TWELVE-WEEK INTENSIVE
Steam bending demonstration during the Twelve-week Intensive.
The Satterlee Building bench room.
Student Riccardo Ramirez, left, and instructor Brian Reid
assembling a case piece, 2009
- February 15 – May 7, 2010
- June 7 – August 27, 2010
- November 1, 2010 – January 28, 2011
- February 21 – May 13, 2011
AUDIENCE
Our Twelve-week Intensive is especially designed to meet the needs of aspiring professional furniture makers and amateurs on sabbatical from other professions. With two instructors available at all times and only twelve students, each participant is able to individualize the course of study to fit his or her interests and level of experience.
CURRICULUM
The skills available through our curriculum include:
- Design – Drafting, design development through models, mock-ups, and prototypes; critiques and discussions of aesthetics.
- Drawing – Improving your ability to sketch, render objects, and think on paper.
- 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 power tools and routers for stock preparation, joinery, and forming.
- Advanced techniques – Laminate bending; steam bending; re-sawing and veneering; jig and fixture making; and more.
- Surface preparation and finishing – Preparing wood with cutting tools, 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 curriculum divides into three projects. For the first two weeks we go through the Basic Woodworking course (see page 10), teaching the essentials of furniture making with an emphasis on hand skills. Each student designs and builds a project requiring hand-cut dovetails and mortise-and-tenon joinery. The second project, weeks three through eight, focuses on solid-wood case piece construction, including door-making and drawer-making. Each participant creates a case piece with at least one door and one drawer. The third project starts in week nine with a series of lectures and demonstrations on steam bending, laminate bending, and veneer work. Each student designs and constructs a challenging piece using one or more of these techniques.
Faculty
The faculty for the Twelve-week Intensive is drawn from among the following instructors. Additional faculty may be named as opening dates draw near. Most of the instructors listed have web sites, which you can visit for more extensive views of their work. See list of instructors here.
APPLICATION PROCESS
Participants are accepted any time on a first-come, first-served basis. No application is required.