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Introduction

In this class you  build a medium sized trestle table (18-24" wide, up to 60" long and 30" tall) using primarily, hand tools.

This class is intended for graduates of Hand Tool Heaven or our Basics of Woodworking series or hand tool woodworkers with the equivalent skills. This class is a great opportunity to put those skills together in a project setting.

A trestle table is good looking piece of practical furniture. You'll get to make some design choices within overall size we propose. 

The stretcher can be position as mid to low level foot rail or a discrete high rail with straight edges or have subtle curves - your choice.  

There are design choices on the trestles as well - foot style, shape, edge details, how to deal with the expansion and contraction of the table top

The joinery used in this project is mortice and tenon. You get to make choices about wedged flush cut tenons or wedged or tusked through tenons (for a knock down design) for the stretcher. The top and bottom pieces of the trestles are joined using draw bored (pinned) tenons.

You'll join the top from 2 or 3 well dried, rough sawn boards. We'll show you how to quickly and efficiently flatten the top and dimension the top with hand saws (although we do consider the band saw a hand saw!).

We'll have kits of the other parts prepared so that you spend most of your time on the fun stuff - joinery and details.

We're proposing to make the table of local North Western woods - either western maple or alder. These woods, when air dried, work well with hand tools. We'll settle on on the wood when we check on our local sources. We will have selected the boards for quality and havwe assembled kits before the class starts.

If you would prefer to bring your own wood - you'll need about 40 bd ft of usable 8/4 lumber. Please contact us directly if you propose to do this.

A table like this can look great with a simple blonde shellac finish or an oil and wax finish. We'll demonstrate the finishing techniques and may be even apply the first coat.

Note: Steve Habersetzer and other faculty will do the bulk of the teaching and class supervision. Jim Tolpin will be on hand for demonstrations and Q&A sessions most days. We'll be leaning heavily on Jim's exploration of artisanal techniques and proportional design in this class.

Class Description

In this class you learn:

• Table design and construction techniques
• Fine tuning of the design
• Joinery design
• Preparing a parts / cut list
• Preparation and glue up of the table top
• Flattening and dimensioning the table top by (mainly) hand
• Dimensioning  the trestle and stretcher stock
• Laying out and cutting mortice and tenons joinery for the trestles and stretcher
• Cutting and shaping the trestle top and bottom pieces
• Joinery to attach the table top
• Glue up of the Trestles
• Applying edge detail to the table top
• Final assembly
• Application of basic finishes

When doing the heavier work on the table tops you'll work in teams of two or three depending on class size. This spreads the workload and get the tasks completed on time.

Tools:

• List of recommended Hand Tools (TBA)
• If you do not have all the tools on the list bring along those that you already own. We have a wide array of teaching tools and each work bench is equipped with a set of hand tools. However we do encourage you to start acquiring your own tools so that you get used to them and we can help you tune them up during class.

More about this class

• Class Notes
• Blog Entries

Prerequisites

This class should not be your first time working with hand tools. We designed the class for students who have taken Jim’s Hand Tool Heaven class or the Hand Saw Essentials and Hand Plane Essentials classes in our Basic Of Woodworking program.

However if you have self studied and completed the projects in Jim Tolpin's "The New Traditional Woodworker" or have taken hand tool classes elsewhere then this will be a great class for you.

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.

*If the acutal materials cost less we will refund the difference at the beginning of the class.

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.