize boards for staging collations of cheese, untainted by the everyday boards that are never free of the faint whiff of onion despite applications of salt and lemon as recommended by top cheffing types.