There was once a time when every decent backyard had a shed. In Australia the back shed was a sacred place where a bloke could work on his favourite projects without any interference from the wife, the boss, the kids, or anyone else for that matter.

It mattered not if you brewed your own beer - made your own wine - or distilled your own spirits, or whatever, the back shed was a secret blokes place where real men got down to business. Many hours, sometimes days could pass by without notice, such was the intense nature of the back shed project business.

Many great inventions have evolved from the midnight oil burning sessions spent in the back shed, crikey, what would mankind do without the inventive nature of the back shed tinkerer, it is such a lot of fun when you gather a shed full of tools to make all kinds of things from wood or metal.

Are you one of the new breed of real blokes who's rediscovering the wonders of the back shed? Oh, how I pity some of those blokes couped up in high rise luxury pens where all they have to look out on is the thousands of other lost souls couped up in hundreds of other high rise luxury pens.

I wonder if some of the men living there wouldn't wish for a backyard shed to tinker in, but then again, it's a bit hard to walk out to the back shed after the evening meal when your living twenty floors up, isn't it!

Still, I guess they have the expensive hi-fi gear to listen too, or the super wide plasma on the wall to look at, but is that really enough, do not they have an ounce of creative practical genius in them?

Could they not apply their hands to simple tools to bend and shape metal, or to cut and shave timber? Working with tools is one of life's simple but very rewarding pleasures, just ask the blokes that already do this; they are amongst the top ten percent of happy satisfied people on earth, simply because they have a creative outlet for their inner talents and desires, not to mention the wonderful practical things they make using simple hand & machine tools and equipment all housed in the ordinary blokes back shed.

If you ever have the urge to try your hand at creative metal work, then let me introduce you to hobby metal casting, of course you'll need a back shed before you even begin to gather your tools & equipment, but the personal rewards and satisfaction go way beyond the doing.

It is derived from the fact that you are creating with your mind - your hands - and a few simple tools... it may not sound like much, but ask anybody who creates stuff in the back shed, and you'll soon begin to understand why.

Every weekend, right across the globe there are blokes hard at work creating - building - fabricating - casting, and making things for all kinds of projects. Want to give it a try? Then may I welcome you to the blokes shed domain.