In this class, you will learn the fundamentals of furniture making through the process of making a small side table from rough sawn lumber. You will mill lumber, practice making mortise and tenon joints, and learn about various finishes, including milk paints, that can make your tables fun and unique. We will use a combination of stationary machines, handheld power tools, and hand tools so students can learn how to complete each step of the process with the tooling they have access to when they return home.

For beginners, the course will provide a solid foundation in safety, process, and furniture construction that you can apply to any future project. All students will learn tips and techniques from a full-time professional woodworker.

Sophie is a metalworker, woodworker, and furniture maker currently based in Reading, PA. She makes classic furniture designs recreated out of steel to give voice to women in both the woodworking and metal fields, and she utilizes steel in the making of her work to explicitly expand upon the materials that are considered to be part of the fine furniture making field. Sophie received her MFA in Furniture Design and Woodworking from San Diego State University, and BFA in Sculpture and Drawing from SUNY Purchase College. She has exhibited her work across the country, including Blue Spiral 1 Gallery (NC), the Center for Art in Wood (PA), and the Metal Museum (TN), and has been fortunate to receive several grants, fellowships, and residencies to help advance her career, including the John D. Mineck Fellowship in 2022. Sophie currently teaches at Kutztown University and has taught workshops at A Workshop of Our Own, Penland School of Craft, Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts, the Appalachian Center for Craft, and Haystack Mountain School of Crafts. https://sophieglenn.com

A 6-day class for mid-level woodworkers, this class uses bandsaw, table saw and router skills to build an attractive table that is 18” deep, 39” wide and 30” high. It includes making the sunburst top, tapered leg accents and two different stack-laminated elements. It is a great way to both improve your skills and add a couple of new techniques to your repertoire. The materials in this class will be cherry and walnut.

Tuition: $1100

Materials: $250

Capacity: 8

Andrew Glantz is a furniture designer and maker who lives and works in Scottsdale, Arizona. Born and raised on the East Coast, he graduated from the Frederic Gunn School, 1967 and Wesleyan University; BA, 1971 and MAT, 1972. After teaching Graphic Arts for ten years, he turned to period piece renovation and construction from 1978 to 1984. When he moved West in 1984, he began to devote his efforts solely to contemporary, sculptural furniture design and construction. He is the owner of Zenith Design, a one-person studio, and is responsible for all phases of design, construction and marketing. He is an arts activist and before moving to Scottsdale, he lived on the Navajo Nation from 1984 to 1987. He moved to Salt Lake City in 1987, and was involved with the Salt Lake Arts Council, the Salt Lake Arts Center, and the Utah Arts Council’s Endowment Fund Development Committee. He also ran the Vital Arts Gallery as volunteer executive director for three years and has curated several major exhibitions. He relocated to Scottsdale in 2002. A longtime member of the Furniture Society, Andrew was tapped to serve as a trustee in 2005, and served as treasurer, vice president and president of the board of trustees, as well as chair of the development committee. His term of office ended in 2011. He is an active advisor for the Southwest School of Woodworking. He teaches furniture design and construction at the Southwest School of Woodworking in Phoenix and the Marc Adams School of Woodworking in Franklin, Indiana. He is a presenter committee member of he Yuma Art Symposium. His articles on furniture design and construction appear in several trade magazines. He delights in mentoring makers far and wide through teaching and Zoom meetings from Florida to Utah and locally.

In this class, we will make a simple 4-leg 4-stretcher tabletop. We will be covering everything you need to know as a beginner to choose lumber, layout, and cut joints, as well as join a table top and attach it to the carcass.

This class is designed for someone just starting out and looking to learn traditional joinery. And in the end, you will walk away with a side table you can cherish for a lifetime.

Only hand tools will be used to make this table. The table will be made of solid cherry.

James Wright has been working with wood since he could stumble into his father's shop. This led to a career in woodworking and design. But after years of power-tool woodworking, life circumstances forced James to switch to hand tools only. The hand tool workshop allowed James the time to slow down and enjoy the process. He is now a full-time woodworking educator and YouTuber with over 500,000 subscribers across two channels, and travels around teaching hand tool woodworking in person and online.

Surface embellishment is a way to add visual interest and value to your work. It can be used to differentiate good work from work that is truly remarkable. Imagine opening a cabinet door and being greeted by a burst of color or delighting in the texture of a carved drawer front. Consider the visual impact of ebonized legs supporting a table top or the discovery of the gilded interior of a box. These are all examples of ways that embellishment can be used to enhance a project. These techniques can be used on furniture, turned objects, boxes, and more. They can even be used to transform a cheap, mass-produced item into a lovely, thoughtful gift. In this 1-day action-packed technique class students will learn a variety of ways to embellish their work. In between demos there will be plenty of time for hands-on practice of the techniques. Students will be encouraged to play and explore as they learn to take their work to a whole new level of WOW!

TOPICS TO BE COVERED

• Ebonizing
• Pyrography (wood burning)
• Gilding
• Creating textures
• Fun with fire! (AKA torching your wood)
• Unexpected use of color
• Color with texture
• Texture with gilding
• Ebonizing with pyrograph
• Whatever combo your heart desires!

Recommended student tool list:

• Note taking supplies
• Ear and eye protection – required for use of equipment
• Water bottle
• Wood burner and various tips if you have one
• Small brass brushes (cheap from Harbor Freight)
• Plumber’s torch and lighter if you have one
• Variety of sharp carving gouges or Dremel tool with carving burrs or Foredom tool with carving burrs
• Drawing tools like circle templates and French curves
• Hair dryer or heat gun (nice to have but not required)

Tuition: $175

Material: $50

Capacity: 10

At the intersection of chemistry and craft is where Kansas City-based Kelly Parker feels most at home. She is a designer and maker of contemporary studio furniture and sculpture. After graduating with a degree in biochemistry, she worked in the corporate world for 18 years before taking a rather circuitous route into art. Her chemistry background informs her pragmatic approach to problem-solving in building the sculptural designs that are the hallmark of her work. She has a curvy, contemporary aesthetic and often uses steam bending, bent laminations, and vacuum forming as part of her process. Kelly finds design inspiration wherever she sees a beautiful form, whether it is a flower or the engine cowling on a Boeing Dreamliner. To accelerate the transition from analytical chemist to artist, Kelly has taken numerous design and technique classes at various craft schools while also extensively experimenting in her own studio. She has been an artist-in-residence in Michael Fortune’s studio in Canada and was selected as an artist-in-residence at the Centre for Fine Woodworking in Nelson, New Zealand. She has been awarded professional development grants from the Furniture Society and Anderson Ranch Arts Center, was the first recipient of a professional development grant awarded by the Krenov Foundation and was awarded Best in Show at the biannual chair exhibition, American Craft Today: Chairs, hosted by The Bascom Gallery in North Carolina. Her work has been featured in Fine Woodworking, Australian Wood Review, and Rooted: Creating a Sense of Place: Contemporary Studio Furniture. Kelly is also an occasional writer for Australian Wood Review. In addition to making and writing, Kelly also teaches at craft schools and guilds across the US. https://woodsongstudio.com/

This 1-day hands-on clinic focuses on how to produce identically shaped, complex parts. Kelly’s work includes parts that are heavily shaped and often feature compound curves. She will teach how to easily fabricate identical parts that cannot be created by pattern routing. Students will first create templates for the front, side, top and bottom of a part. These templates will be traced onto a rectangular 'blank' to guide the shaping process. Kelly will demonstrate how to rough out parts using the bandsaw and router table, then refine parts using a variety of rasps, card scrapers and profiled sanding blocks, while carefully working to layout lines. Students will have the opportunity to practice these techniques as they create a shaped table leg using the templates they created. If time allows students will be encouraged to design a leg and fabricate the necessary templates to create it.

TOPICS TO BE COVERED

• intro to layout tools: adjustable square, center-finder, drawing bows, French curves

• intro to shaping tools: bandsaw, router table, Shinto rasp, cabinet maker’s rasp, card scraper, spoke shave, profiled sanding blocks, etc.

• drawing, cutting, fairing and using templates

• laying out a 'blank'

• working off of center lines and layout lines

• shaping multiple parts in a consistent, repeatable manner

• discussion of hard lines and soft lines

At the intersection of chemistry and craft is where Kansas City-based Kelly Parker feels most at home. She is a designer and maker of contemporary studio furniture and sculpture. After graduating with a degree in biochemistry, she worked in the corporate world for 18 years before taking a rather circuitous route into art. Her chemistry background informs her pragmatic approach to problem-solving in building the sculptural designs that are the hallmark of her work. She has a curvy, contemporary aesthetic and often uses steam bending, bent laminations, and vacuum forming as part of her process. Kelly finds design inspiration wherever she sees a beautiful form, whether it is a flower or the engine cowling on a Boeing Dreamliner. To accelerate the transition from analytical chemist to artist, Kelly has taken numerous design and technique classes at various craft schools while also extensively experimenting in her own studio. She has been an artist-in-residence in Michael Fortune’s studio in Canada and was selected as an artist-in-residence at the Centre for Fine Woodworking in Nelson, New Zealand. She has been awarded professional development grants from the Furniture Society and Anderson Ranch Arts Center, was the first recipient of a professional development grant awarded by the Krenov Foundation and was awarded Best in Show at the biannual chair exhibition, American Craft Today: Chairs, hosted by The Bascom Gallery in North Carolina. Her work has been featured in Fine Woodworking, Australian Wood Review, and Rooted: Creating a Sense of Place: Contemporary Studio Furniture. Kelly is also an occasional writer for Australian Wood Review. In addition to making and writing, Kelly also teaches at craft schools and guilds across the US. https://woodsongstudio.com/

In this 5-day class students will construct a unique side table while learning the basics of solid wood construction, exposed-dowel joinery and finishing. Kelly loves to teach people how to use power tools and safety will be her focus as the students learn how to use many common shop tools, including the bandsaw, miter saw, drill press and router table. Students will learn to use several types of jigs throughout the project. Additionally, they will learn how to fabricate simple dowel jigs that will allow them to create joints that are both functional and decorative. Spontaneous learning opportunities will ensure that students learn basic problem-solving skills that will be useful as they work on future projects. As time allows, each student will be encouraged to embellish their project with pyrography (wood burning), ebonizing, application of color, etc., so that the table created is reflective of each student’s personal aesthetic. The class will also include strategies for successful glue-ups and discuss simple finishing techniques. By the end of the class each person will have a unique table and a new-found confidence in their woodworking skills!

TOPICS TO BE COVERED

• the safe use of common hand and power tools
• reading plans
• successful construction techniques for solid wood
• exposed-dowel joinery
• use of shop-made jigs
• pattern routing
• problem solving skills
• successful, stress-free glue-ups
• use of sub-tops in lieu of aprons to attach a leg substructure to a table top
• creative use of wood dowels
• intro to embellishment techniques: wood burning, ebonizing and color
• easy finishing techniques

At the intersection of chemistry and craft is where Kansas City-based Kelly Parker feels most at home. She is a designer and maker of contemporary studio furniture and sculpture. After graduating with a degree in biochemistry, she worked in the corporate world for 18 years before taking a rather circuitous route into art. Her chemistry background informs her pragmatic approach to problem-solving in building the sculptural designs that are the hallmark of her work. She has a curvy, contemporary aesthetic and often uses steam bending, bent laminations, and vacuum forming as part of her process. Kelly finds design inspiration wherever she sees a beautiful form, whether it is a flower or the engine cowling on a Boeing Dreamliner. To accelerate the transition from analytical chemist to artist, Kelly has taken numerous design and technique classes at various craft schools while also extensively experimenting in her own studio. She has been an artist-in-residence in Michael Fortune’s studio in Canada and was selected as an artist-in-residence at the Centre for Fine Woodworking in Nelson, New Zealand. She has been awarded professional development grants from the Furniture Society and Anderson Ranch Arts Center, was the first recipient of a professional development grant awarded by the Krenov Foundation and was awarded Best in Show at the biannual chair exhibition, American Craft Today: Chairs, hosted by The Bascom Gallery in North Carolina. Her work has been featured in Fine Woodworking, Australian Wood Review, and Rooted: Creating a Sense of Place: Contemporary Studio Furniture. Kelly is also an occasional writer for Australian Wood Review. In addition to making and writing, Kelly also teaches at craft schools and guilds across the US. https://woodsongstudio.com/

Spend the weekend with Michael Cullen as he introduces you to the techniques of how to create successful patterns and textures using gouges.

The class will focus on creating sample boards to learn simple cuts through more complex ones. He will demonstrate several ways to sharpen and keep your tools in tiptop shape.

The workshop will also include making a small that features surface carving. Be prepared for a fast paced workshop that is loads of fun.

Michael Cullen fell in love with making things as a child through his parents and grandparents who were all makers. Their stories and lessons encouraged him to gravitate towards tools, and ultimately to find his way to furniture making and sculpture. Michael Cullen was trained by English furniture maker, David Powell, who was part of a woodworking lineage that stretches back to Edward and Sydney Barnsley and the era of English Arts and Crafts. With 40 years in the craft his work ranges from delicate boxes that fit in your hand to monolithic sculptural pieces that are best lifted with a crane. Michael Cullen's work has been shown in museums and galleries throughout North America and Europe. He has taught and worked all over the world. His work has been published widely in both books and magazines.

In this five-day class, taught by renowned furniture maker Michael Cullen you will investigate different approaches and forms that a box can become using both hand tools and machines.

This workshop is highly creative and will focus on exploring ideas in box making that fall outside the typical six-sided container. Emphasis will be on shaping and sculpting boxes to create pleasing curves, unusual shapes and just about anything that falls into the category of fun and zany.

A primary focus in the workshop will be on creating patterns and textures and applying color to the surfaces on the boxes, both inside and out. You will design and build two to three small boxes during the workshop. During that time you will hone your skills by constructing your designs with the safe operation of the bandsaw and an array of hand tools. You will investigate different approaches and forms that a sculptural box can take on. Be prepared to veer off the path into creative territory.

Tools used but not limited to include: gouges and chisels, files and rasps, and some machinery. This class is perfect for the beginner who is curious about making things from wood and is also very good for the expert who is looking to take a different tack on making.

Michael Cullen fell in love with making things as a child through his parents and grandparents who were all makers. Their stories and lessons encouraged him to gravitate towards tools, and ultimately to find his way to furniture making and sculpture. Michael Cullen was trained by English furniture maker, David Powell, who was part of a woodworking lineage that stretches back to Edward and Sydney Barnsley and the era of English Arts and Crafts. With 40 years in the craft his work ranges from delicate boxes that fit in your hand to monolithic sculptural pieces that are best lifted with a crane. Michael Cullen's work has been shown in museums and galleries throughout North America and Europe. He has taught and worked all over the world. His work has been published widely in both books and magazines.

Have you ever wondered how to add curves to your cabinetry or introduce a few graceful lines to an otherwise simple box? A coopered whiskey cabinet is an excellent project for building your woodworking skills. From basic joinery, such as dadoes, to more advanced frame-and-panel construction, this cabinet offers opportunities to develop a range of techniques. A curved door and hand-shaped edge profiles add character to the piece while expanding your skills.

In this class, Erik will guide you through the design and construction of a wall-hanging cabinet. The class begins with grain selection: how and when to use flatsawn, quartersawn, or bookmatched boards, and how different grain orientations affect the visual flow of a piece.

Next, you’ll explore the cabinet’s joinery, including housed stub tenons or floating tenons for the carcass, stopped dadoes for the shelves, and rabbets and grooves for the rear panel. Throughout the class, you’ll use a combination of machinery and hand tools. Erik will discuss when to choose hand planes or sanders for surface preparation, as well as routers or hand planes for shaping edge profiles.

Finally, Erik will share his finishing techniques and explain which approaches work best in professional and home shops. Students will leave with a beautiful cabinet for their favorite whiskey, along with the skills and confidence to tackle a project of this caliber in their own shop.

Class price includes a $150 materials fee..

Erik Curtis is an American woodworker, sculptor, and television personality. He attended the Nine-month Comprehensive at the Center for Furniture Craftsmanship in 2012 and has taught at schools around the country. His creative practice combines the sculptural with the functional in an attempt to blur the line between furniture and art. He also stars as the carpenter on Netflix’s "Instant Dream Home." www.encurtis.com.

Have you ever seen the Shaper Origin and thought “that’s way too complicated for me.” Well it’s way easier than you think! From lightning-fast joinery to perfect inlay to hardware installation, the Origin can do it all. And with a few basic tips and tricks and a weekend of practice, so can you!

In this class, Erik will walk you through the basics of what Origin is, how it works, and how to get started using it in your own work flow. We will cover basic layout and operations, simple joinery operations such as the mortise and tenon, and inlay. Students are encouraged to bring their own Origin to class, though we will have a few units for students to share. By the end of the weekend, students should have an understanding of how and when to use Origin and the confidence to put it to work in their own shop!

Bullet points

• Basic Origin features
• Layout and gridding
• Workstation, plate, and other Origin accessories
• Cutting and mortise and tenon on Origin Inlay

Erik Curtis is an American woodworker, sculptor, and television personality. He attended the Nine-month Comprehensive at the Center for Furniture Craftsmanship in 2012 and has taught at schools around the country. His creative practice combines the sculptural with the functional in an attempt to blur the line between furniture and art. He also stars as the carpenter on Netflix’s "Instant Dream Home." www.encurtis.com.

In this five-day wall cabinet class, Mike Pekovich will cover basic hand tool skills which are the foundation for doing good work. You’ll also learn how and when to add some power to the equation for efficient, accurate results. The nightstand also offers great lessons in dovetailed case construction and exposed mortise and tenon joinery.

The project incorporates subtle curves, and a cord wrapped stretcher that brings the piece to life. A side-hung drawer offers a good lesson in making simple drawers and finishes off the cabinet. We will spend some time in class talking about design and how small details can have a big effect on a piece.

We’ll also address the notion of developing a philosophy that works to connect the person you are with the work you make, and how that philosophy can drive design details and methods of construction as well.

Tuition: $950

Material: $200

Author of The Why and How of Woodworking and Foundations of Woodworking, Fine woodworking's Editor and Creative Director Mike Pekovich has been making furniture and teaching people to woodwork for most of his career. During his 25-year tenure at the magazine, Mike's focus has been on making the craft easier for those of us that struggle day to day in our shops. While books and magazines are a great way to reach a wide audience, Mike's passion is in working one-on-one with students, and teaching provides that opportunity. "Some things just don't make sense until I can get a tool in your hand and show you the right way to go about a task. That's where the most important teaching gets done."

In this weekend class, you'll learn the basics of box making along with exploring the Japanese latticework technique of kumiko. The box joinery will be handled at the tablesaw where you'll learn how to work safely and accurately with small parts. If you're new to machines or a little nervous using them, this a perfect introduction. Then we'll head to the work bench to complete a kumiko panel for the lid to finish off the box.

A set of bevel blocks used in creating the pattern will be provided for the students' use during the class. New sets will be available should a student wish to purchase their own.

All of the materials for the boxes and panels will be provided.

Mike is the creative director and a frequent contributor to Fine Woodworking magazine. He has been making furniture for over 30 years and teaches throughout the country.

Tools: Safety glasses, 12-inch ruler, pencil, phillips screwdriver, very sharp 3/4 to 1-1/2 wide chisel, block plane (optional), shoulder plane (optional), Japanese pull saw or fine crosscut saw. If you don’t have a saw or chisel, one will be provided.

Tuition: $400

Material $125

Author of The Why and How of Woodworking and Foundations of Woodworking, Fine woodworking's Editor and Creative Director Mike Pekovich has been making furniture and teaching people to woodwork for most of his career. During his 25-year tenure at the magazine, Mike's focus has been on making the craft easier for those of us that struggle day to day in our shops. While books and magazines are a great way to reach a wide audience, Mike's passion is in working one-on-one with students, and teaching provides that opportunity. "Some things just don't make sense until I can get a tool in your hand and show you the right way to go about a task. That's where the most important teaching gets done."