Scrimper's Fretworking Site - Fretworking Family

My late grandfather was a very keen and experienced fretworker.

He was born in Chipping Norton Oxfordshire in 1884 and from an early age was interested in fretwork, which was very popular at that time.

As a fairly young man he started to give lessons to others who wanted to learn fretwork. His students asked him where they could get the equipment from, such as blades, frames and designs etc, so he contacted the Hobbies company who supplied him with the items that he could sell to his students.

Eventually this led to him opening his first shop in Chipping Norton selling fretwork equipment together with lots of other items.

When wireless (now radio) arrived, he started to build and sell the receivers and other wireless equipment alongside provisions and all manner of other goods. Locals used to refer to his shop as The Chippy Woolworths!

He also opened another shop in the High street but was only given a short lease and eventually had to close it.

Unfortunately the shop closed in 1942 as my father Norman was away in the army and G.F.Hewett could not manage to keep the shop going on his own.

One of the finest Pieces my grandfather made was the Handicrafts design No 12 The Lords Prayer Plaque. shown to the right. This piece was advertised by Handicrafts as being the finest and most attractive design they have ever produced. it was part of the Handicrafts Advanced design series.

It also holds the record for the greatest number of exhibition awards.

As I mentioned on the designs page, I was very lucky to receive copies of the original Handicrafts pattern No 12 but over time it has become very fragile and brittle.

I have scanned all the parts to save them and am in the process of recreating this amazing design and eventually hope to place it here so other keen fret-workers can download it and hopefully have a go at cutting this lovely item out.

My late father Norman was also an accomplished fretworker, obviously being taught at a young age by his dad. All of the pieces he has made have long since disappeared. In 1939 he joined the Army and spent the next six years in the desert with the RASC 8th army.

When the war ended, he returned and took a job at an RAF camp as Barrack warden. At the time, toys and gifts were difficult to obtain in post war Britain, so he spent his evenings making wooden toys and gifts on his Hobbies A1 fretmachine. These he would take to work and sell to the families who lived there. The wood was obtained by breaking up old tea chests, which used quite good quality 3 or 5 ply plywood.

I well remember as a young boy helping him with sanding etc as he beavered away on his treadle machine. I still have this machine; it is well over 100 years old and still works as it did when new.

This is the web-masters late father Norman at his father's Hobbies Imperial Fret-machine, proudly showing off some of the items he has made.

The camel rack shown is Handicrafts design No 5243.

I don't have the original design sheet but I have created the design from a tiny image in the Handicrafts annual.

You can download a copy of the plan from the designs page.

Design No 5243 (Published 1926)from Handicrafts

From a very early age I became interested in fretwork plus I was always fascinated by the fretwork design sheets and Hobbies annuals that my father had. I was also inspired by the excellence of the work that my grandfather did on making the magnificent Lords Prayer plaque.

Every week I would look forward to the arrival of the Hobbies Weekly magazines, this was in the 1950's & 1960's, I still have most of those magazines. As time went by I took over my father's Hobbies A1 Treadle Fretsaw and his hand frames, I still have these too.

I have two grandsons and even with the lure of technology, mobile phones, computers and social media both are pretty good at using the Scroll-Saw. One of them Ben is now very expert with the fretsaw.

The image left shows Ben at age 9 using my late grandfathers 120 year old Hobbies A1 Treadle Fret-machine.

Right a Britannia design he cut out in 2023 using a 100 yr old Handicrafts design. You can download this design on the Designs page.

A little about the web author

I was born in Kingham and spent most of my childhood living in the village. I was educated at the village school and at age 11, like others was sent to Chipping Norton school some 4 miles away.

As a young boy I was fascinated by electrical things and woodworking, I would spend hours wiring up switches and torch bulbs and by age 13 I had taught myself all about radios and how they worked etc. During the school holidays I worked at Lainchburys in the village doing woodwork. My first job was at Salters boat yard in Oxford as an apprentice boat builder but it only lasted for six months because the train fare there took all of my wages and I had an offer of a job training as a Radio and TV service engineer at a wonderful company called Leech and Hainge at Chipping Norton, a job I liked so much I would have worked there without pay.

Eventually I moved on via several other electrical firms until starting my own electrical business with my brother, an electrical shop in Cheltenham which we ran for over 33 years.

The shop in Gloucester Road Cheltenham during 1977

Service with a smile!

One of the service vans.

Below are a few of the things I have made with the Fretsaw. The patterns to make some are on the design page. You will also find videos on my Youtube channel where you can watch me making some of them.

Thank you for visiting my Fretworker web-site. You may be interested in my other web-sites that I have published.

The Story of Lainchburys engineering works at Kingham. 1862-1987

KinghamPast is Photographs and Stories of Kingham Village.

My YouTube channel is here.

It contains over 200 videos on various subjects with the emphasis on making and mending things.

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