In late October, my friend John Gregg and I went to woodworking school in Almonte, Ontario, Canada. We were taught by Ted Brown and Ron Barter at the fantastic Rosewood Studio.
Ted is an alumnus of the College of the Redwoods and studied under James Krenov, one of the great master woodworkers. Ron has quite the woodworking resume as well, having done many commissioned furniture pieces in Canada and the U.S.
We studied proper design, measuring and planning techniques for various projects. All were given an introduction to proper setup and use of bandsaws, tablesaws, jointers and planers. I learned a great deal about using and maintaining handtools such as planes, chisels and scrapers. Sharpening chisels and plane blades is an art in itself and is the one of the greatest contributors to quality work. I'm sure another contributor has to be patience...skill comes to mind as well!
One of our "projects" for our class was to take a rough milled slab of poplar wood and create 4 properly dimensioned boards. We then handcut dovetails in these boards to create an open box.
As a new woodworker, I want my projects to be as perfect as possible, but it's easy to become mentally paralyzed by over-thinking every cut and angle.
One of the most memorable and liberating concepts that I learned from the class is the subject of "relative measurement". While there will still be some critical measures and angles to a project, it's important to remember that, "...if you are building a chair, it will need to be about the size of a chair!" Once you are happy with the first leg of a coffee table, the other legs just need to be the same size as the first one.
I highly recommend the Craftsmanship 1A class if you have an interest in becoming a "serious amateur" woodworker! There are a good handful of great bed&breakfasts within a short walk of the studio. I stayed at the "Blue Heron" and was treated like a rockstar! Some classmates and newfound friends also stayed at the Blue Heron, John from Toronto and Jack Giacomelli of Kingston, Ont.
Since the class, I have done a handful of projects that have been very satisfying. I created a lighted display case for my friend, Sarah Keefe's new business. The display carcase was an old maple wardrobe that Polly and I found next to a dumpster! I created the faceframe and shelf lips from 4/4 rough maple and used 1/2" birch plywood for the shelves. I hand-drilled the shelf pins using a template I created. The face frame was joined with dowels and screwed to the carcase. The screws were countersunk and covered by maple plugs. The entire piece was hand-planed and finished with polyurethane gloss. Each shelf is lit by its own xenon light which is controlled by a hidden dimmer switch. (picture to come)
I assisted John Gregg in producing some wall mounted racks for displaying sheets of paper. These racks started as 5/4 rough maple and used shellac and pastewax for the final finish. (picture to come)
I also built a couple more display racks. One rack uses a louvered door to display card samples. The back panel of the louvers were created with 1/4" plywood. The base designs of both racks were created by myself. (picture to come)
