Yesterday we held two major, major training workshops that progressed the Real Woodworking Campaign on several fronts. The first was staff training with my friends and coworkers in the campaign stateside. Throughout the daytime workshop, we worked on new tool chests made from eastern white pine.
The project itself is the vehicle I use to train with as I do with all of my curriculum. This is a project from our New Legacy Foundation, which holds the content of our training courses, books etc. It’s all part of our goal to refresh woodworking and get people of all ages back in the woodshop to develop real woodworking skills that will launch them into much higher levels of true and sustainable craftsmanship.
There was heightened excitement increasing throughout the day as the joints came together and the wood conformed to the men making the chests. This is a definitive training program that covers everything from raised panel construction to half-lap dovetails, through-dovetails and mortised frames and doors in one project. All of these are transferable to a mass of other projects so therein is the real value of the curriculum I have developed for the Foundation over the past twenty years.
Feel free to sign in and keep up with the progress the real Woodworking Campaign and of course look up our New Legacy website stateside here.
Evening beginnings
On a more fundamental level the evening workshop was for parents who want to teach their children and grandchildren woodworking. We introduced sharpening as a fundamental skill all teachers must have mastered if they are teaching others. This was a knock-your-socks-off workshop enthusiastically received by about 30-40 adults. It was a first class all round.
The idea is to create an environment of generosity where we can share what we have based on the each one-teach-one theory I have used for two decades. It’s passing on the skills through relational approach I believe so strongly in and anyone can do it once the understand the basics. My spending one hour with thirty people means thirty people take what I have and spend it on others as they grow.
