However, for Rob Buchanan, from Rouskey, outside Donemana, nothing could be further from the truth. Despite losing a finger to a saw many moons ago as he chatted and distractedly cut into a piece of timber at the same time, his love affair with wood has endured.
"I loosed my finger on that saw there. I never felt it coming off. I turned round and there was the finger just sitting there," he says, almost in passing, as he regards his missing digit: "There was a man standing over there at the bench, de ye see. He spoke and I looked round at him and whiniffer I looked back there was a finger missing. I didnay know it was off until I saw it hanging on a wee piece of skin.
"I served my time with a man named Harry Allen, down there in the village. The house is down there yet and the wee workshop is still standing there too. I left school at 14, for in those days you left school at 14, and stayed two year on the farm up here. There was four brothers and I wasn't interested too much in the farming, so I stayed at it for two year and I started then when I was 16 at the carpentry. I was always interested in it," he says.
A constant companion of Robert's is his tabby cat, who has no name, but seems to have an in-built alarm clock when it comes to getting a treat, and guarantees the workshop is rodent-free.
"That cat's spoiled. I've had a cat around here for 13 or 14 years, and I called it Tom, a he-cat. It died there about a month ago. I always keep an odd packet of cooked ham in that drawer in that cupboard there, de ye see. And if I made up to that end of the workshop at all that tom cat was up pestering me for a slice of ham. So then, when I was giving him a slice that cat there was running about too, so I had to give it a slice. So now that Tom is away I got this one now and it always looks for it," he says of the ham-hungry feline.
Retiring to the point of shyness about his skills, it is left to others - namely Raymond Forbes and Billy McClintock - to reveal that in his day Robert was a master of his craft, in demand for window replacement, making all manner of carts and contraptions for horse and donkey-drawn transport, as well as making and repairing the many water wheels dotted around the countryside that relied on the burns and Mourne River to keep the flax mills in operation.
"Och, years ago I made windays and everything, but windays is all plastic now," he muses.
In a year Robert reckons he makes "a few tractors and trailers", but when steel became the fashion the demand for his skills dropped away.
When I ask him if he was ever afraid of being put out of business completely by mechanisation, Robert laughs.
"It wouldnay worry me about that. For a long time I worked out around the country, y'know. Just around the farms doing odd jobs and farm work. Now that there (indicates the cart he's working on], that there's ordered. That's for use. That there is a bit longer than the ordinary horse cart, but there are two shafts in a horse cart on up for a horse, but this here is going to be pulled by a tractor, de ye see?"
The donkey cart behind him is a beautiful piece of work. He is keen to point out that the wheel work on it would take the longest time of all to make compared to any of the bodywork. That said, I discover that a solid wheel is very easy made compared to a spoke wheel which takes "a brave wee bit of work to make".
"I've made a few donkey carts, but that one I've made a brave while, but there's not much demand on them now. Folk's keeping their money now and not parting with it," he says, adding: "There would be an odd one coming in here that sees these things and they would order wan."
"I enjoy it...I never wanted much on anything else. I had to serve three years with Harry Allen learning it, and I had to work - but I was getting no pay. Nothing, for three years. I wasn't too long at it till I was able to do a brave bit of work myself, and I used to work in my spare time up in places like Glenhordial, putting in kitchens and windays."
Asked if he ever thought about giving up the carpentry, Robert, who is a young at heart 86-year-old dismisses the notion.
"If I charged now what is a proper carpenter's wages, de ye see these things here, you wouldnay be able to afford them. They'd be too expensive. Now, I'm sort of only passing the time out here and I wouldnay be at this full time now de ye know."
Given a helping hand with the painting and priming of the wood, due to the arthritis in his hands, it's hard to picture Robert's workshed without him pottering around, and he certainly shows no signs of stopping, never mind losing his skill if his new tractor trailer is anything to go by. Another work of art in progress.