With most children who pester their parents to get them a new gizmo or gadget at Christmas, you can be sure it is a passing phase. The guitar, easel or other assorted items will soon be discarded and covered in dust. But for Eoin Bogan from Virginia, Co Cavan, this was not the case.

For Christmas 2015, at the age of just 11, Eoin begged his mother to get him a lathe, so he could practice woodturning.

Eoin had always been into woodworking and says he was going out to screw bits and bobs together in the shed from the age of four.

He had seen various people at shows giving woodturning displays and thought it was something he would like to try.

After much canvasing, his mother, Sandra, finally relented. On Christmas Day that year, Eoin made a jar with a lid, on the lathe, and has not looked back since. The 13-year-old now has his own business, Blue Cabin Works, making a variety of wooden pieces in the garden shed on the family’s suckler farm.

“I begged mam and I pestered her for months coming up to Christmas. She finally gave in and decided to get me a lathe.

“She was a bit hesitant, thinking, as you know, kids go through phases. They want one thing and 10 minutes later they would be on to the next thing. But I stuck at it,” says Eoin.

“It is all self-taught, from watching videos and googling stuff. I never went to lessons or anything like that. On the very first day I got the lathe, I went out, got any piece of timber I could find and used it. I just kept going and trying different things.”

In the beginning, Eoin housed his lathe in the garage. However, this was too noisy for the rest of the family, so it was moved to the blue shed down the bottom of the garden. From there the name Blue Cabin Works was born.

The second-year student at St Oliver’s in Oldcastle, Co Meath, sells a variety of items, including yarn bowls, egg cups, rattles, pincushions, tea pot trivets and more through his Facebook page, which was set up in July of this year and has nearly 700 likes.

Eoin has already sent his work to the US, Canada and Germany. When asked where he gets the inspiration for his pieces, he cites a number of different people and websites, but often the ideas just come to him.

“Sometimes I would go out into the workshop and I would just go with the flow. I would be cleaning or sweeping around the bench and an idea would come to me and I would just start making it.

“I would be out in the shed a good bit. I go home from school, do my homework, get a bit of food and then head out to the shed.” CL

To view Eoin’s handmade pieces, see his Facebook page, Blue Cabin Works.