Joinery/Small Cabinet Studio

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Putting wood together: laminating, veneering, and joining techniques. Small cabinet design project.

Skill level: Intermediate to Advanced

Instructor: Jonathan Cohen, has more than forty years experience as a professional furniture maker/designer and over twenty years experience teaching.

Class Length: 10 weeks, 6 hours per week, meeting twice weekly

Description:

Joinery is an important part of making things of wood, and an area that allows room for much creativity.

In this class we will begin with a brief investigation of wood strength, structure, and movement to start understanding the reasons behind different joinery. We will then spend a couple of weeks going into detail for all the most important ways to put wood together, such as dovetails, mortise and tenons, box or finger joints, miters and splined miters, lap and half lap joints, through tenons and, well, the list is nearly endless. Each class as we learn about individual joints, we will spend most of the class at our workbenches getting hands on experience.

Towards the middle of the class each student will start designing a small cabinet which makes use of many of the joints we have been learning. The cabinet will include at least one door and one drawer, and will include instruction on proper door and drawer hanging techniques, so that when the course is finished students will not only have a wonderful piece to take home, they should have a very solid foundation of all around joinery skills and cabinetmaking skills.


Objectives:

  • By the end of this class students should have a very solid understanding of wood strength, structure, and movement to make informed choice between different joinery options in their own projects.
  • Students should also have hours of practicing those joints, and feel confident that they are able to employ those skills whenever a design calls for them.
  • Students will have successfully created a small box/cabinet of their own design.