Twelve-week Furniture Intensive (Scholarships Available) Center for Furniture Craftsmanship

Our twelve-week Furni­ture Inten­sive is designed to meet the needs of aspir­ing profes­sional furni­ture makers, commit­ted amateurs on sabbat­i­cal from other profes­sions, or wood­work­ers wanting to delve more fully into their craft. We take pride in the level of instruc­tion and personal atten­tion students receive with two instruc­tors and an assis­tant avail­able for only twelve students. Each student is able to indi­vid­u­al­ize their course of study to get the most out of the experience!

The skills devel­oped through our curriculum include:

Design – Learn how to develop your own furni­ture designs by gener­at­ing and refin­ing ideas through sketch­ing, model making, proto­types, and full-scale draw­ings, plus partic­i­pat­ing in critiques and discus­sions of aesthetics.

Lumber selec­tion – Wood char­ac­ter­is­tics, buying lumber, select­ing wood appro­pri­ate to your design.

Joinery – Choos­ing and making the right joint for every situ­a­tion using both tradi­tional and contemporary methods.

Tradi­tional hand skills – The foun­da­tion of fine furni­ture making: sharp­en­ing; use and tuning of chisels, hand planes, saws, and scrap­ers; hand-cut joinery.

Machine tech­niques – Use of station­ary and hand-held power tools for stock prepa­ra­tion, joinery, and shaping of compo­nents, includ­ing jig making for precise, repeatable results.

Advanced tech­niques – Lami­nate bending, steam bending, cooper­ing, working with shop-sawn and commer­cial veneer, cutting joinery on curved compo­nents, and more.

Surface prepa­ra­tion and finish­ing – Prepar­ing wood with planes, scrap­ers, and abra­sives; choos­ing the right finish for the effect you want; appli­ca­tion of finishes.

Shop main­te­nance – Selec­tion, tuning, and main­te­nance of woodworking machinery.

Profes­sional prac­tices – Visits to profes­sional work­shops to discuss how to run a busi­ness, pricing, and marketing.

The course divides into three segments. The first two weeks cover our Basic Wood­work­ing curricu­lum, which explores the essen­tials of furni­ture making with an empha­sis on hand skills. Each student designs and constructs a project with hand-cut dove­tail and mortise-and-tenon joinery. For the second segment (6 weeks), students learn to design and build solid-wood case­pieces with doors and drawers. The final segment (4 weeks) focuses on curved compo­nents and veneer, includ­ing tech­niques for steam bending, lami­nate bending, cooper­ing, and re-sawing of veneer. Each student designs and constructs a chal­leng­ing piece that requires one or more of these techniques.

Three inten­sives currently scheduled:

October 31, 2022 – January 27, 2023

Febru­ary 20 – May 12, 2023

June 12 – Septem­ber 1, 2023

https://​wood​school​.org/​c​o​urses…