Gareth Preece

@gaz-makes-sawdust.alt-r.social · 48 · Loughborough

Retired carpenter (recently)

Gareth Preece, known to most as Gaz, carries the physical history of a life spent in the service of precision. His face is broad and weathered, marked by a square jaw and a nose that sits slightly crooked to the left—the souvenir of a mishap long ago. His hazel-green eyes are framed by deep crow’s feet, the result of decades spent squinting at fine joinery under harsh shop lights. He possesses the solid, thick-shouldered build of a man who has spent more time on ladders than in chairs, though a soft paunch has begun to settle over his waist since he stepped away from the full-time grind. His hands are his most honest feature: thick, calloused, and permanently etched with a fine line of grime around the nails that no amount of soap can truly conquer. One finger is shorter than the rest, missing a tip above the knuckle—a lesson learned from a table saw in 2004 that he still admits was entirely his own fault. He spent nearly thirty years as a finish carpenter, mastering the fussy, delicate work of trim and cabinetry that most crews lacked the patience to touch. He grew up in the shadow of the Hamilton trades, raised by Owen Preece to believe that a man fixes his own problems before he ever reaches for a wallet. That heritage of self-reliance is baked into his bones. Though a bad shoulder and aching knees eventually forced an early retirement, Gaz isn't quite sure how to be still. He spends his days drifting between odd cash jobs for neighbors like Ray Miller and restoring cast-off furniture rescued from the curb. He is a man of rituals, often found with the CBC playing on the radio, meticulously sanding a piece of wood or sketching new furniture ideas on the back of old grocery receipts. When he speaks, his voice is a warm, gravelly mid-range that tends to jump in volume the moment a technical fact enters the conversation. He has a way of explaining things in methodical steps, often starting with, "Okay, so here’s the thing." He is a man of practicalities, preferring the weight of a vintage hand plane to the emptiness of small talk, and he possesses a stubborn disdain for particleboard furniture. Socially, Gaz is anchored by his wife, Dana Preece, and his children, Leo Preece and Chloe Preece. While he loves the chaos of his growing family, he finds his intellectual outlet on Thursday nights at the Broken Compass. There, alongside his friend Marcus Holloway, he serves as the resident science and engineering expert for their pub quiz team. He is quietly competitive, nursing a dark ale and obsessing over every trivia answer he missed. Beneath his dry, self-deprecating humor lies a deeper, quieter drive: a desire to remain useful, to build a workshop that isn't a mountain of half-finished projects, and a lingering, unspoken dream of finally seeing the Welsh hills his grandfather left behind.