To register for this  class, go here:  Port Townsend School of Woodworking

In this five weekday course you will build a simple, but elegant, piece of furniture using mostly hand tools. My fundamental goal is to allow you to experience the almost indescribable pleasure of working good wood with good tools into a pleasing and useful form. Each student (the maximum number is 8) will be assigned a massive workbench furnished with a complete set of professional-grade, tuned and sharpened hand tools. The school is located in a restored historic building at Fort Worden State Park and Life Long Learning Center at the tip of the Olympic Penninsula--just a beach walk away from the "Victorian Seaport" of Port Townsend.  

 Under my instruction, you will learn to:

·        Quickly create a cutlist from working drawings.

·        Layout and cut stock to size.  (We keep material on hand...or you can visit Edensaw Lumber down the road if you wish to pick out your own hardwood stock)

·        Properly sharpen, set up and use planes and chisels (in conjunction with handsaws and occasionally a bandsaw) to create a variety of traditional joints such as mortise and tenon, bridles and dovetails.

·        Work a decorative profile along the edge of a board with hand tools.

·        Layout, cut and smooth a curved edge.

·        Quickly true end-cuts perfectly with a hand plane and shop-made shooting board.

·        Hand plane and scrape surfaces mirror smooth. (A process that is dust-free, quiet and much, much faster than sanding!)

·        Assemble structures accurately, efficiently and with consideration of the inherent instability of solid wood.

·        Apply a deep luster, non-toxic, oil-based finish (a traditional boiled, heavy-metal free,  linseed or tung oil).

In theJoy of Woodworking course you will discover how fast and fun it is to work wood with properly tuned and sharpened handtools. In just a few days you'll get the hang of some simple and sensible techniques that eliminate the typical tedium of hand-tool working. I'm looking forward to showing you how working wood without the largely unnecessary use of power tools (at least after the initial milling and rough sizing procedures) creates the joyful, quiet and dust-free experience that furnituremakers enjoyed in the centuries before the industrial revolution.

As I proposed in my most recent book (Woodworking Wit and Wisdom"):

"The more power you apply to the process, the further you get from the product"!