The Port Townsend School of Woodworking will offer two 12-week intensives each year starting in 2012.
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Woodworking Foundation Course
Running January through March this full time course focuses on developing the basic skills of woodworking through the extensive use of hand tools.
The course starts with traditional techniques for riving (splitting from the log) and shaping wood to make basic furniture. The course then switches to teaching and developing craftsmanship with hand tools - this section will be co-taught by Jim Tolpin (author of The New Traditional Woodworker). Students make a series of bench tools (straight edges, winding sticks, tool totes etc) which build and hone their skills.
The middle part of the focuses on teaching solid wood joinery through building a tool tote and a small side table with a draw.
The course culminates with the students designing and building a tool chest inspired by Christopher Schwarz's The Anarchist's Tool Chest.
This class is suitable for beginning woodworkers. The school has a full set of tools for each student but encourage students to acquire and tune their own tools.
Full Class Description and Enrollment
The class costs $6100
Schedule:
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January 9 - March 30, 2012
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January 7 - March 29, 2013
Scholarships are available to young people (17-29 years old) and to Veterans up to 35 years old
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Furniture Making Intensive
Our Historic Preservation program teaches students the skills to complete historically correct, and energy efficient, exterior renovations and restorations on buildings at Fort Worden State Park. A natural extension of the School’s Furniture Making program is to start creating furniture for buildings at the Fort.
We will be offering a three month Furniture Making Intensive in the Fall of 2012. This course will focus on the skills and materials needed to make robust, well designed and well made solid wood furniture. In the final part of the course the students will work in teams to make furniture for houses, program spaces (meeting rooms) or hospitality areas at Fort Worden.
Our goal is to challenge students to design and make furniture that combines the practicalities of making furniture in small production runs with details, added through the use of hand tools, that show the traditional values of craftsmanship. The duration of the course also provides a time constraint so students will have to be timely and pragmatic during all phases of the creation of the new furniture.
This is not a class for beginning woodworkers - a graduate of the Foundation Course or somebody with similar skills would be a prefect candidate.
The class costs $6100
Schedule:
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October 1 - December 21, 2012
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September 30 - December 20, 2013
We hope to have Scholarships available to young people (17-29 years old) and to Veterans up to 35 years old.
