He takes a break, long, just to talk to us. We can tell he is interested in our conversation from his kind tone and his willingness to share his passion for the art of woodworking.

That passion is in his genes, it comes from the maternal side. It was passed on both to him and his brother João Alberto Neves (now deceased), who indelibly marked the Azorean shipbuilding, in Santo Amaro do Pico, where he started a family and built many of the trawlers of the so-called “blue fleet”. “Our uncles were great carpenters, and, at that time, they did not even have the equipment we have now”, Jaime stresses, recalling that, as a boy, he did not want to follow his relatives in the craft, but was forced to do so because he did not like school. Teachers did not know how to captivate him and, at the age of 15, he began to learn how to make bins, which were widely used at that time, and buckets for transporting water. “There were no plastics, everything was made of wood. My brother started making buckets out of cedar to be used on trawlers, but then he moved to Pico”, Jaime says.

A little later, at the age of 17, Jaime Neves followed in his brother's footsteps and went to Pico, to work in José Costa's workshop, in Santo Amaro, but he did not stay long, since he did not like the craft related to shipbuilding. It was military service that changed, in a way, his life. “I left military service with new ideas to put into practice in São Jorge Island. This thanks to Sergeant Manuel Almeida Chaves, a master carpenter with a super brain. I will never forget his motto: 'We should always be closer to those who know more than we do because, with the other ones, we learn nothing'. I learned a lot from him.

Back on his island, Jaime set up his own business and started making furniture and building his own wooden machinery. “Later on, I bought a very good machine, by the Pinheiro brand, and I imported cryptomeria from São Miguel. Over time, there was also formic coming from the mainland. I started making wooden partitions and facades for a construction company, which was a great help as it guaranteed me a lot of work”, he recalls. Jaime Neves' carpentry kept abreast of trends and began to sell hardware, paints and ceramics.

Amazing workpieces
Anyone who knows Jaime Neves knows well what he is capable of, but even so, he never ceases to surprise. At 75 years old, he has the internet as an ally in the realization of his dream projects and he likes to learn, regardless of the source. He considers it “stupid” when people say they do something in a certain way because their parents already did it that way.

However, the internet does not solve everything. The first bicycle he built in wood was inspired by an image he found online, but he went on to make several changes to suit his taste; even the chains were made of wood. As he usually says in relation to this and other projects, the photographs he finds on the internet are just the starting point; much of what is done is the fruit of his own imagination. One of his most impressive pieces is a wasp, in wood: “Building that wasp was crazy but I liked it since I saw, many years ago, a movie in which an actress rode around an Italian city on the same one. I never forgot that movie.” Also worth mentioning is the clock, all in wood, with a pendulum. “And it works”!

However, his favorite piece is a Cadillac he made, in a smaller size than the original, but which has already paraded through some streets. Even the door hinges are made of wood. “The old Cadillac model has always fascinated me, since I was a kid”, Jaime admits. And with this project completed, he's already thinking about the next one: a three-meter-long Formula 1 Ferrari, for which he found neither plans nor measurements on the internet.

As for selling his workpieces, that is something he is not interested in. Jaime enjoys entering his carpentry shop and seeing what came out of his imagination and hands. He has never done exhibitions either, but he has had several opportunities and there is no shortage of people who come to visit him just to see what he has done.

Jaime Neves enjoys what he does, always in his spare time. "What I do is not to stand out or to make myself look like I am better than anyone else. It is just to amuse me. I spent Christmas Day here, this is where I like to be”. That is why he does not even think about retiring: “If I stop working, I die. It is like they say here: 'Those who run for pleasure do not get tired'."