In this fast-paced course youll learn everything a woodworker needs to sharpen, tune and use handplanes, chisels, scrapers and the wide arsenal of edge tools available today. This class is for anyone who has ever been curious, frustrated or intimidated by hand work. It begins with the absolute basic principles of cutting wood and ends (after only five days) with you knowing how to make essential furniture joints using hand tools and building a traditional English sawbench. Here’s what you will learn:
Sharpening: Even if youve never sharpened anything before, youll learn to put a keen edge on any tool , chisel, knife, plane blade, scraper , without spending hundreds of dollars on equipment. Learn all about edge geometry, how to choose the perfect angle for any tool, and the tricks that you won’t find in the manuals (back bevels or triple micro-bevels).
Tune-up: With your edges sharp, youll fine-tune and modify your hand tools so they behave predictably and beautifully. Youll tune your planes to do the job they were intended to do, without spending hours and hours ridiculously lapping their soles. Youll learn the real working differences between the traditional bevel-down planes and the newer bevel-up planes and get a chance to try both to compare for yourself. A 100-year-old trick to modify your card scrapers will be revealed. You’ll also learn how to adjust the grips to fit your work, your workspace and your hand size.
Use: Once all your tools are properly sharp and tuned, youll discover how they work almost effortlessly if you understand just a few principles, including how to properly read the grain of any board and that not all tools are intended to be used with the grain.
A lot of information will be shared about handwork tools, such as:
1. How to tune and use the three bench planes required to flatten any board.
2. Every woodworker must have a pair of joinery planes.
3. The four handsaws necessary to hand-cut any furniture joint, from dovetails to dados.
4. The chisels needed for good woodworking, all about good bevel-edge chisels, mortising chisels and paring chisels.
Application: On the final day of the class youll put your new skills and knowledge to the test to build an English sawbench, one of the most useful hand-tool appliances ever invented.
This week-long class is great for beginning and intermediate hand-tool woodworkers alike.
