Hi, I’m Dino.

I was born in Yugoslavia, grew up in the UK after my family started over there, and eventually followed a wonderful Norwegian woman north. The workshop — and Craftasaurus — now lives in Norway.

By day I write software. Good work, but at the end of it there is nothing you can hold. The bench is the counterweight: real wood, real steel, and no undo button. When I plane a board or pull a bar of glowing steel from the fire, the day’s work has weight, grain, and heat.

Craftasaurus started as things for our own house — brackets, a desk, a sign for a friend’s band. People kept asking where they came from, then whether I would make one for them. At some point “hobby” stopped being the right word.

Off the bench

When I’m not lifting a hammer I’m lifting weights, or getting folded in half at Brazilian jiu-jitsu. Summers are for slow barbecue. And thanks to Solo Leveling I have fallen head first down the Korean rabbit hole — the shows, the music, all of it. I regret nothing.