Furniture Making Courses

Intensive Weekend and 3, 4 and 5 day courses covering a range of traditional hand skills and techniques for small groups. Each course offers a different project to teach you new skills .

Weekend Courses

Join a small group of like minded people for 2 days of totally absorbing woodworking tuition for the perfect beginning to your woodworking career. Sharpening & Tuning Hand Tools and Cabinetmaking Fundamentals will whet your appetite for pursuing your hobby. These courses are hands on and packed full of information and most importantly nearly all your time will be spent practising at your bench. In a relaxed and enjoyable atmosphere – absolutely the best way to learn!

Furniture Making Courses

Our furniture making courses concentrate on the traditional techniques used to create fine furniture in past centuries which is critical if you wish to make furniture predominantly by hand. Particular attention is paid to tuning tools and developing hand skills.

Antique Furniture Restoration

Antique Furniture restoration requires an understanding of a variety of different skills but the main requirements for a restorer are good hand-eye co ordination, an inventive mind and an eye for colour and detail. Students are invited to bring along a couple of small antique items e.g. small chair, toilet mirror, occasional table, writing slope etc. In discussion with John one item will be selected to work on as part of the course. The aim is for the student to return home with sufficient knowledge to complete the project in their own time.

French Polishing & Modern Hand Finishes

This course is appropriate for both the complete beginner, and the more experienced restorer or furniture maker, who is perhaps lacking in confidence, or would like to look at a new approach to an old subject.

Wood Machining

This course is an introduction to using the machinery that might be found in a small to medium sized woodworking workshop and is suitable for those who have their own machinery or are considering purchasing.

Veneering

Veneering is a wonderful way of adding a decorative effect, a technique that has been used in furniture making for hundreds of years. This course looks at both traditional hand veneering, and the more modern method of veneering using a vacuum press.

Laminating

If you have any sort of urge to move on from straight lines and get a few curves into your woodworking designs LAMINATING is going to be the vital technique that you will need to master.