Introduction

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.

This course covers much of the same ground as Jim Tolpin's Handtool Heaven - in fact Jim will teach some segments of the class - covering the basics of hand tool woodworking. Instead of making benchtools there is more emphasis on joinery - dovetails and mortice & tenons.

This class gives you the basic skills and traing to take most our other furniture making classes - though we do encourage you to complete a couple of small projects first.

Class Description

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. We'll introduce you to the principles of proprtional design so that you can build a simple but elegant and functional piece of furniture or tool tote. We're restraining the variety and complexity of the design to ensure you finish the joinery and any shaping before the end of the class.

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.

Tools:

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" or your old chisels of the same sizes if they are, at worst, lightly rusted with minimal nicks in the blades.

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 tuning and using them.

• #5 Jack plane
• #62 1/2 Block Plane
• Western dovetail saw (Lee Valley - Veritas Dovetail Saw is great
• Cutting (marking) gauge - with a blade not a pin
• 12" combination square

More about this class

• Class Notes
• Blog Entries

Prerequisites

Enthusiasm - this class is for beginners who want to build the basic skills to start Furniture Making. 

Class Information and Registration

Class starts at 9:00am on the first day.

Please read our What to Expect page for general information about the School.

Please also read our Registration Policy.

Coming Classes:

When you click on the Register link you will be able to register for the class or, if the class is full, sign up for the wait list.