As a self-proclaimed, “jack of all trades, master of none,” I have always felt the least prepared and most inept in the arena of fine-wood working…. I certainly have always found it to be the most humbling of materials. In the Spring of 2023, I received a professional development award from the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts at Washington University in St. Louis to cover all of the costs attached to a week-long joinery workshop at the Marc Adams School of Woodworking in Franklin, Indiana.
The “Joinery WITH Marc Adams” workshop is a non-project based class focused on providing participants opportunities to develop both hand and machine skills specific to joinery with wood. Attending this class provided me with an advanced and what I consider to be a necessary set of skills, knowledge and experience needed to support our faculty, students and shop users at the Sam Fox School of Design and Visual Arts.
Specifically, this workshop focused on:
Tool Sharpening
The layout process
Joint selection (techniques covered: dovetails, half-blind dovetails, lap dovetails, sliding dovetails, decorative dovetails, mortise and tenons, angled mortise and tenons, three-way miters, scarf and hip joints, decorative joints, and the joinery system used for carcass construction in cabinetmaking)
Correct cutting techniques for precise fitting joints
Adhesive selection
And five levels of repair
Every other semester, a Furniture Design class is taught in the Walker wood shop, a space that I am responsible for. The curriculum encourages and supports the students’ design and fabrication of complex joinery and furniture. While I had always been able to support the faculty and students at a general level, I unfortunately never felt that I had a deep understanding and experience of these processes to support in the way I believe is needed and deserved. Attending this workshop certainly provided me a foundation and put me on a path to gain the joinery experience and advanced woodworking techniques that will allow me to support the students and faculty in a way that I have hoped for.
workshop bound!
Calling the facilities impressive at MASW is definitely an understatement! During the five day workshop, I was enamored daily by the amount of tools available, workspaces to use, supporting staff, and the cleanliness of how it was all kept. In congruence with our class, there were 3 other full workshops being taught in other shops on the campus. Because of the large spaces and dedicated shops for each class, I had to make an effort to get out and see what the other classes were doing.
We started the week learning how to sharpen our scrapers and chisels. Having a sharp tool is critical and foundational to all of the work that follows. Consequently, it was great to hear Marc’s thoughts on the many different methods and techniques available and to be taught two that are effective without a lot of fuss. Whether in my own practice or working with students, convenience is everything.
“What is the only thing you can’t make with good tools? ………Excuses”
-Something my dad used to say to me
After learning how to sharpen our tools and ways to use a scraper, we jumped right into hand cutting DOVETAIL joints. Our sequence of dovetail joints were as follows:
through dovetails (2 pins / 1 tail)
hidden dovetails (2 pins / 1 tail)
dovetail joint with two boards of different thicknesses
through dovetail using 3 or more pins
It was during this point in the week that the importance of the course mantra, “Layout is Everything,” became so crystal clear!
“LAYOUT
IS
EVERYTHING”
-MARC ADAMS
Following our exercises with dovetails, we began learning how to layout and cut a MORTISE and TENON joint. Beginning with hand-carving both the mortise and tenon, we progressively began incorporating power tools such as drill presses (forstner bits), table saws, bandsaws, routers and of course, mortising machines into the iterations of fabrication. This section of the workshop culminated in us making both a knock-down trestle joint that required an angled mortise as well as a mortise and angled tenon joint.
photo credit to the Marc Adams School of Woodworking
Words of Wisdom
To reinforce that layout is everything and to demonstrate how far we had all come in such a short time, on Friday afternoon Marc brought us all to the front of the classroom to give us one last surprise project. After presenting to us an encyclopedia of joinery, he had each of us pull an envelope from a larger stack of unmarked envelopes, each containing an illustration of a different joint than the next that we were expected to make. Amazingly, I chose a recent foe and the only joint that I had ever tried making prior to this workshop… the infamous mitered finger-joint. The previous Christmas, I chose this method to frame a wood-block print I bought for Andy in Xi’An, China in 2017. While in the end, I succeeded, I must have remade that frame at least 4 times because of the subtleties and nuances of such a beautiful and simple joint. When I pulled the one envelope containing this same joint, it felt that everything came full-circle and that there was truly order in the chaos.
Each student’s first dovetail, signed and dated
photo credit to the Marc Adams School of Woodworking
In the end, this workshop was much more than I had ever hoped for! From 8am on Monday morning to 4pm on Friday, there was not a moment of idle time. Everyone showed up early and stayed late just to try and keep up with everything we were being given. Marc’s teaching, the schools supporting staff, extensive facilities and the jam packed schedule all made this class a journey into joinery that I would recommend to anyone interested. Thank you to the Sam Fox School at Wash U for the opportunity and support and to the Marc Adams School for the amazing class and entrance into fine wood-working! I hope to make it back!
homeward bound!