If you’ve ever dreamed of making your own furniture, this is the perfect place to start, even if you have little or no experience. Over the course of 10 weeks, you’ll discover the joys and challenges of working with wood and power tools to build a small maple box with cherry splines.

You’ll start by learning the properties of wood and the essential elements of shop drawings, then quickly move into the machine room for instruction on milling rough lumber. As you build your box, you will learn and practice basic machine woodworking and joinery skills using the jointer, planer, table saw and router table. Finally, you will hand sand your box before taking it home to apply finish.

Upon completion, you can move on to more complex projects and woodworking operations in Build a Shaker Table, or Introduction to Cabinetmaking. We also have a number of shorter weekend classes that build on the skills you just learned.

If you want to delve more deeply into the traditional art of using hand tools, take a look at our Sharpening Hand Tools and Introduction to Hand Cut Joinery workshops.

Skills Learned

The essential properties of wood movement, read basic plans, use of the jointer, planer, table saw, router table, miter joinery, hand sanding.

All The Details

Cost: $395 (including materials)

Meeting Times: 10 Sessions 6:30 – 9:30 pm. We also have a week-long version of this workshop.

Prerequisite: None.

Please Bring: 12′  – 16′ tape measure, pencil and paper, and safety glasses/ear protection if you have them.

Instructor: Brian Mulcahy, Greg Larson

Recommended Tools: None.