Furniture Maker Intensive Course

The Furniture Maker Intensives are blocks of classes that take place over a two to six  week period.  They enable you to really immerse yourself and focus on rapid woodworking skill acquisition.  Some of the intensive are arrange to have a few days, sometimes a week of non instruction time, allowing you to work independently while still under supervision, we have found that for some students “doing it by themselves” helps to cement the knowledge they have been covering during the class and at the same time highlights areas they want to go back and work on with the instructor.  During the intensives you will have your own bench for the duration and additional time with the experienced shop assistants.

January 7th – Feb 22nd.  Beginners Intensives

A six-week furniture building course that will immerse you in the world of woodworking.  It will teach you all of the vital skills required to create your own furniture projects.

You will have access to the expertise of our renowned furniture making tutors include an apprentice with Michael Fortune.  You will also have all of the specialist equipment available in our studio. You will start at the basics –  designing and making a wood blank, and on to a table and box making and thorough initiation into fine furniture making such case work.  You will go from square one to making three to four pieces over the period of six weeks using both hand tools and power tools.  You’ll leave capable of making most pieces of furniture – as well as understanding some more advanced techniques such veneered, and curved pieces.

The week by week format for this course is as follows:

Week 1 – Beginning Woodwork – learn the process and how to use all of the tools associated with woodworking

Week 2 – Focus on building hand tool and joinery skills

Week 3 – Study with Michael Cullen on Creative Processes of Box Making

Week 4 – Shop Practicum/Self Study week (Fine Woodworking Live weekend)

Week 5 – Apprenticeship with Michael Fortune & Kelly Parker

Week 6 – Student Break

Week 7 – Veneering with Tim Coleman

We are currently building out the dates for all of the intensives. Call us if you have a question. 813 223 3490

All intensives may be paid for using the Installment Payment Plan which divides the cost over 12 months.

SOME OF THE THINGS YOU’LL LEARN IN YOUR FIRST MAJOR PROJECT

  • Create cutting lists and project sheets for your first major project. Breaking it down, learn to “eat an elephant, but a bite at a time”
  • Order your own lumber, using the right terminology that we will teach you, you will learn to buy economically, avoiding purchasing pitfalls.
  • Safe machining of all your parts to specification. We teach you to mill accurately to get your joints and get your quality with one stroke of a hand tool for final fit
  • Mark out and cut mortices. mark out and cut tenons.
  • Cut and clean angle shoulders.
  • Dry assemble hand plane and polish.