Carpenter carves out long career

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By Wena Alun Owen BBC News <a href="/1/shared/spl/hi/pop_ups/08/uk_glyn_richards/html/1.stm" onClick="window.open('http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/spl/hi/pop_ups/08/uk_glyn_richards/html/1.stm', '1221223824', 'toolbar=0,scrollbars=0,location=0,statusbar=0,menubar=0,resizable=1,width=600,height=530,left=312,top=100'); return false;"></a>Glyn Richards in his workshop at his Deiniolen home.<a href="/1/shared/spl/hi/pop_ups/08/uk_glyn_richards/html/1.stm" onClick="window.open('http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/spl/hi/pop_ups/08/uk_glyn_richards/html/1.stm', '1221223824', 'toolbar=0,scrollbars=0,location=0,statusbar=0,menubar=0,resizable=1,width=600,height=530,left=312,top=100'); return false;" >In pictures</a> In a world largely dominated by the flat-pack and throw-away culture, the skills of the true craftsman are still in demand.

The smell of MDF and glue simply do not compare to the sweet tang of wood in a carpenter's workshop.

Tucked away on one of the steep streets of the village of Deiniolen, not far from Llanberis in Gwynedd, is one such place: the workshop of "retired" carpenter Glyn Richards, 80.

His skills are so much in demand that he is still there every morning before 8am.

In 1975 he worked on Pwyll Gwyllt, the first show at soon-to-close Theatr Gwynedd in Bangor. And he has just finished a grandfather clock and a cart wheel for Llyfr Mawr y Plant, the last show at the theatre next month.

The curtain will fall for the last time to make way for a new arts centre.

I'd have gone round the bend if I didn't have something to do Glyn Richards, carpenter While he has worked with many Welsh language television stars, he preferred it when he did not have to meet them.

"I didn't enjoy filming, all the stopping and starting."

But he did not mind that his work "disappeared" after the end of filming, even though some of the sets involved weeks of work producing items as different as post boxes and Romany-style caravans.

Mr Richards left school at 13 to begin a seven-year apprenticeship as a carpenter, and said: "I haven't been out of work since".Mr Richards learned how to produce a cart wheel when he left school.

His joinery is more than a job though, as apart from his everyday work at various workshops during his working life, he has produced countless tables and chairs, grandfather clocks, as well as 11 (to date) Welsh dressers.

The current workshop is a shed at the top of the garden, and space dictates that dressers nowadays have to be finished off in the living room of the house he shares with his wife Iona.

In the workshop Mr Richards proudly points out tools he has collected since he started working, a drawer knife, spoke shaves and planes.

Working holidays

They are handled with care and the always put back in the same place. The "shed" is full of "half-finished" items, feet for a stool, a frame for a mirror and the top for a computer desk, "it has to be something that comes apart because the person wants to take it up into his attic office".

Bits of wood of every kind, the favourite is oak, even if they are off-cuts are seen as potential for something else.

A small table in the living room is one such project, small and a perfect resting place for a cup of tea, the top is an off-cut from a mirror frame.

Holidays are also spent working. On a visit to Australia Mr Richards helped a friend mend his roof, before making a gate and a table.

On a trip to the Republic of Ireland he made a window, and friends in Newcastle always tell him to take his tools when he visits.

"I'd have gone round the bend if I didn't have something to do," he said.