My father-in-law, David Hutchison, who has died aged 84, was a multi-skilled precision engineer who created items ranging from Jacobean furniture to a catapult for HMS Ark Royal in his garden shed.
He was born in Forest Gate, east London, the only child of Betty Whittaker. She later married Ronnie Hutchison, an actor, writer and variety performer under the name Harry Tate Jnr (and son of the comedian Harry Tate), with whom David would appear on stage and whose surname he took.
Betty was a wardrobe mistress and the house was often visited by celebrities of the 1960s calling for their costumes. David met Morecambe and Wise, Frankie Vaughan, Alma Cogan, and Freddie and the Dreamers, but was particularly bowled over by Sylvia Sims, whom he had to entertain (stall) while her dress was finished.
After school in Forest Gate, and in Yapton, West Sussex, he was apprenticed to the gunmaker Holland & Holland (1952-57), where he learned basic engineering skills. Soon afterwards he left to set up his own company, HPI, with a friend – in his garden shed in Chesham Bois, Buckinghamshire – producing thermometers for refrigeration units.
These were so successful that David progressed, after a name change to Adam Instruments, to owning two factories in Aylesbury, with a substantial staff . He was completely indiscriminate in hiring – all he required from prospective employees was a willingness to learn. This venture was so successful that at one stage he reckoned that one in three refrigerated lorries on the road carried his gauges.
At home he continued to make bespoke precision instruments, and was invited to tender by the MoD. His work for the navy included the mechanism for the catapults and restraining hook on the Ark Royal; before he set to work they sent round an admiral to inspect his shed.
His passion was restoring antiques – from furniture to clocks to blunderbusses, all of which were bought as scrap. One Jacobean chair was delivered in worm-eaten pieces in a sack, a clock was in 30 bits, the blunderbuss was a pile of rusty iron. These were all restored to painstaking perfection: if a part was missing he would make it to the original specification. His entire house was furnished with 17th- to 19th-century furniture and artefacts – all restored by him.
From David, I learned everything from how to wire an electric cooker to the mains (by telephone instruction) to identifying furniture, clocks, glass and anything else from his preferred period: how it was made, where it was made, what it was made of and whether it was well made or not. He was a man of rare skills and knowledge, generously imparted.
David met Barbara Pugh in Kilburn dance hall in the early 1960s, the last of four girls he asked to dance that night – he later excused himself by saying he thought she was too young to be out because of her youthful appearance. They were married in 1964. She survives him, along with two daughters, Amanda (my wife) and Tracey, and three granddaughters, Rosie, Amelia and Isabella.
