The goal of this ten day intensive course is to teach you the tool skills, sequences of work, techniques for assembly and finishing of a small piece of furniture using hand joinery.

We assume that you have little or no experience of woodworking and that you are keen to learn. This is an ideal course for beginners.

The course is a series of lectures, demonstrations and hands-on learning sessions. We steadily add to your skills and knowledge through the entire course. You'll learn to sharpen your chisels and plane blades. You'll develop and practice your sawing and chiseling skills on a series of simple joints ending up making dovetails. We emphasize markup using cutting gauges and mortise gauges.

We demonstrate and teach you to safely use the major power tools - jointer, planer, bandsaw and tablesaw to mill lumber foursquare.

This is a project based course. During the first week, in between sessions of handwork, you'll design a simple piece of furniture (we'll give you a set of requirements). You'll sketch, review and mock up several designs before making a full scale drawing of the final piece. From the final design you'll create a materials and cut list. As a class we  make a trip to the lumberyard (Edensaw) for you to choose and purchase your lumber. You will rough mill your lumber at the end of the first week.

At the beginning of the second week you will do the final milling of your lumber, dimension the pieces; layout and start the hand joinery. We'll include sessions on assembly, glue up and finishing.

You should leave on the final Friday with a completed piece and a good grounding in furnituremaking.

The course runs Monday to Friday both weeks.

Class Tool List:
Sharpening is a key skill that you will learn during this course. To fully learn sharpening you need to sharpen a blade from scratch. So we do ask you to bring chisels. We recommend the Irwin (formerly Marples) Blue handled chisels - 1/4", 1/2", 3/4" and 1"

You do not need to purchase or bring any other tools to take this class. You will be working at a bench that is fully equipped with hand tools. However if you already own any of the following tools you may bring them along to get further practise with them.

• Block Plane
• Japanese or Western dovetail saw
• A cutting (marking) gauge - with a blade not a pin
• #4 smooth plane
  

This course is part of our Craft of Furnituremaking Series. In November 2010 we offer this class as the first part of a six week intensive.

Class size:              10
Cost:                       $1200
Materials Charge:   $35