For many woodworkers, a good workbench is perhaps the most important tool in their shop. It provides the woodworker with many critical functions that enhance the entire experience of woodworking and the quality of your work. Among them a bench provides a stable work space that also functions as a reference surface for accurate machining and assembly of your work. It also provides several tools and clamps to hold your work pieces as you work on them with both hand and power tools.

With so many things that workbenches can do to help us in our woodworking, there are many, many decisions a woodworker needs to make when building or buying a workbench. With that in mind we'll discuss the history of workbenches and talk about the various kinds of workbenches, how they work and their specific features and what they mean to the way you do woodworking. And. we'll discuss making the design choices to get the right bench for the way you do woodworking.

We'll also talk about building workbenches. A workbench is much more then just another project to many woodworkers. It's a bit of a rite of passage, too. A workbench has all kinds of design, joinery, assembly and structural details and building one is also a great opportunity to practice your woodworking skills. We'll discuss what to consider when taking on the project.

Tim's background is in architecture and design and is now a full time furniture maker. His first project as a woodworker was building a workbench and has been very enthusiastic about them ever since. So much so that he built the definitive website reference 10 years ago to help other woodworkers build and design their own workbenches: www.workbenchdesign.net.

We're hoping to get Tim to teach a build your own workbench course in 2010.

Dale Faulstich is an artist and woodcarver. He has been living and working on the Norwest Coast since 1972. His home and studio are located on the North Olympic Peninsula in Washington State, where he lives with his wife, Heather, and their two children.

As a non-native, working in a native tradition, Dale enjoys a unique relationship with the Jamestown S'Klallam Tribe of Sequim, WA. The long-standing collaboration has led to many commissioned artworks.

Dale continues to be involved in various Tribal projects and he assists Tribal members in designing and carving traditional objects. He also teaches an ongoing series of classes.

Dale has created masks, totem poles, steam bent boxes, animal form bowls, rattles, drums and ceremonial objects; as well as carved doors, wall panels, furniture and other contemporary applications which can be found in many private collections in the United States.

"I came in to horse logging after a career as a healthcare manager.  I have always appreciated forests of a diverse and interesting  nature along with the wildlife variation that exists in them as well. I have always believed in forest management, but not the overly aggressive harvesting that leaves something to be desired from  an aesthetic and forest diversity  perspective.
 
I am from the Midwest where draft animals are still used on farms and for logging. Thus my interest and passion to study and apply low impact forest stand improvement using draft horses. Notice that this is not only low impact harvesting but an improvement tool that promotes stand diversity as well." 

The sound of a violin is deeply influenced by the bow used to play it. The quality of the bow can be almost as important as the quality of violin. Most high end bows are made of Pernambuco (a rare wood that is now on the endangered species list) which is incredibly dense and heavy.

Port Townsend has a large community of violin and cello bow makers - possibly the largest community outside of Paris.  Paul Siefried is one of the leading makers and we're delighted to have him come and talk about the process of making bow.

Paul and fellow bow maker Ole Kanestrom have established their joint workshop in a former restaurant, the Wild Coho, so inevitably their new location is called "The Wild Bowho". Visits to the new shop are by appointment.

Jim is working on a new book on hand tools. The research he had done and his experience with hand tools are making him rethink the practise and philosophy of how hand tool are used and gives him even greater appreciation of how the old furniture makers worked.

The old furniture makers worked in a much more organic (should I say analog?) way. The furniture was fitted to the space and the wood fitted to the piece of furniture - largely without reducing dimensions to feet, inches and fractional inches. The precision of the joinery was more important than the accuracy.

In this lecture, Jim contrasts the traditional methods and modern measurement intensive approach. Jim will explore each path and show you how to work efficiently with either approach.

To illustrate the hand tool-primary approach, Jim will mock up a footstool during the lecture to show how story sticks, full-size drawings and layout patterns drive the design and construction process.

This presentation will discuss the nature of earthquakes and how they affect buildings; the types of seismic risks associated with various types of building construction; and structural solutions to buildings with seismic risk including foundations, frame stiffening and tying building components together. In addition, he will discuss the varying degrees of structural reinforcement and the issues with non-structural elements and furnishings. Both commercial and residential buildings will be discussed.

Gee Heckscher is a semi-retired architect recently moved to Port Townsend from the Bay Area. Born, educated and brought up in the northeast, he moved to California 30 years ago and worked on a wide variety of seismic strengthening and historic preservation projects both as a general contractor and architect. He found Port Townsend while working on the reinforcement of the Jefferson County Courthouse Clocktower.