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Learn how to use hand tools skillfully in this three-week component of BARN's Beginning Woodworking series.
You will build a two-compartment tote, handy for storing or carrying silverware, garden tools or other items. The project was specifically designed to give you experience with the most common hand tools. You will learn to use:
Details:
Instructor: Paul Kury. Paul studied woodworking at Lonnie Bird’s School of Fine Woodworking in Dandridge, Tennessee, and has been an active woodworker for 40 years. His preference is 18th century furniture. Paul also volunteers as a woodworking safety monitor at BARN.
Get started on your woodturning adventure with this three-session beginner's class, where you’ll complete small spindle projects as you learn safety, tool control and how to create the basic shapes involved in spindle and bowl turning.
By successfully completing this class and our free, one-hour Orientation to the Woodshop class, you will be cleared to use the wood lathes for spindle turning during Open Studio. You will also be eligible to take a bowl-turning class, although it is strongly suggested that you spend time turning in Open Studio a few times before you enroll in that class. (Note that you still must take Tool Safety Classes before using other power tools in the Studio.)
Instructor: Jamie Straw has been turning wood for several years, working on both spindle and bowl projects, and has taught woodturning at BARN since July 2017. She also serves as coordinator of BARN’s woodturning classes. She is past Vice President for Education and Training for the local chapter of the American Association of Woodturners. Her focus is on helping students build skills progressively as they design and create their woodturning projects.
* This class has a prerequisite. Please see below.
Because they cut fast and loud, routers can be one of the scariest woodworking tools. But they are also one of the most versatile. With a router, you can create your own molding for picture frames, cut joints, detail edges, create inlays, make multiple matching parts, and much more. Whole books are written about routers and what they can do.
This class focuses on the basics and safe practices so you can confidently set up and use both hand-held routers and table-mounted routers. The class is limited to four students to ensure hands-on time for everyone.
At the first session, you will learn how to use the router table safely. You will change router bits, adjust the fence, and run softwood and hardwood samples, to see how the effects vary. While the class won't focus on creating a project, you will wind up with skills that you can use later to create picture frames or other projects.
The second session will focus on hand-held routers. You will learn about the different types and will install and adjust edge bits. You will shape edges and create edge rabbits.
Instructor: Don Johnson has been using routers for more than 30 years to create a variety of furniture pieces and table stands. He especially appreciates the way using a router adds a level of sophistication to any wood project He's found that routers are perfect for creating rabbits for glass or stone insets.
To use the shop, you will also need to attend our free one-hour Orientation to the Woodshop class.
Woodshop Tool Safety 1 will qualify you to use the following tools during Open Studio time and in classes that require certification in these tools:
Instructor: Charles Sharpe
Participants will also learn about the leadership structure within the shop and about opportunities to participate in helping everything run smoothly. Volunteer jobs range from serving as safety monitors to helping on Maintenance Mondays.
Instructor: Jeff Williams
Instructor: Jeanne Huber
**This workshop will be live streamed via Zoom.**
Share your woodworking successes and challenges and learn what others in the BARN woodworker community are doing in a new series of online meetings.
These sessions will usually begin with a small bit of prepared content, such as pictures of projects that members want to show, or interviews with local pro woodworkers, or tours of home shops — whatever content members of the group suggest. After the prepared content, we’ll have a chance to touch base on areas of interest with each other. You can ask technical questions, share lessons you've learned, suggest classes you'd like to take.
If you have pictures to share or a topic to suggest, please email woodclasses@bainbridgebarn.org.
To turn wood effectively and enjoyably, you need sharp tools that have quality profiles. Learn to sharpen the tools you need to turn spindles, bowls and other projects on the wood lathe.
In this class, you will learn to sharpen gouges according to BARN protocol and gain an understanding of how to sharpen other tools (e.g., skews, parting tools, scrapers). If you would like advice on your own tools, you are welcome to bring them.
This class is strongly recommended for students who have completed Intro to Woodturning or are enrolled in Intro to Bowl Turning. The class is required for any turners who wish to use BARN turning tools on an ongoing basis.
Instructor bio: Jamie Straw has been turning wood for several years, working on both spindle and bowl projects, and has taught woodturning at BARN since July 2017. She also serves as coordinator of BARN’s woodturning classes. She is past Vice President for Education and Training for the local chapter of the American Association of Woodturners. Her focus is on helping students build skills progressively as they design and create their woodturning projects.
You will start with the basic shape cut out from basswood, allowing you to skip the tedious time needed to carve away the background. This frees more class time for developing techniques for creating the embellishments that bring a relief carving to life.
You will be able to choose one or more designs from among those that the instructor will provide. If you've taken this class before, you will be able to carve something new this time. Your materials fee includes the cost of the basswood blanks.
Tuition assistance is available. Click here to apply.
BARN will supply carving tools to share, but students are also encouraged to bring their own.
Instructor: As a third-generation woodworker, Jeff Iller learned about woodworking tools and knives early on. By high school, he was winning ribbons with his wood carvings at his hometown fair. Around 1996 Jeff found room for a shop and he has carved ever since. He’ll carve most anything, but prefers to innovate with the working tools to carve multiple parts inside one piece of wood and to make physically detailed and accurate carvings of women's faces. Carvings on the entry sign to the BARN Woodworking Studio shows the quality of his work.
Iller says he was taught early on that he could make anything from wood. He is still trying to prove that statement wrong.
Instructor: Greg Engemann
*This class has prerequisites. See below.
Gain confidence in using a wide array of power tools safely in this three-week component of BARN's Intro to Woodworking series.
You will build a sturdy, two-step stepstool of solid wood and plywood. The project was specifically designed to give you experience with the most common stationary and portable tools in the woodshop:
Instructor: Dave Whitacre
This class has prerequisites. Please see below.
Learn how to create a lidded wooden box to hold a range of small items – candy, rings, trinkets – or just for show or gift-giving. Turning wooden boxes is an enjoyable, creative past-time; it’s also a skill-builder that encourages you to employ a variety of tools and techniques.
In this class you will make a classic cylindrical box with a fitted lid from a single piece of stock. You will use not only familiar tools such as a roughing gouge and spindle gouge, parting tool and scrapers, but also explore using a skew to help the quality of finish and provide crisp transitions. You will learn the sequence of steps that must be followed to successfully complete a box with a precision fit to the top, and how to create and use a jam chuck for finishing the bottom.
This class is designed for turners who have mastered the basics and long to expand their techniques.
Instructor: Bob Abresch. Bob is a long-time woodworker who started turning two years ago when the BARN facility opened. He has taken classes from several notable local turners and has enjoyed creating a variety of turned objects which, much to his surprise and delight, have been popular items at BARN’s annual bazaar.
* This class has prerequisites. Please see below.
If you want to be more effective when using any of the four bandsaws in the BARN Woodworking Studio, this class is for you. A bandsaw seems like a simple machine, but to get the best results, one must understand the types of blades, the guides that support the blade, the size and power of the saw, and how the teeth cut wood. And some cuts — such as resawing, cutting curves and beveling — require special techniques. All bandsaws need to be tuned regularly, and with the heavy use in our studio, more often than once per week.
In the first session, you will learn about the mechanics of the saw and blades, how to choose which saw and blade to use, how to tune each saw, and how to change the blade when you need a different one for your project.
In the second session, you will practice making cuts of various kinds, including those that require relief cuts, templates, stock support or special tuning of the fence. Such cuts include resawing, cutting round stock, tapering (for pieces such as table legs), easy circle cutting, beveling and template-cutting for duplicates.
Completing this class will qualify you to use the 36-inch Northfield saw, which is not included in the tool safety class that covers the other bandsaws.
You will be encouraged to ask questions relevant to your own project interests, and to share any problems you've had using bandsaws.
Instructor: Jamie Straw. Jamie has been woodworking for more than 20 years and has experienceon all of the standard stationary tools of a wood shop. Her first floor-model tool was a bandsaw, which she uses for both sawing large woodturning blanks and processing dimensional lumber.
Instructor: Scott Weigle
"Where do you get your wood for turning?” -- Perhaps the most common question woodturners are asked by people new to the craft!
In this class you will learn not only where to find or buy wood, but also how to evaluate wood for different projects; how to cut, preserve and store it (if it is green); how to lay out bowls, vessels and spindles on your stock to ensure good project success; and how to maximize the yield from your wood. Much of the wood local turners use is free “found” or “fallen” wood, and there are many details to learn about how, when and where to obtain these treasures.
Woodturners use bandsaws to prepare much of their stock, and are often challenged by irregular pieces of wood that require special safety tactics. In this class you will learn how to determine which approach you should use for a particular piece of wood, be it a log, a burl or a piece of spindle stock. Students who have taken Tool Safety II will gain hands-on experience in cutting turning stock on one of the studio’s bandsaws.
You are welcome to bring one or two pieces of wood you want to evaluate for turning stock.
