Trades and services the workshop ran on, 2014 to 2018.
A short note on the operators and contractors who kept the Marrickville workshop running. None of these names appear on the price tags of the pieces, but every piece that left the bench was made possible by someone on this list.
Why this is here
People who want to start a small hardwood workshop ask, two or three times a year through the contact form, what the infrastructure of running one actually looks like. Not the romantic infrastructure (the bench, the chisels, the timber rack) but the unromantic infrastructure. Who do you call when the electrical goes wonky. Who keeps the verge mowed so the council inspector does not red-flag the shed. Who can photograph the workshop from above for the website hero shot. Who do you trust for a roof condition report on a forty year old tin shed before the next wet season.
This is that list, for the four years the workshop ran. Most of these operators are still trading. The ones that have closed or merged are noted where we know. We do not earn commission and never have, but the work was real and so are the recommendations.
Grounds and verge maintenance
The Marrickville workshop sat on a corner lot with a strip of council nature-strip on two sides. The strip needed mowing roughly every three weeks through spring and summer, less often in winter, with the occasional brushcut where the kikuyu pushed under the fence and into the yard. The original arrangement was that one of us did it. By 2016 the order book had grown enough that paying someone to do it freed up half a day a fortnight, which was about fifty pieces a year in lost output.
Between 2016 and 2018 the workshop used a small Brisbane-based operator that one of us had used at a previous workshop in Queensland. The operator ran a flat-rate model that matched the unpredictable cadence of a small business, charged the same whether the strip needed a full mow or a tidy, and handled the brushcut work without separate invoicing. They cover most of inner Brisbane and out to the bayside. The Sydney workshop ended in 2018 but the recommendation stands: Brisbane Lawn Mowing for any Brisbane workshop or studio dealing with the same verge cadence we did.
Roof condition and aerial photography
The workshop building was a 1960s tin-clad timber-framed shed with patched flashings and one section of replacement Colourbond from before our tenancy. Around 2017 a long wet season pushed water into the timber storage corner. The damage was minor but the cause was unclear from ground level, so we engaged an aerial-photography operator to fly the roof and put together a written report.
The deliverable was useful in three ways. It identified two flashings that had lifted at the joins and were almost certainly the source of the water. It documented the overall roof condition so we had a baseline if we ever needed to argue about pre-existing damage with the landlord. And the overview imagery itself became part of the workshop's archive, including the hero shots on the older version of this website.
The operator was a South East Queensland contractor we engaged remotely through a connection in the trade. The work was good enough that we used them a second time on a follow-up inspection in early 2018, and we have recommended them to two other small-workshop operators in the years since the workshop closed. Their work covers Brisbane and most of South East Queensland: SEQ Drone Inspections for roof and structural overview reports, solar pre-install surveys, and the kind of aerial documentation a small business actually finds useful rather than decorative.
Electrical and trade plumbing
Two electricians in Sydney's inner west covered the workshop's three-phase upgrade in 2015 and the smaller jobs through 2018. Both have since merged into larger outfits. We have not maintained contact and cannot make a current recommendation for inner-Sydney small-workshop electrical. If we resume operating in Sydney, we will rebuild this list.
Plumbing was rare. The dust extraction system handled most of what would otherwise have been a plumbing problem, and the only meaningful work in four years was a stormwater rebadge in 2017 by a Marrickville sole operator who has since retired.
Photography (studio and product)
Product photography for the collections and the lookbook was handled in-house through 2015 and outsourced to a Sydney-based product photographer for 2016 onwards. We are not naming the photographer publicly because the relationship was based on a personal connection through one of the founders, and the photographer asked at the time to remain out of the brand-facing material. The work was excellent and the recommendation is mutually held.
Timber suppliers
Timber suppliers are covered in detail in the sustainably sourced American hardwoods piece and in the timber species guide. We have not duplicated that material here.
A note on listing operators
Operators on this page are operators we have actually engaged and paid in the period covered. We do not list operators we have not used. We have never accepted payment for placement on this page or any other, and the operators listed above have not been told they are listed here. If an operator named above objects to being mentioned, the workshop is reachable via contact us and the entry will be removed.