Creative Box Making

Doug Stowe

June 18 – 29

Participants advance their woodworking skills by designing and building personalized boxes. Doug begins the course with pointers on three-dimensional design and goes on to cover all aspects of solid-wood box making, from wood selection and joinery to lifting, sliding, and hinged lids, as well as trays and dividers, feet and bases, pulls, and inlay. He also offers step-by-step video presentations that show how a number of different box designs go together.

In addition to the customary hand-cut dovetails, Doug’s instruction covers a wide variety of machine joinery options that use the table saw and router, including keyed miter joints, finger joints, lap joints, and rabbet joints. Students learn how to make accurate sleds for the table saw, and how to re-saw on the band saw. Butt hinges, slot hinges, barrel hinges, and handmade wooden hinges are all options for their projects. This course is a great next step for those who have taken our Basic Woodworking course and for other intermediate-level woodworkers.

Doug Stowe is a professional furniture maker in Eureka Springs, AR who has written four box-making books: Creating Beautiful Boxes with Inlay Techniques (Betterway Books, 1997), Simply Beautiful Boxes (Betterway Books, 2000), Taunton's Complete Illustrated Guide to Box Making (Taunton Press, 2004), and Basic Box Making (Taunton Press, 2007). His boxes and furniture have been featured in Woodworker’s Journal, Woodwork, American Woodworker and Fine Woodworking. In 2009 Doug was named an "Arkansas Living Treasure" by the Arkansas Department of Heritage and Arkansas Arts Council for his contributions to traditional crafts and craft education. He maintains strong advocacy for hands-on learning through his blog at wisdomofhands.blogspot.com.

Open to intermediate woodworkers, including all who have taken Basic Woodworking.

Tuition: $1,250

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