It is a rare occasion to spare an entire week for carving and building chairs, but any greenwood chair enthusiast would agree that there is no better fun to have. Join two kind chairmakers to build your own hand carved bench and learn foundational chair making skills, using an expansive arsenal of hand tools.

To start off the class, students will use wedges, sledge hammers, froes, axes, and a healthy serving of elbow grease to split bench parts from fresh oak logs. From there, we’ll transform split green wood into elegantly faceted legs, stretchers, and spindles by carving the wood down with shaving horses and drawknives and learning clever marking and measuring tricks to move the process along efficiently. After the smaller bench components are placed in a homemade kiln to dry, students will move on to the layout, mortising, and shaping of their 15 x 40 inch pine bench seat, prepared by the teachers. By the final morning, students will be ready for glue-up and assembling all their parts into a comfortable bench seat, complete with a hand-carved back rest or crest rail. The teachers will demonstrate a few staple carving techniques to add ornamentation to your bench, and will share tricks to using traditional milk paint to finish this one-of-a-kind piece of furniture, ready to be loved for a hundred years to come.

This project will make for a hard-working and immersive week, but Mary and Rose will break up the physical work with demonstrations, stretching breaks, and a few discussions on the history and function of the designs and techniques used for the project so that interested students can continue to explore the craft beyond the scope of our week together.

Required Tools

• All required tools and materials will be provided.

Optional Tools

Instructor will have all of these available for students, but if you have your own that you prefer using, bring them:

• Drawknife
• Spokeshave
• Card scraper
• Sloyd knife
• Block plane