I attended the Woodcraft hosted "Rough to Ready" hand plane class today presented by Bill Anderson. Here is a brief review of the class.
Class: Rough to Ready
Instructor: Bill Anderson
Location: Woodcraft's Raleigh-Durham location.
Class Size: 4 (only two students showed up for the class so we received some great one-on-one instruction from Bill)
Course Overview: This was a hands-on workshop in the skills and techniques required to dress and square up a piece of rough stock to a finished board. Topics covered included:
1. Terms and definitions. Learned what it means to be flat, smooth and/or square.
2. A review of tools used. Discussed all the hand tools required, their use, and good sources for buying tools both new and used. Tools covered included winding sticks, straight edges, squares, panel gauges, marking gauges, scrub planes, smoothing planes, jointing planes, block planes, and scrapers.
3. Hand plane anatomy, tuning and sharpening. Had a brief overview of the parts of wooden, transitional, and metal planes. What the critical features are on a hand plane, and how to get the most functionality out of a plane.
4. Hand planing techniques. Proper techniques for using the various types of planes were covered in great detail and used during the hands-on portion of the workshop. Some of the specifics covered setting the depth of cut, reading the grain, and working with figured stock.
5. Squaring and surfacing. This is the area where we spent the majority of our time today. We each started with a rough sawn piece of 8/4 poplar and took it through the following steps:
a. Plane a flat reference surface.
b. Square up a long edge.
c. Cut and plane the parallel edge.
d. Mark the stock thickness.
e. Plane the parallel face to a finish.
f. Cut and square the board to length.
(due to time constraints and discussion of other material we did not complete steps e. and f. above but Bill covered their procedure in detail with us.)
6. Finishing. Various types of scrapers were discussed and we completed a practical exercise in sharpening and using a scraper to prepare a surface for finishing.
Take aways from the class: Bill provided each student with a 25 page document in a sturdy three ring binder which covers everything in detail presented during the class. This document also includes a comprehensive bibliography of resources for additional information as well as a extensive listing of sources of good tools including websites.
Overall Comments: Bill Anderson is an experienced craftsman and superb teacher on the art of using hand planes. I highly recommend this class for anyone interested in learning the proper techniques of using hand planes for preparing rough stock.
Bill will be presenting a sharpening class on 16 Jul at the same location and based on listening to his brief instructions today on sharpening plane blades and scrapers I know his sharpening class will be extremely informative and worth every penny.
Class: Rough to Ready
Instructor: Bill Anderson
Location: Woodcraft's Raleigh-Durham location.
Class Size: 4 (only two students showed up for the class so we received some great one-on-one instruction from Bill)
Course Overview: This was a hands-on workshop in the skills and techniques required to dress and square up a piece of rough stock to a finished board. Topics covered included:
1. Terms and definitions. Learned what it means to be flat, smooth and/or square.
2. A review of tools used. Discussed all the hand tools required, their use, and good sources for buying tools both new and used. Tools covered included winding sticks, straight edges, squares, panel gauges, marking gauges, scrub planes, smoothing planes, jointing planes, block planes, and scrapers.
3. Hand plane anatomy, tuning and sharpening. Had a brief overview of the parts of wooden, transitional, and metal planes. What the critical features are on a hand plane, and how to get the most functionality out of a plane.
4. Hand planing techniques. Proper techniques for using the various types of planes were covered in great detail and used during the hands-on portion of the workshop. Some of the specifics covered setting the depth of cut, reading the grain, and working with figured stock.
5. Squaring and surfacing. This is the area where we spent the majority of our time today. We each started with a rough sawn piece of 8/4 poplar and took it through the following steps:
a. Plane a flat reference surface.
b. Square up a long edge.
c. Cut and plane the parallel edge.
d. Mark the stock thickness.
e. Plane the parallel face to a finish.
f. Cut and square the board to length.
(due to time constraints and discussion of other material we did not complete steps e. and f. above but Bill covered their procedure in detail with us.)
6. Finishing. Various types of scrapers were discussed and we completed a practical exercise in sharpening and using a scraper to prepare a surface for finishing.
Take aways from the class: Bill provided each student with a 25 page document in a sturdy three ring binder which covers everything in detail presented during the class. This document also includes a comprehensive bibliography of resources for additional information as well as a extensive listing of sources of good tools including websites.
Overall Comments: Bill Anderson is an experienced craftsman and superb teacher on the art of using hand planes. I highly recommend this class for anyone interested in learning the proper techniques of using hand planes for preparing rough stock.
Bill will be presenting a sharpening class on 16 Jul at the same location and based on listening to his brief instructions today on sharpening plane blades and scrapers I know his sharpening class will be extremely informative and worth every penny.
