Next month I’m conducting a two-day seminar on building a Dutch tool chest for the Alabama Woodworkers Guild in Maylene, Ala. During Feb. 14-15, I’ll build a Dutch tool chest and demonstrate all the hand-tool techniques so you can make one for yourself.
And if you are lucky, you might just win the tool chest and not have to make one. All the attendees to the two-day seminar get a raffle ticket to win the chest. But more importantly, they get to eat some really amazing food while some sasquatch shows them how to cut dovetails, dados and mouldings by hand.
The Alabama Woodworkers Guild is a special organization in a special place. Located in an historic old schoolhouse, the club could not ask for a more beautiful place to build stuff. Last year I did a two-day seminar on building a six-board tool chest there and had a fantastic time. The food (and I am crazy for good food) is crazy good.
If you live in the deep South, it’s totally worth the drive. I’ll also bring along some Lost Art Press books, postcards and who knows what else?
Registration for one day of the class is $100. Both days is $175. To register, contact Chris Mazur at 205-979-1593 or chrism1928@earthlink.net. Or Preston Lawly at 205-982-2828 or eventman@bellsouth.net.
Here is a complete (I hope) list of everywhere I’m teaching in the coming year. Despite my personal hermit tendencies, I teach in-person classes because they work. A week (or weekend) of focused instruction, bathroom humor, critical review and work, work, work generates results.
If you want to attend a class that’s full – no matter the school or instructor – my best advice is to always get on the waiting list and assume you will get in. All classes have churn and last-minute vacancies. If you are flexible and ready, you likely will get in.
Just reading this list of classes below makes me want to take a nap. One more note. Before you comment: “Why don’t you come teach in Ketchuptown, North Dakota?” remember this: I can only teach at schools where I am asked to teach. I don’t solicit schools or clubs for teaching work.
Jan. 17-18 Highland Woodworking Build a Windsor Sawbench
This class is the foundation of my book “The Furniture of Necessity.” Once you can build these sawbenches, chairmaking will seem like child’s play.
Feb. 14-15 Alabama Woodworkers Guild Dutch Tool Chest
I’m still waiting on some details, but I believe I am leading a two-day demonstration on building the Dutch Tool Chest and one of the attendees will win the chest at the end of the seminar.
Feb. 23-27 Melbourne Guild of Fine Woodworking, Australia
Build a Roubo Workbench
Using some massive yellow pine slabs that the school has dug up, we are going to build some brutish workbenches using the schools industrial equipment and handwork.
March 2-4 Melbourne Guild of Fine Woodworking, Australia
Build a Dutch Tool Chest
Last I checked there were a couple vacancies in this Dutch Tool Chest class. Come for the instruction; stay for the tea. Dutch tol chest classes are fun and productive (i.e. you finish your chest).
March 6-8 Brisbane, Australia
Class to be announced
March 11-13 Henry Eckert Woodwork School, Adelaide, Australia
Build a Dutch Tool Chest
This will be my first class to Henry Eckert, which carries our Lost Art Press books. Again, this is a three-day class where we will build a Dutch chest using hand techniques – lots of fun joinery.
March 28-29 Kelly Mehler School of Woodworking, Berea, Ky.
Officer’s Campaign Trunk
This will be an intense two-day class in building a “riveted” officer’s trunk as shown in my book “Campaign Furniture.”
April 9-12 Oregon Woodworkers Guild, Portland, Ore.
I’m teaching a one-day class on April 10 on building a traditional try square. Then on april 11-12 we are building the Tool Chest for New Anarchists – an exploration of traditional nailed construction (another part of the “Furniture of Necessity”).
April 25-26 Marc Adams School of Woodworking, Franklin, Ind.
Handplanes and their Uses with Thomas Lie-Nielsen
This annual two-day class is a quick but intense dunk into the world of handplanes and how they work. This class has launched hundreds of people’s love affair with the plane.
May 4-8 Woodworkers Club, Rockville, Md.
Build a Knockdown Nicholson Workbench
Using the school’s industrial facilities, we’ll build a Nicholson workbench that can be knocked down flat – though it is so sturdy that you’d never know it was a knockdown bench.
May 15-16 Handworks, Amana, Iowa
The hand-tool event of the (insert very long time frame here)
Seriously, read about everyone who will be there. And the Studley Tool Chest? And the Handworks event is free? You better have a good excuse if you aren’t going.
June 13-15 Dictum, Niederalteich, Germany
Build a Sawbench
This three-day course is an intense tutorial on sawing. Learn the three classes of saw cuts and how to produce joinery straight from the saw (and how to fix things when sawing goes awry). You also will get to see me kiss their coffee machine.
June 16-17 Dictum, Niederalteich, Germany
Build a Marking Gauge & Mallet
This is a quick but fun class in making an 18th-century marking gauge and a fantastic wooden joiner’s mallet.
June 18 Dictum, Niederalteich, Germany
Metal Handplanes and Western-style Saws
A one-day course introducing students to the advantages of metal handplanes and Western saws.
June 22-28 Furniture Institute of Massachusetts, Beverly, Mass.
The Anarchist’s Tool Chest (and then some)
We’ll be building the large tool chest in this seven-day class (it’s usually a five-day class). Everyone will finish their chests and many people will have the time to build their interior tills.
July 13-17 New English Workshop, Bridgwater College, England
Course for Young and Aspiring Woodworkers: The Tool Chest for New Anarchist
This special low-cost course is design to jump-start anyone’s interest in handwork. We will fix up all the tools you need in your kit, build a basic tool chest and dive into learning the joints of the craft.
July 20-24 New English Workshop, Warwickshire College, England
Build a Knockdown Nicholson Workbench
If you need a bench that can be easily moved for when you move, or even has to be knocked down in the evenings, this is the ticket. It’s a fantastic bench.
Aug. 10-14 Connecticut Valley School of Woodworking, Manchester, Conn.
Build an 18th-century Roubo Workbench
Using some amazing ash from Horizon Wood, we’re going to build a heavy, tough extremely functional workbench. The industrial machinery (and teamwork among the students) makes it possible. Everyone goes home with a bench.
Aug. 24-Sept. 5 The David Savage School, Rowden, England
Tool Chest with Parquetry Lid
In this two-week class we’re building a traditional tool chest with all the hard-core joinery during the first week. Then David and his people are going to guide us through building a parquetry lid for the chest using a variety of techniques, traditional to modern.
Sept. 25-27 Woodworking in America, Kansas City, Mo.
The instructor list for WIA is impressive. And then I’m there, too. As always, WIA is fun event for the classes and the Marketplace. Lost Art Press will have a booth.
Sept. 28-Oct. 2 Marc Adams School of Woodworking, Franklin, Ind.
Hand-tool Immersion 101
This special low-cost course is design to jump-start anyone’s interest in handwork. We will fix up all the tools you need in your kit, build a basic tool chest and dive into learning the joints of the craft. We will be allowed to camp on-site to reduce costs. And we’ll eat communally. We will be showering alone.
Nov. 8-14 The French Oak Roubo Project II, Barnesville, Ga.
Build a Roubo Bench with 18th-century Oak
This incredible experience bands a bunch of us together in an incredible workshop with huge equipment to turn out the most massive and amazing workbench. Period.
One of the best reasons to build a workbench at a school is to take advantage of the industrial-scale machinery and the strong backs of your fellow students. Oh, and your workbench is done in just a week.
The knockdown Nicholson bench is a fantastic bench I built during the summer using some principles swiped from Mike Siemsen, Caleb James and Peter Nicholson. The bench assembles in minutes and once together, you would be hard-pressed to say it could ever come apart. The thing is solid.
And the whole thing knocks down flat for transport or for when guests come over. It’s the ideal bench for an apartment, a temporary workspace or if you ever plan to move.
The massive and classic French bench we’re building in Connecticut will be made with the super-primo ash from Horizon Wood Products that we used to build benches at the Marc Adams School of Woodworking in 2014.
Bench classes are physically taxing, but they are like an Amish barn-raising. Everyone has to pull together to get all the workbenches complete. It’s a team sport, which is something rare and wonderful in the world of furniture-making.
Every time I teach at Roy Underhill’s “The Woodwright’s School,” he gives me a rash of crap for two things: my waterstones and my plastic, pressurized plant sprayer that I use to moisten my stones.
He now begrudgingly ignores my waterstones, perhaps after I offered data that many early sharpening stones in the Western tradition were also lubricated with water. But the plastic plant sprayer just won’t cut it in the 1930s-era environment that Roy cultivates in his school.
And so this week I bought an old(ish) brass plant mister so that I can avoid the conversation about plastic this year. The mister isn’t particularly old, but it was cheap and works just fine. You can dispense water by tipping the mister forward (like a watering can) or press the top plunger to get some mist from the nozzle.
I’m mentioning this because I am indeed teaching a class in 2015 at The Woodwright’s School. Roy released the 2015 schedule last week and my name wasn’t on it. I got a few messages along the lines of: Did Roy catch you sleeping with his dog?
The answer is no, he did not catch me.
We haven’t set a date for the class yet because Roy is trying to coordinate it with shooting a couple of episodes of “The Woodwright’s Shop.” When we do settle on a date, I’ll announce it here. At this point, I think the class is going to be on how to make the collapsible bookshelves from “Campaign Furniture.” A fun project.
— Christopher Schwarz
P.S. The headline of this blog entry is in tribute to Megan Fitzpatrick (who also is supposed to be teaching at Roy’s in 2015). A reader complained to Megan’s boss that I was a “bad influence” on her. If you know Megan, you know how funny that is.
If I have only one complaint about my life, it is that with all the teaching, writing and building that I do, I have no time left to take woodworking courses for myself.
I don’t drool over tool catalogs. My personal pornographic publications are the brochures and web sites from woodworking schools that teach skills that I want to master.
So when I had dinner with David Savage last summer, you can imagine how long it took me to say “yes” to his following proposition: I teach a class in building a tool chest at his school in Rowden, then stay on for a second week to assist and take a class in sunburst veneering.
Savage has long been one of those woodworkers I wanted to learn from. He does amazing work. And, equally important to me, he is one of the most daring woodworking writers alive today. He is, simply put, nobody’s tool. He is fearless in exploring the craft and his own human failings. Check out some of his articles here.
So this summer I head to Rowden to lead a class in building a dead-nuts traditional tool chest, one I have specially designed for this course. During the first week, Aug. 24-28, we’ll build the chest using hand tools and traditional production methods and joints – dovetails, tongue-and-groove, miters, breadboards etc.
The second week (Aug. 31-Sept. 4) we will embellish the interior lid of the chest with a sunburst veneer pattern designed for the course, plus traditional veneer and crossbanding on the lid of the top till. The goal is for all of the students to walk away with a finished chest, a boatload of newfound skills and a slightly swollen liver.
When David announced the course last week, it filled up immediately. But the wait list is very short right now and these classes always have a certain amount of churn. If you’d like to read more details about Rowden, David’s crack team of instructors and the course, check out these pages here and here. You can sign up for the course’s wait list here.
I’ll be writing more about the chest design in the coming months. It is based off a number of historical examples that have survived quite well and has some features you might consider for your tool chest.
