The Shed magazine April/May 2026 issue 126 on sale now
Hayden Scott’s road to crafting Damascus blades has been a journey of self-discovery, from an ambitious teen working the boning tables of the Balclutha freezing works to chef Al Brown’s right-hand man. Now, with over 25 years of experience using knives, he has found his calling: hand-forging the finest blades for cooks all over the world from his backyard sheds in the Waitākere Ranges.
“Hayden grew up in Balclutha surrounded by farmland and a practical family: his mum made the family’s clothes; dad was a chippie; an uncle built airplanes, and another uncle was a fitter and turner.
Hayden and his brother were often left to their own devices, usually with a pocket knife in hand. He remembers, “I always had a project on the go. What have we got here? What can I make from this?” Huts and bows and arrows lead to hovercrafts with electric motors, and later to bicycles, motorbikes, and furniture restorations.
His uncle Russell was a real inspiration, a builder who knocked together a Jodel airplane, which Hayden fondly remembers flying around Otago in. “I was in absolute awe that someone could build something like that, at home.” Another uncle, Allan, was a Fitter and Turner who rebuilt motorcycles. He had to dig out a cellar under his house to store his vast collection of vintage motorcycles. Hayden remembers, “He was always in there with his overalls on, working on them. Growing up around people like that was really motivating.”
In the dining room shed
Jane Allnatt’s father was a commercial artist, a painter, model-maker and did a bit of carving, so there’s something of the family tradition in what Jane Allnatt is doing in working with wood. But it’s unlikely her father imagined her designs and creations coming out of a shed in the dining room.
Working on a sheet on the floor of a room in her house is the Howick resident’s “workshop” and preferred way of creating work. Yet that work has regularly taken prizes in various categories at the annual National Woodskills Festival at Kawerau, a central gathering place of woodturners and sheddies.
It is also unlikely you would find many men praising the convenience of their working space because, as the sculptor puts it, “the room is centrally placed and I can disappear to cook dinner or if there is any washing, I can do that. The light is good, too.”
The Workmate – a shed in a cupboard
In 1961, Ron Hickman, a just-married South African immigrant to the UK, was making a wardrobe using expensive Scandinavian chairs as sawhorses (as you do) when he inadvertently cut one of the chairs as well as the plywood. This was his eureka moment. The need for a workbench which could be stored away in an apartment cupboard when not being used was obvious.
His prototype folding workbench had a classic cast-iron and steel Record brand wood vice attached to it.
Ron was known in the Lotus Cars factory, where he was director of engineering, as someone who could always see an alternative approach to design problems, and so it was with his workbench. His final design used the top of the bench as a vise; one half of the top being fixed, the other being moved by two threaded rods to clamp the object being worked on, vaguely similar to a book-binder’s vise. His background in car manufacture led to him design the folding workbench with a metal frame. Because it was intended to be used for woodwork the top was wooden – solid wood in the original design.
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