A 20-YEAR-old commerce student from Innishannon, who made his own Currach during lockdown last year, is now entertaining thousands of followers on TikTok with his woodwork videos of him using old hand tools.
And it seems the Americans can’t get enough of Eoin Reardon’s videos either, with almost half of his followers coming from the United States.
Eoin rose to prominence last year when he decided to build his own Currach, despite never having studied woodwork before.
‘I had always wanted to build a boat. It was something to do during the lockdown last year and plus the currach seemed like the easiest boat to build.
‘I used a lot of online resources and videos to find out how to make one and it took me about four months to complete it,’ Eoin told The Southern Star.
‘I first set sail on it last August and the plan was to sell it but that didn’t happen so I decided to hang on to it, and I am also building another one at the moment.’
Eoin – who is in second year in UCC – said that he really got into using traditional Irish woodwork tools during this process and he collected and bought a good few and decided to sell some on but there hadn’t been much interest in them.
‘I decided to make a few TikTok videos showing off the tools and then it really took off within the past month when I started posting videos more regularly. I’ve had 30m views since I’ve posted them up and people seem to love them. The idea was to show off the tools on TikTok and then get people to buy them but the success of the videos has taken on a life of its own.’
Eoin has got over 280,000 followers alone in the past 28 days, with 47% of them coming from the United States, 23% from the UK and 9% from Ireland.
Eight of his videos have exceeded 1m views in the past couple of weeks and he now has 320,000 followers, while he has also hosted a number of live sessions with audiences peaking at just over 1,000.
‘I go to sleep some nights and when I wake up the next day I see that I’ve gained over 20,000 followers overnight!’
It looks like it’s going to be a busy summer for Eoin as he plans to build another Currach, while also entertaining his thousands of followers on the social media app with his woodworking skills.
