Woodworking Class – Building a chest

As I said in my previous post regarding the Review of a Sharpening Class, I really learned a lot out of just one day.  The class was at the Northwest Woodworking Studio in Portland, Oregon.

In about a week, I am taking a 6-day course on Building a chest by hand and also a 1-day course on Dovetails.

In the first course, I hope to learn more about case building and design along with material selection.  Of course the whole thing is by hand so I hope to learn a lot about necessary hand tool techniques.  Specifically, I’d love to learn a bit about thicknessing and joining material.  Most of my current hand plane technique is working ok but I’m sure that I can gain various insights into how to do things more efficiently or using less effort.  According to the class listing, this is taught by the owner of NWS, who I met when I was there for my sharpening class.  I’m really looking forward to this.

The 1-day course on dovetails will hopefully give insights on all different dovetails including through, half-blind and sliding as these are the 3 I expect to use the most.  Given the fact that I’m re-inventing my woodworking skills, I’m expecting that dovetail joints will be my main joints for quite a while.

I’m going to miss my family though maybe they will come down for my last night and we can play a bit.  Of course, I haven’t let myself have these opportunities to learn very often so I’m truly looking forward to these classes.