Brent was born in Orakei but raised on the North Shore. His father was a radio and tv repairman with a well-equipped home workshop where Brent picked up his making skills at an early age.  He went from making radio-controlled model airplanes as a kid to full on race cars not many years later.

Trained as a Fitter and Turner Brent worked in several engineering and machine shops before starting his own engineering business.  After selling the engineering business to one of the partners he took a job in the Engineering Department at the University of Auckland where he worked for 29 years.  While there he worked with a number of PhD students, fabricating testing machinery and test rigs to support their research.

Brent became a volunteer at the Devonport Community Workshop soon after retiring as the result of an article in the North Shore Times seeking recruits.   In retirement Brent found he was not only missing having projects to work on but also the comradery of working with a bunch of guys, both of which he found at the Claystore.

Brent has had the same home workshop, which takes up the entire garage and some of the laundry, for 43 years, though he does have to share it with his wife’s extensive bicycle collection from her competitive cycling days.  He always has an interesting project or two on the go and has even made training devices for theatre nurses to develop their hand eye coordination.