Ray left us 9/15/21 after a hard fought battle with cancer.

He is missed….

I am still here, and still figuring out what to do next.

The website will stay for as long as I can pay for it… as a small record of one little corner of his big beautiful life ❤️

A Brief HISTORY

Ray and Linda both started their lives living in a small town in the southwest of England, surrounded by beautiful countryside and ancient buildings.

Ray was just a whisp of a boy when the good natured torture of his woodworking education began. He spent many days pulling nails from old wood and carrying heavy objects up and down ladders in the cold rainy summers of Dorset, often just for the amusement of his wise old teachers.

He learned how to build a home from the ground up. With the use of traditional hand tools he was taught the ancient joinery secrets that only weathered old Englishmen know.

He worked hard, and after six long years of instruction (yes, it was supposed to take that long) he became a Master Craftsman.

 It turned out that young Ray had a natural talent for understanding the ways of wood, and a gift for the art of furniture making.

He was ready to spread his wings and share his talents.

Meanwhile, Linda had already fled the homeland in search of adventure and had found her place in the USA,  she was meeting new people and having a grand old time... but after a very fun few years, she was lacking the daily creativity a gypsy girl needs, so when Ray offered to share his new wealth of carpentry knowledge with her in exchange for letting him sleep on her sofa in the USA , a deal was made.

Soon enough she had learned a lot, despite Rays teaching methods, she focused on all the parts of his trade that she wanted to know, the ones which don't require heavy lifting, or rusty nails.... and so, with her eye for detail and his aptitude for being able to build pretty much anything, a business was started ...

They became  SOLID……… SolidWoodInc