My Space: Jordan Lambert’s Tahiti workshop

Just a couple of years ago, my Tahitian husband told me that he’d like to move back to the country of his birth. We were living in northern France at the time, and I wasn’t too sure about moving to a hot climate on the other side of the world, but my stepmother was also born there and it seemed like the right decision to make. What took me by surprise was the difficulty in moving all my tools and equipment – and especially my wood store! Since Tahiti has very strict rules about importing woods, I had to get permits for all my tonewood, and then have it heat-treated at temperatures of 60–70C. Then, when it arrived in Tahiti it had to be treated again with methyl bromide, to make sure anything that might have been living in it was definitely gone…