Category: Woodworking Classes

The goals for the first day of the “Hand Tool Immersion 101” class at the Marc Adams School of Woodworking were simple:

1. Sharpen a 1/2” chisel to perfection.
2. Sharpen and set up a block plane so it could take fine, fine shavings.
3. Grind, sharpen and set up a jack plane.

Of the three goals, I was most excited about getting 18 vintage jack planes set up and running. If I could give every woodworker in the world one tool, it would be a jack plane set up with an iron that was ground, honed and polished with an 8” to 10” radius on its edge.

That tool can accomplish incredible feats of flattening. With this tool, you can flatten a board of any width – you are limited only by the length of your arms. Machinery be dammed.

Plus, a good jack plane is handy when working edges, or anytime you need to remove a lot of wood in a hurry.

Thanks to the help of Raney Nelson of Daed Toolworks, all of the students became grinding aces in short order. Then they honed up their irons, tuned up their jack planes and started destroying the sample boards we gave them.

Tomorrow (Tuesday) we start on the real stuff – building a tool chest with only hand tools. Then we’ll find out if the first day of teaching was worth a dang.

— Christopher Schwarz

P.S. So after a long day or hard work, the entire class retired to the forest behind the school to cook dinner, drink a beer and talk about woodworking. As I scooted off to bed, they had built a fire in the school’s fire pit and were talking about the day ahead.

You can follow the classroom experience with the hashtag #babyanarchists on Instagram.

I may have chopped off one of my favorite fingers on Monday, but not even that could keep me away from Woodworking in America 2015. Chris’s three classes on staked furniture, workbenches and back irons are, respectively, just the tip of the Lost Art Press iceberg at this year’s festivities, which also feature courses by LAP contributors Roy Underhill, Megan Fitzpatrick, Don Williams, and Mike Siemsen.

Over in the WIA Marketplace, the Lost Art Press booth is hosting two special “meet the author” book signing events that I just learned about. At 2 p.m. on Friday, St. Roy will be in the booth to sign babies, chests and books. In addition to Calvin Cobb: Radio Woodworker!, we welcome you to bring any of Roy’s other eight inimitable titles for signing.

On Saturday afternoon, also starting at 2 p.m., Don Williams and Narayan Nayar will be at the booth to sign copies of their works, including Virtuoso: The Tool Cabinet and Workbench of Henry O. Studley.

And most importantly of all, I your fearless forum moderator will be at the booth all day Friday and Saturday. In addition to showing you my “accidental amputation” (as they labeled it in the emergency room), I am particularly looking forward to hearing your thoughts and suggestions on the forthcoming Lost Art Press forum.

Part of our delay in launching the full forum has been due to our internal deliberations over how deeply to plunge into the universe of hand tool woodworking. We originally envisioned the forum as a space to discuss LAP books and the projects contained therein. But one thing we learned almost immediately from the beta forum is that many of you have questions and interests which delve more deeply into the marrow of the hand tool world. To hear more about the options we’re considering, and to weigh in, please stop by the booth.

Your nine-and-a-wee-bit-fingered moderator,

— Brian Clites

Your innate intelligence, your achievements in the corporate world and the number of degrees you have earned at university won’t help you much at the bench when you start woodworking.

To be sure, some people have some natural dexterity (I didn’t) that helps them take the first steps in the craft. But after teaching a lot of beginners during the last 10 years, I have found there is only one way to get good at woodworking: Do a lot of woodworking.

As David Savage says: “You need to build a shed-load of furniture.”

This simple fact is sometimes hard to accept for people who are used to being a star pupil or an outstanding employee. I’ve had CEOs, attorneys, surgeons, PhDs and one high-ranking politician get quite frustrated when they cut dovetails and their results look no better (or even worse) than the elevator repairman at the bench next to theirs.

When anyone (regardless of their position in society) gets frustrated because they have failed in a class, I try to trace their steps to disaster. Did you do this? This? How about this?

Many of them lie, but their work tells the truth. Their chisel was dull and too wide. They didn’t mark the waste. They used a coping saw to remove the half pin. They used their own cockamamie marking system instead of the traditional “marriage mark” that I begged them to use.

How they respond to this failure determines if they will learn anything or not. You cannot buy a tool to get you out of these weeds. You cannot simply say, “But I’m a doctor,” and have the door opened for you. You have to admit: I stink, and I need to know the steps to become good.

Those steps aren’t usually found in books, I’m afraid. A book can tell you how to saw, but those instructions are meaningless until you are sawing. With some people I had to literally take them by the hands and guide their strokes so they could feel it. That’s humiliating for some, I know. But you cannot download this. It is uploaded through your fingers.

The way forward is, I’m afraid, to destroy your sense of self. Become a small child on the first day of school and do what exactly what you are told. Gradually, you will match the letters to sounds, the vibrations to results, the patterns into words and the wood into furniture.

— Christopher Schwarz

These last couple weeks I have been participating in a (personally) exciting experiment with furniture maker David Savage. Last week I taught a class at his school on making a traveling tool chest very similar to the one on the cover of the August 2015 issue of Popular Woodworking Magazine.

David was a student in my class. He built the chest. And he did it the way I told the students to do it (100 percent traditionally). Now if you know anything about David Savage, that’s a ridiculous thing. He’s forgotten more about furniture making than I know.

And yet the class was enjoyable for him because it reminded him of techniques he has set aside over the years – using hot hide glue to assemble carcases, using traditional wedge-shaped nails and milk paint (to name a few).

This week, David and his right-hand man, Daren Millman, are teaching us all about veneering using traditional methods (hide glue) and modern ones (PVA glue and a veneer press). And even though I’m comfortable with both methods, I’m taking the course and having a blast.

David and Daren are both fantastic teachers with insights into veneering that have made this week the highlight of 2015 for me. Even though I’m only two days into the class I feel like my mind has been opened with a crowbar.

Note to self: Take more woodworking classes with excellent instructors. It’s worth the money and the time.

— Christopher Schwarz