5 Day course

Monday, August 18, 2008 to Friday, August 22, 2008

(Code:IT080818)

In this five-weekday course you will build a simple, but elegant, piece of furniture using mostly hand tools. The 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.
Under Jim's instruction, you will learn:

• To quickly create a cutlist from working drawings.
• To layout and cut stock to size.
• To 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.
• To work a decorative profile along the edge of a board with hand tools.
• To layout, cut and smooth a curved edge.
• To quickly true end-cuts perfectly with a hand plane and shop-made shooting board.
• To hand plane surfaces mirror smooth. (A process that is dust-free, quiet and much, much faster than sanding!)
• To assemble structures accurately, efficiently and with consideration of the inherent instability of solid wood.
• To apply a traditional, deep luster, oil-based finish.
• To learn just how fast and fun it is to work wood with properly tuned and sharpened handtools once you have gotten the hang of some simple and sensible techniques that are not all that difficult to master.

You will be provided a Swedish-made professional cabinetmaker’s workbench stocked with premium-grade Lee Valley hand planes, chisels, saws and layout tools. Class size is limited to eight students, and Jim Tolpin will be assisted by another instructor to ensure that your questions are quickly answered and that you receive plenty of one-on-one instruction.

<Register>

Cost: $575

Material charge: $<TBD>

Starts at: 9:00 AM

Class size: 8

What to bring:

A notebook and a pen or pencil