WHEN Iain Clegg could not find a suitable bed to buy, he opted to make his own and sowed the seeds for a future business.

For friends admired his handiwork so much that he decided there was a living to be made from making and selling wrought iron beds.

The fabricator and welder ploughed some of the money he had earned while working on oil rigs off Scandinavia into setting up Bedcraft, based at a unit on Kendal's Shap Road industrial estate.

Mr Clegg plans to sell his beds largely via his Internet website (http://www.bedcraft.com), although customers are welcome to visit his workshop and showroom.

The former Queen Katherine School pupil has returned to Kendal after extensive travelling, including some ten months spent in Australia, where he worked for a company that made a ferris wheel and various other items for the stunning ceremony marking the opening of the Olympics in Sydney last year.

His beds are handmade from solid steel and he guarantees that they will last a lifetime. It takes three days on average to make each bed from scratch, and he can make any size or design of bed to order as well as a range of different styles.

Mr Clegg, who launched Bedcraft at the beginning of May, has been busy making some wrought iron railings for a client as a sideline, but plans to concentrate on bedmaking now the business is up and running.

May 22, 2003 13:00