about

I'm Peter Millard, a one-man-band carpenter and cabinetmaker in West London, UK, who makes occasional YouTube videos between all the client work - or perhaps that's the other way around! With a keen interest in woodworking, I pursued a career in professional photography for ~20-odd years, before coming into the splintery side of things full-time in 2001.

I put out my first YouTube video in 2015, gaining a few thousand views and 40 subscribers and failing to capitalise on this early momentum by leaving it for another 6 months before putting up my second video - and a further 6 months before I posted my third... Then I started paying attention, and committed myself to a video a week for a year on YouTube, which is how I find myself here; fun ride.

I had a side-bet with my nephew that I'll get 10,000 subscribers by the end of the year (calendar year, so 13 months on YouTube). He was convinced I would, I was convinced I wouldn't; I did.

This website is an extension of the YouTube channel, and its new-found persona "10minuteworkshop" (a braaaaannndd) and is here simply to organise the links and info; whether it turns into anything else, we'll see.

Either way, thanks for visiting, and be sure to check out those videos.

Peter

P.S. - about that avatar/profile photo...

So I was in New York with my wife early 2017 (our first visit) I'd been listening the Making It podcast, and Jimmy Diresta had just announced that he was leaving the lower east side and moving upstate. Now I don't normally do the fanboy stuff, and I didn't want to get our holiday bogged down with youtube trivia (I'd only been on YT 3 months by then, remember) but I emailed Jimmy and asked if he was around at all for a quick visit; he said maybe Tuesday - the day we were due to leave. So Tuesday rolls around, we check out of the hotel and head out - we figure we'd go to Brooklyn, walk back across the bridge and I can visit Jimmy in Clinton St, and my wife can hang out at the Tenement Museum for half an hour. We get out at Brooklyn and it's starting to snow - New York in January, who'd have thought - and it starts to get heavier and heavier. By the time we've found the start of the bridge we can't even see the first tower, let alone the far ones, or Manhatten. So we jump back on the subway to Delancey St and go our separate ways at. Clinton St is deserted - I know Jimmy's entranceway from his videos, and from the bench and it's all locked up tight. Turns out Jimmy was still upstate waiting for a repairman who was stuck in the snow, so I never did get a selfie with Jimmy Diresta, or visit the New York shop, which is a great shame, as I'd loved to have compared it to mine, size-wise.

But I got a selfie with Jimmy's traffic cone, outside his Clinton St shop. It ain't much, but sometimes you have to take what you can get...