Complex sentence: He was tolerated in his desire for a mechanical career by his father, who considered it a foolish whim, but within a year one of the Hodgson brothers, who ran a nearby machine shop, described Peale as more capable with tools than they were.
Split into simpler sentences: He was tolerated in his desire for a mechanical career by his father, who considered it a foolish whim. But, within a year, one of the Hodgson brothers, who ran a nearby machine shop, described Peale as more capable with tools than they were.