Class Description:

In this course, we’ll dive deeply into the techniques and fundamentals of solid wood furniture making.  We’ll use all the tooling available in the modern home shop and the hand tools that have been used in woodworking forever.  I don’t ascribe much to the concept of being a “hand tool woodworker” or a “power tool woodworker”.  I’ll use the best option at hand to produce the finished results I’m looking for.  The reality is those decisions are often made by what tooling is available to you – or sometimes the mood that strikes you.  You’ll be working in a well-equipped shop, but we won’t rely on high priced equipment exclusively.  There are many ways to cut a mortise – we’ll take you through the process of laying out and chopping by hand, using a plunge router, a mortiser, a drill press, and a domino.  It’s my goal that when you leave this course, you can adapt what you’ve learned to your own shop.  We’ll spend a lot of time on the table saw, with routers, jointers & planers, an array of hand-held power tools and then we’ll fine tune joinery at the bench with hand tools.

From Scratch

No parts will be prepped for you in this course.  We’ll begin with rough sawn material and finish with a completed piece of furniture.  Learning the craft of woodworking is far more than fancy tools and techniques.  A deep knowledge of the material is at the core of this class.  Hundreds of decisions are made throughout the initial phases of material selection and milling that have a direct impact on the finished quality of the work and you won’t miss out on any of it.  You’ll start the week with a pile of rough sawn boards and end it with a piece ready for finish.

Beginner, Intermediate, and Advanced

Whether you are an absolute beginner or even an advanced woodworker, you’ll leave this course with a renewed sense of ability and inspiration.  For those just starting, you can learn how to safely and efficiently operate woodworking machinery and design furniture built upon traditional joinery techniques.  For advanced woodworkers, a week spent with a professional furniture maker will boost your efficiency, productivity, and bag of tricks – allowing you to make a greater impact in the limited time you may have in your home shops.  There will be plenty of one-on-one time in this course, and we’re happy to tailor the experience to you.

The Project

The project pictured is a Shaker-inspired riff on the hall table.  While we’ll all be working on a hall table, the design is up to you.  We’ll give you several options, but I’ll also encourage you to bring some of yourself to the table.  We’ll discuss what makes a successful design and why, then help you to realize your own ideas.  This project is an ideal piece for a thorough grounding in furniture making techniques.

All material costs and daily lunches are included in the course fee at Pine Croft.

Class Description:

This is a high engagement, 3 day workshop. Start with the foundations of broom construction &
apply those skills to larger handled sweeps while we play with the relationship between
sculpture and tool. You will learn to sort & grade materials, prepare & finish handles, weave
& stitch broom corn. We will explore design considerations & creative problem solving. You
may make multiple handled brooms.

This class is suited for beginners and beyond. Moderate hand & body strength is necessary.
All tools & materials provided. Wear clothes you don’t mind getting dirty.

RISK DISCLAIMER: Traditional Broom Making is a toxin-free & safe activity & like all activities it comes with risk &
personal responsibility. By signing up for this class you acknowledge that the risk you take in participating in this
activity is your responsibility & you release PleaseSendWord & Hosts from liability in the event of injury of any
kind.

All material costs and daily lunches are included in the course fee at Pine Croft.

Class Description:

In this two day class we will explore the basics of machine and hand tool woodworking through three simple, functional, and engaging projects. Each student will make a serving/cutting board, a decorative bowl, and a spoon which will introduce them to basic milling, turning, and knife work.

This class is perfect for beginners looking to dip their toes into woodworking and find their favorite way to work with wood. Whether you are looking to work with machines like jointers, planers, table saws, and lathes or if splitting and carving with gouges and a slöjd knife are more your style, we will do it all and more in this class!

Cutting/Serving Board

For this project we will go over selecting and milling wood for a glue-up. We will go over the safe use of chop saws, jointers, planers, and table saws. We will touch on wood movement and grain direction as we prepare for glueing up our boards. Once the glue has dried, we will go over getting our boards to finished dimensions before shaping, sanding, and finishing them.

Decorative Bowl

For this project students will be introduced to bowl turning. We will start with the preparation of the bowl blank and how to attach it to the headstock of the lathe using a lead screw in a chuck. Then students will be shown how to use a bowl gouge to create the silhouette and foot profile for the outside of their bowl. We will go over sanding and finishing before removing the bowl from the lead screw and fitting the chuck into the foot of the bowl to turn the inside of the dish. Once the bowl has been shaped, we will sand and paint, if desired, before finishing it.

Simple Spoon

For the spoon carving part of this class we will go over the splitting of green wood from a log and then start with shaping our blanks with our desired silhouettes. We will go over the use of a drawknife and shavehorse to remove excess material from our spoon blanks before using gouges and hook knives to hollow out the bowl of the spoon. Lastly we will go over the use of a slöjd knife to smooth the surface and finish shaping the spoons.

All the tools and materials will be provided for this class.

All material costs and daily lunches are included in the course fee at Pine Croft.

Class Description:

Building on the techniques we learned in Foundations of Furniture Making, this class will explore delicate and exacting joinery while building a carefully proportioned side table.  The details in this piece highlight the makers hand at every corner.

So many dovetails…

Dovetails are all over this piece – from the socket dovetail that joins the legs above the drawer, to the through dovetails at the drawer back and the half blind dovetails at the drawer front.  There are so many ways to cut this joint and we’ll look at them all.  One method doesn’t work for everyone, so I’ll encourage you to look for ways that makes sense to your hands, your head and the tooling you have available.

Engineering with wood…

One of my favorite joints – the breadboard end – tells a story of craftsmanship and consideration.  Tenons cut on the table top join to breadboards with pins and wedges.  The joint is engineered to hold tight and allow movement at the same time.  Glue is used sparingly in assembly and the draw bored pins do the heavy lifting.

Fitting Drawers

Cutting fine dovetails is great, but you need a place for them to go.  There’s nothing better than a finely fitted drawer that runs on wood runners.  We’ll dive into a traditional approach to fitting a drawer that leads to silky smooth operation, no matter the time of year.

Shaker Style

Drawing from examples of Shaker pieces, turned and tapered legs give us a chance to explore turning furniture parts.  Transitions from square to round take a bit of practice, so we’ll spend a day at the lathe tuning in our finished cuts.  Delicately turned pulls give us a chance to shape graceful small parts.

(photos: turning square to round transition, turning pulls, tapping in pegs)

Prerequisite:  I’d highly encourage taking my Foundations of Furniture Making course before this one.  In that class, we really have time to dive into knowledge of wood as a building material – and the exacting methods of building fine furniture.  The ability to make a mortise and tenon joint and accomplish exacting layout is essential to your success in this class.  A basic comfort level with the tablesaw, bandsaw and router are essential. Coming into this higher level class without a solid background in the fundamentals of woodworking may lead to a difficult experience.

Required Tools:

Dovetail Saw

Marking Gauge

Combination square

Mallet

Basic set of chisels (3/8”, ½”, ¾”)

Layout knife

Rabbet block plane or shoulder plane

Card Scraper

Additional tools – not necessary, but if you have a favorite:

Block plane

Cordless drill

Hammer – for tapping in pins

Turning tools – Spindle roughing gouge, skew chisel, beading and parting tool

Material costs and daily  lunches are always included in the course fee at Pine Croft.

Class Description:

In this course, students will learn both foundational & following stages in developing, and practicing fine technique, finesse & tool control, while exploring how to be made applicable in creating well-designed, and proportioned vessels, from outflowing open, and enclosed form bowls, to fine platters.

Matt will introduce you to some of his most effective approaches in turning side grain vessels.

–Based on his formative years training & spent as a working professional trade woodturner, and will aid in helping you to realize and develop a design aesthetic and approach for you to begin creating your best work with the advantage of using traditional woodturning tools.

—Learn How the process of acquiring the skill of advanced tool usage, and developing an eye for form, naturally leads to better results in the making process for the longer term; such as cutting cleaner surfaces.

— Learn to understand how particular body ergonomics can greatly affect the creation of high quality work on the lathe.

— Learn to create a range of traditional & contemporary forms and items based on Matt’s years working as an in-house trade woodturner, in the high-end furniture trades of Shackleton Thomas Furniture.

—Learn directly from a professional woodturner who has 20 year experience in both the wholesale tradeshow, and retail & interior design market industry

The costs of material and daily lunches are included in the course fee of every class at Pine Croft.

Class Description:

This week long class will give students a glimpse into the rocking chair production process developed for this chair over at Student Craft.

Katie Bister worked in the Woodcraft studio of Student Craft for all four years of her tenure at Berea College. Adept and willing to try many mediums in the craft world, Katie connected with the idea and practice of chairmaking. Over the course of her senior year, she set about to design a chair for the Student Craft catalog. Working alongside Director of Woodcraft, Rob Spiece the two spent the year iterating different ideas. After 6 months and 12 different chairs, they refined the vision into the People Collection Rocker. It’s an armless rocker that encourages an active participant to knit, strum, or rock backwards if they’d like.

This class will be a solid foundation in chairmaking that covers hand carving the seat, round mortise and tenon joinery, turning for furniture, bent lamination, drilling angled joinery accurately, and building an approach to making that suits your own workshop. We’ll share our jigs and processes used to produce these at Student Craft, but will also show you ways to approach this build with the tooling you have available.

If you don’t have any experience in the world of chairmaking, I’d recommend taking our People Collection Stool class first. This will be an ambitious six days to make this rocker from scratch!

All material costs and daily lunches are included in the course fee at Pine Croft.

Class Description:

This class will introduce weavers to native black willow bark, a very strong, flexible and beautiful fiber uncommonly used for basketry. Class participants will learn fiber preparation by removing the outer bark layer from portions of precut strips prior to constructing a small basket and bark harvesting will be discussed. Students are encouraged to create freely, choosing from variety of weaving techniques for the basket body and twining techniques for border design options. Cordage making for optional handle application will also be taught. All skill levels are welcome.

All material costs and daily lunches are included in the course fee at Pine Croft.

Class Description:

The key to a good sewing experience is regularly practicing the basics. In this class we will cover the foundational elements of quilt making through planning, cutting, sewing, and finishing a small wall hanging from start to finish. This class is designed to accommodate both beginners and those more comfortable with sewing who want to hone their skill. Participants will learn best practice throughout the process and leave with the competency to keep quilting confidently at home.

All material costs and daily lunches are included in the course fee at Pine Croft.