Practice Woodworking: July (heatwave) Edition

The summer of 2013 is filled to the brim with woodworking classes here at the Lohr School of Woodworking. Tomorrow will close out another Practical Woodworking course.

I must first commend our current practical woods students for being so brave and willing as they have managed to show up with smiles and motivated attitudes despite this unbearable north east heatwave. I am a Floridian girl and even I am dyin' from these temperatures so, good job guys, your dedication is admirable!

Jeff, Doug, Terry, Susan, Bill, Cate, Paul, Dan, Gwen, John, and Vince have done a wonderfully impressive job this week learning, listening, and executing new woodworking techniques. Furthermore, they have really become one as a class as they work together to implement their newly absorbed woodworking procedures! Each of them started the week with three rough, FAS, red oak boards and, today all eleven workbenches are graced with nearly completed hall tables.

We have been lucky enough to have the week to get to know the students and today is the day that they get the chance to add details that make their tables unique to them. I love to watch the creativity and personality shine through the pieces as they quickly approach completion.

Throughout the week, students see demos covering every concept, machine, tool, technique, strategy, and jig design we can cram into the week. Although the weather has been rather warm, we did stick to the status quo of making the messiest, dustiest tasks into outdoor activities. Here, Rob is demonstrating how to use the router sled/table. In this demo, he explains the jig's assembly, design, and use. As we use it as a method for milling one face of a board too wide to fit through the jointer or planer, it is safe for you to assume that the router throws a lot of dust and chips around as it levels the face's surface. Luckily, in the summertime, the mimosa tree is in full bloom so we were able to teach, learn, and mill board faces under the shade of a beautiful and delicious-smelling tree.

The latest and greatest addition to the shop was fueled by Jeff's efforts to contribute as little was we can to the ever-growing landfills. As we are located on the farm with it's own functioning ecosystem and work with all natural, earth-grown wood, we do our best to make environmentally-friendly decisions with our trash and material reuse.

A fancy new water cooler will limit the number of plastic water bottles we go through here at the shop (especially in the height of the summer). The idea is to have one reusable bottle for each student/staff to last the week instead of 2-5 throwaway bottles per person per day. Perk number one of this handy machine: the water is always ice cold without having to restock the refrigerator. So, welcome to the shop, new water cooler. We look forward to your convenience and ice-cold hydration services.

All in all, last week was yet another wonderful week spent with ambitious and motivated aspiring woodworkers. We were pleased to host the eleven of you and hope to see you return to the shop in the future!


Another week begins here at Lohr Woodworking so look out for an update or two about our next summer adventures.

Practical Woods: June 2013 Edition

The Lohr School of Woodworking is happy to welcome and work with another new crew of aspiring woodworkers!

Safe from the erratic spring weather patterns happening outside, we've been working away the week in the shop with eleven new Practical Woodworking students. The Mikes, the Steves, John, Fred, Jono, Lesley, Pat, Bill, and Jim have been a wonderful addition to our shop this week as they have learned about everything from tree growth and wood drying, to milling rough boards to squared perfection!

As per usual, we have a collection of students with a wide range of prior woodworking experience and knowledge. And, even better, this group comes equipped with bright and hilarious personalities! As a new teacher here at the shop, I love to see how students of every level are excited and eager to learn the "right way" to do things in order to have the best results quickly (while making sure to keep all their fingers and limbs).

One of the best and most interesting parts of the course are all the Lohr-original jigs! After so many years in the trade, Jeff has come up with the easiest, safest, and most logically constructed jigs to make most processes fool proof and comfortable. A jig for cutting mortises in table legs, a jig for cutting perfectly tapered legs, a jig for leveling surfaces of bigger-than-the-planer boards, a jig for this and a jig for that. He keeps all of the stages of each jigs' progression so students can see where his logic started and how it developed into these hand-crafted, time-saving assistants. Best of all, like all other information and processes presented in the class, Jeff tells students in great detail how they can copy these things when they return to their home shops.

As I continue to ease my way into woodworking instruction, I am quickly learning how different (and just slightly the same) teaching math to eighth graders is from teaching adult woodworkers. The first major difference is that these students want to be here. In fact, they seem to love being here as much as we do; something I can't say so much about most 14-year-olds being forced to learn math.



I look forward to the next couple of days as the Mikes, the Steves, John, Fred, Jono, Lesley, Pat, Bill, and Jim see their tables come together and sigh with relief when they can go home and digest all the information that has been thrown their way this week. Now, onto Day 5 (sanding day) of Practical Woodworking!