I’m essentially a self taught woodworker. I’ve watched shows and videos. I’ve read magazines and books. I’ve attended woodworking shows and classes at those shows. All of this probably means that I’m doing many things (if not everything) wrong. I know that it doesn’t diminish the results I’ve had over the years but I feel that if I had more knowledge I would have more pride in my work and it’s results.
I base all of this on my guitar skills. For 10 years, I tried to learn to play the guitar on my own. I could strum a few chords but never really put together a song. About 3 or 4 years ago, I started taking lessons and my confidence and skills improved at a much improved rate. I’m far from being a world class musician but now I understand how music works and where I want my knowledge to grow. I have confidence in what I can do and a strength that comes from knowing where I can still improve. I believe that I will have a similar benefit from woodworking classes.
I picked Northwest Woodworking Studio in Portland Oregon. They have an extensive set of classes that they offer throughout the year. They even have a full time masters program (both at their location and remote learning).
My first class is Building by hand: A Sidetable which is a week long course. I’m following this immediately with Wooden Handplanes. My last in this group of classes is Sharpening. My recent focus on my woodworking skills into integrate more hand tool skills into my projects. With the size of my shop, I would love to reduce my dependency on power tools (not eliminate them, just reduce). These classes all lend to that goal. In addition, I agree with comments that I’ve read in books and seen on the internet that gaining hand tool skills improves power tool skills for the same or similar tasks.
I chose this school because of many positive comments around the internet and I even heard a podcast (sorry, can’t remember which one) where they interviewed a student for the distant learning program. I’ve talked to Gary, the owner extensively over the phone and have a good sense on the effort they put forward for each class. When I talked to him, he had just finished with a Workbench class which sounded exhausting and fun. I’m very excited. I will certainly post something after the classes.
