Workshop Clearance After 37 Years: Why a 74-year-old former RAF engine fitter is letting his handcrafted Flying Ace wind spinners go for a fraction of their value, before the bulldozers take his old tin hut for good.

Just outside Albrighton in Shropshire, a former RAF engine fitter named Dennis Hartley has spent the last 37 years building something small and stubborn: hand-balanced Flying Ace wind spinners that have outlasted dogs, cars and most of the gardens they were first planted in.

On the first Monday in December, that comes to an end. The old tin hut where Dennis has balanced every propeller by hand since 1989 has been sold. Thirty-six new-build houses will go up where his workbench stands today.

What’s left are 97 finished Flying Ace spinners — and one decision Dennis made that most makers in his position never would.

Albrighton, Shropshire, at dawn: Where steel still has a soul

The workshop is an old curved tin hut from the war, the kind farmers used to store hay in. It measures barely 35 square metres. On the walls hang tools whose wooden handles have been worn smooth — most of them belonged to Dennis’s father, a fitter at the Granville pit in Telford.

A little iron stove ticks in the corner. On the bench sits a row of Flying Ace spinners in every stage of being finished. The hut smells of oil, steel and cold tea.

Dennis runs his thumb along a freshly smoothed edge.

He has walked into this hut at a quarter to six nearly every morning since 1989. Thirty-seven years of mornings. After November, that’s over.

When wind only brings noise

Most gardeners only find out when it’s too late: nearly every wind spinner sold in Britain today is made to end up in the bin.

The blades are stamped from thin coated steel that starts to rust the moment the coating gets scratched. The bearings are cheap plastic sleeves that swell in the damp and seize in the first hard frost. Nobody balances the blades — which is why most of them creak like a garden gate by their second winter.

Dennis saw this coming years ago. He had spent 28 years keeping RAF jet engines running, where one badly balanced part could mean a pilot didn’t come home. So when he started building wind spinners, he built them the only way he knew: as if somebody’s life depended on them turning right.

Twenty-eight years on jet engines: How Dennis tamed “the secret of perfect running”

Dennis never just built wind spinners. He built them like little engines. Every Flying Ace has a body of 304 stainless steel — the kind used on boats and in hospital kitchens, because it doesn’t rust. The propeller is balanced by hand on a stand Dennis built himself in 1991 from an old scrapped engine part.

The part most people never see makes the biggest difference. Every propeller turns on a sealed ball bearing, not a plastic sleeve. Nothing to swell, nothing to seize. It starts turning in a 4 mph breeze and stays quiet in a gale.

Then there’s the paint. Every biplane wears the red, white and blue RAF roundels — the same colours Dennis looked at every working day for 28 years. And on the side, he paints the number B7270. It belonged to a real Sopwith Camel: the plane credited with bringing down the Red Baron in April 1918.

Why Dennis can no longer keep doing what he loves

“That’s it now,” Dennis says, looking slowly round the hut. There’s no bitterness in his voice. Just the calm of a man who has made peace with something he didn’t choose.

In July, the farmyard was sold to a developer from Birmingham. The plan is 36 new houses with “open-plan living.” The bulldozers arrive on the first Monday in December.

And there’s something else. The arthritis in his hands has been getting worse for three winters.

No chance of a new start

Dennis spent the summer looking for another workshop. “There’s nothing left round here,” he says. “Every old barn has turned into a wedding venue or a holiday let. The rent on what’s left would finish me inside a year. I’m 74. I’m not starting again.”

What’s in the hut now is the last of it. When these 97 spinners are gone, the Flying Ace goes with them.

“I’ve got customers whose Flying Ace has been turning for over 20 years”

Dennis pulls an old biscuit tin off the shelf and tips out a pile of photos — some faded, some stuck to postcards, most dated on the back in his own handwriting.

“This one went to a lady in Shifnal in 1990,” he says, holding up a photo of a spinner beside a greenhouse. “She rang me last spring. Said it’s still going, she’s never touched it. Now she wants one for her grandson. She’s 86.”

He spreads a few more across the bench. Ludlow, 2004. An allotment in Wolverhampton, 2009. Tenby, 2012. “Every one of these is still turning. I don’t service them. I don’t oil them. They just keep going. That’s the whole point.”

What Flying Ace owners say about Dennis’s work

• ★★★★★

  “Bought mine at Shrewsbury Flower Show in 2005. It’s stood in the same spot for twenty years. Never oiled it. Not a spot of rust. You can tell it was made by someone who actually cared.”

  — Margaret E., Shrewsbury
• ★★★★★

  “My wife thought I was daft paying this for a garden spinner. Three years on, she’s the one who goes to the window when the wind picks up. Silent, and it turns in the lightest breeze.”

  — Keith R., Stafford
• ★★★★★

  “Got one for my dad’s 80th. He was ground crew at RAF Scampton. He put it next to the bird table and sits watching it every afternoon. Worth every penny for that alone.”

  — Sarah H., Lincoln
• ★★★★★

  “Two Pennine winters and not a mark on it. The cheap one my neighbour bought online fell apart by October. Mine still looks like the day it came.”

  — David M., Huddersfield

The end of an era in Shropshire — and your last chance

Soon Dennis will lock the hut door for the last time. The older tools are already packed in crates for his grandson. The lathe is going to a college in Telford. Everything else — the balancing stand he built in 1991, the paint pots, the spare bearings — goes in the skip when the bulldozers arrive.

Only 97 Flying Ace spinners remain. When they’re gone, the listing comes down. There will not be another batch.

“It’s about the mechanics, not the money”

So that the last ones find good homes, Dennis has priced them well below what the steel and bearings alone cost him.

The Flying Ace Wind Spinner: The facts at a glance

• 100% Shropshire handwork. Every Flying Ace is built by Dennis in his hut near Albrighton. No factory. One pair of hands, start to finish.
• Balanced like a jet engine. The propeller is set up with the same care Dennis used for 28 years on RAF engines.
• 304 stainless steel. Doesn’t rust, doesn’t flake. Made for the wettest British winter.
• Sealed ball bearing. Turns in a 4 mph breeze. Silent in a gale. No oiling, ever.
• Hand-painted RAF roundels. Red, white and blue, plus the B7270 marking of the real Sopwith Camel from 1918.
• Signed underneath. One of the last 97 before the hut comes down for good.

Where can you get the original?

The genuine Flying Ace by Dennis Hartley is only available through Craft Folk — a small online shop for real handwork from selected makers.

His granddaughter Lucy set it up two years ago, when Dennis realised he couldn’t keep up with the post, the emails and the workshop at the same time. She answers the emails and packs the boxes. Dennis still signs every spinner by hand before it leaves the hut.

An important note

Please don’t be fooled by similar-looking spinners on Amazon, eBay or market stalls. Cheap copies with similar names have started to appear online. They are mass-produced imports, not Dennis’s work — and they fail the same way every stamped spinner does.

The genuine Flying Ace is only available through Craft Folk. Every original is signed underneath and comes with Dennis’s personal 30-day guarantee.

The hut comes down in December

By the end of November 2026, every finished Flying Ace will either be on its way to a garden — or in the skip with the rest of the hut.

Risk-free trial: The 100% satisfaction guarantee

Dennis and Lucy are sure you’ll feel the difference the moment you put it in the ground: the breeze it catches, the silence when it turns, the weight of real steel.

But if for any reason the Flying Ace isn’t what you hoped, Lucy will take it back. No questions, no fuss.

• ★★★★★

  “We gave my father-in-law one for Christmas. He was an aircraft engineer at Brize Norton for thirty years. First thing he did was turn it over to look at the bearing. Went quiet, then said: ‘Whoever made this knew what he was doing.’ Highest praise you’ll ever get from him.”

  — The Pritchard family, Swindon
• ★★★★★

  “I’ve bought garden things for twenty years. Most of it falls apart. This is the first thing I genuinely think will outlive me. The grandchildren can have it.”

  — Jean K., Telford
• ★★★★★

  “My husband passed last spring. He loved those old cartoons and anything with an RAF roundel on it. I put a Flying Ace where his chair used to be. Every time the wind picks up, I go outside. Silly, but it helps. Thank you, Dennis.”

  — Christine H., Norwich
• ★★★★★

  “Two years in. Survived Storm Babet, a hard frost and three grandsons trying to climb it. Still turning like new.”

  — Brenda L., Leicester