We are currently freshening up our website (like one does rather sporadically), and in describing our current classes were surprised to find that the woodwork one began 35 years ago! Not only that, but one member of the ‘class of ’82’ then held at Ringmer School, has been a continual attender ever since! Des, my good friend and fellow woodwork collaborator, has been coming ever since then, which if my maths is correct, amounts to over 1800 hours of class time, plus the homework of course!
Hasn’t he learnt enough to do it on his own yet, you may well ask? Well yes and no. Yes, he has a great many skills and is a very accomplished woodworker, more than able to make everything himself. Indeed he has single-handedly furnished his own house (and is now branching out to his children’s houses), with bookcases, toys, chairs and tables. But the fact is that Des and many others still come to the weekly class for two other vital ingredients; the workshop and the people.
The workshop itself provides the bench space plus the machines and tools to actually do the work, whilst the six or seven other people in the class help give various solutions to design or practical questions that inevitably arise along the way. They are therefore essentially self-help groups, with the variety of differing opinions giving great scope for creative results. Because, as we are always being reminded, there is rarely only one answer to a design question.
Although Des (and many other serial woodworkers) have been coming for many years and know a lot about woodwork, we also get a fresh batch of beginners every term. And that means the ‘birdbox project’. If you are interested in finding out more about these classes, please make contact, or read what one recent woodwork course beginner wrote here.
Tim
HI Tim,
What day is the woodworking class?
I’d like to see if I can learn how to make a browser, table easels and maybe some canvas frames.
Bit ambitious?
Annie
Sorry for slow response Annie, this was buried in spam!
Classes are on Tuesdays. Those projects are not overly ambitious but you’d need to do the induction course. Next term starts in September. Tim