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\u201cMy daughters inherited one in the early 80s, and at their birthday parties all their friends wanted to do was ride on their rocking horse. So, I decided to try my hand at making them to sell.\u201d<\/p>\nNot everyone can make beautiful hand-crafted wooden things. Colin Rogers certainly can. In fact, he\u2019s on a mission to revive a dying craft.<\/p>\n
Colin, known better by friends as Buck Rogers, might be 82, but he sure is living life largely. From the comfort of his home in Waterfall Gardens Retirement Village, he spends his days not just hand-crafting model cars out of wood but creating art with origins tracing back to the early days when toys were typically handcrafted from natural materials like wood, bone and stone, reflecting the craftsmanship of their time.<\/p>\n
A retired professor of organic chemistry at the University of Durban Westville, Colin\u2019s interest in woodwork was ignited during a year spent in the UK in 1972, reconnecting with his high school girlfriend, Margot, who he later returned to SA with and married.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe building I was living in at the time was going to be demolished, so I bought a van from a friend and some tools, cut up the kitchen furniture and turned the van into a camper.\u201d<\/p>\n
Prior to this, he\u2019d never even picked up a hammer.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat can I say? The bug bit and ever since then I\u2019ve enjoyed woodwork and working with my hands,\u201d says Colin, who earned the name Buck Rogers when his Latin master caught him reading a cowboy book in Form 3 (Grade 10).<\/p>\n
Next to peak Colin\u2019s woodwork interest was a rocking horse.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy daughters inherited one in the early 80s, and at their birthday parties all their friends wanted to do was ride on their rocking horse. So, I decided to try my hand at making them to sell.\u201d<\/p>\n
Colin did some homework and, while on sabbatical, visited a rocking horse factory in Kent, England, that manufactured horses for princes William and Harry, and supplied Harrods, before setting about to make his first one, which was bought by a Swiss businessman who did not think much of Colin\u2019s artistic abilities.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhile my craftsmanship and woodwork skills were good, my painting skills were not. I enlisted the help of an art teacher friend, Sharon Palm, who would take care of that side of things. Another difficult part of making the rocking horses was finding accessories.<\/p>\n
\u201cI eventually found a taxidermist in Queensburgh who showed me how to make the eyes out of Perspex and learned how to do the leather work and stitch the leather,\u201d says Colin.<\/p>\n
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The actual horse and head constructions are carved out of pine, while the legs and base are made of meranti. Colin uses real horsehair, which he gets from a crocodile farm, for the tails and manes. He uses a Victorian safety rocking mechanism, rather than the usual curved rocker, and each creation is dated in a unique manner. Colin would put the day\u2019s newspaper, and some coins, into the body before sealing each rocking horse.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I exhibited the first one at a church fair, people loved it, many reflected on a childhood that featured a rocking horse similar to the one I\u2019d made. It would seem that this craftsmanship has slowly died over time, but I\u2019d be interested to find out just how many people have old rocking horses lying around in their attics or garages, with no idea they could be of value,\u201d says Colin, highlighting that although they were expensive to make, at the time, they would fetch anything equivalent to R10\u00a0000 to R15\u00a0000 in London\u2019s Harrods. They certainly were built to last.<\/p>\n
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Over the years, and in between leaving the UK for a life in South Africa, Colin experimented with three different size rocking horses. He says if he had to count he probably made about 20 large, 10 medium and two of the smallest size, as most buyers wanted to invest in rocking horses that could be enjoyed as toys \u2013 and ridden \u2013 and not just as d\u00e9cor items or collectibles, which those that remain in his presence have become.<\/p>\n
Colin has now traded the challenge of studying the anatomy of a horse with perfecting the construction of making model cars out of wood.<\/p>\n
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\u201cFor a while I put my woodworking skills to rest while my wife and I focussed on work and raising a family. In our later years, retired from our busy careers, we packed up our family home, with its three-car garage in Durban, to move into our cosy nest egg in Waterfall where a single garage became my workshop.\u201d<\/p>\n
Colin, has six grandchildren \u2013 four in the UK and two in Kloof – and has just finished making a guinea pig hotel for the latter.<\/p>\n
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\u201cWhen Covid forced us into lockdown, I started carving wooden replicas of some of the cars – mostly from the 1940s – that I fancied.\u201d\u00a0 His first vehicle creation was a 1931 Buick Sedan, then a Chevrolet Coup\u00e9, followed by a 1932 V12 Cadillac Sedan, then a 1931 Cadillac Roadster and a 1935 Auburn Boattail Speedster.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019d make a two-page drawing of the car, which gives me a 1\/12 scale, and I\u2019d work off that. It can take several months to make one, but I do it at my leisure. It also became a coping mechanism for me when my wife, who\u2019d been diagnosed with cancer, was undergoing chemotherapy and later died. I\u2019d venture into a peaceful place, with mostly 60s music playing in the background, and pour my energy into sports cars and a 1914 Model T Ford as these filled an emptiness and gave me purpose,\u201d says Colin, who has made about 25 wooden cars, scrounging wood from wherever he can, since 2020.<\/p>\n
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Apart from two UK commissions, he\u2019s not trying to sell his creations as they are purely made for the love of it and to keep busy while retaining a dying craft.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have many people popping in to see how my cars are progressing, and they always say the current one\u00a0is the best I have made!\u201d<\/p>\n
As a nature lover with a life-long interest in collecting interesting rock and fossil samples, of which he has a modest collection, Colin dedicates any spare time he has to breeding butterflies in the village \u2013African monarch to be specific \u2013 and feeding two crested hornbills, a pair of woolly-necked storks, a beautiful grey heron, a hadeda with a gammy leg and his favourite, a yellow-billed kite named Jasper.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve fed him for the last six years, and what is amazing is that I can tell almost to the day, in the second week of August, when he will arrive back from his northerly migration. On good days, when I\u2019m working on my cars outside in the sunshine, the birds all hover in the tree just outside my front door. I think there\u2019s a little heavenly peace in that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Details: You can contact Colin on 079\u00a0129 3106.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Not everyone can make beautiful hand-crafted wooden things. Colin Rogers certainly can. In fact, he\u2019s on a mission to revive a dying craft. Colin, known better by friends as Buck Rogers, might be 82, but he sure is living life largely. From the comfort of his home in Waterfall Gardens Retirement Village, he spends his […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":42359,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[11280],"class_list":{"0":"post-42263","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-personalities","8":"tag-colin-rogers"},"yoast_head":"\n