This class has a prerequisite. Please see below.
Get started on your woodturning adventure with this three-session beginner's class, where you will learn safety, tool control, and how to create the basic shapes involved in spindle and bowl turning. A small project will be started and completed as time permits.
By successfully completing this class, you will be cleared to use the wood lathes for spindle turning during Open Studio. While you will also be eligible to take a bowl-turning class, it is strongly suggested that you spend time turning in Open Studio a few times before you enroll in a bowl class.
In Session 1, you will learn about woodturning safety, bevel contact, and gouge technique focusing on good body mechanics - all important to building a foundation to launch your turning skills. You will use the roughing gouge during most of the class, followed by an introduction to the regular (“fingernail”) spindle gouge. Tools you will use: spindle roughing gouge and fingernail spindle gouge.
In Session 2, you will review the earlier lesson, and then focus on the spindle gouge and parting tool, learning new mechanics for turning beads and coves. Toward the end of class, you will learn how a scroll chuck and tenon work in preparation for Session 3.
In Session 3, you will increase the precision of your turning technique by making a small project such as a honey dipper, finial, spinning top, or goblet, with your own design elements. You will use a scroll chuck, a Jacobs chuck and Forstner bit.
Please click here for BARN's current COVID-19 health & safety protocols.
You must wear safety glasses and closed-toe shoes, tie back long hair, and avoid loose-fitting clothing and jewelry. We recommend bringing your own safety glasses.
BARN is committed to accessibility. Tuition Assistance is available - click here to fill out the simple application before registering for a class. For those who might need physical assistance, please learn about BARN's Companion Program here.
Instructor: Jamie Straw has been turning wood for several years, working on both spindle and bowl projects, and has taught woodturning at BARN since July 2017. She also serves as coordinator of BARN’s woodturning classes. She is past Vice President for Education and Training for the local chapter of the American Association of Woodturners. Her focus is on helping students build skills progressively as they design and create their woodturning projects.
Every Sunday between 1pm and 3pm you can take a free guided tour of BARN. Visit all 10 studios, and find out what you can create at BARN.
We’ll answer all your questions and show you examples of what other makers have made in BARN's fully-equipped workspaces. Tours are free, no need to register. See you on Sunday!
Details:
Students must bring proof of vaccination for the instructor.
BARN is committed to accessibility. For those who might need physical assistance, please learn about BARN's Companion Program here.
Instructor: Jeanne Huber
You will make the box from maple and walnut. With the lid, the box will be 5¼ inches long, 4 inches wide and up to 3 inches high. At the end of class, your box will be ready for sanding and finishing.
Instructor Bio: Doug Salot has adopted Fusion 360 as a lifestyle. He has used it to design signs, cabinets, and replacement parts for various broken things. You'll often find him in ETA using the laser cutter or in the woodshop carving things on BARN's CNC router.
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To turn wood effectively and enjoyably, you need sharp tools that have quality profiles. Learn to sharpen the tools you need to turn spindles, bowls and other projects on the wood lathe.
In this class, you will learn to sharpen gouges according to BARN protocol and gain an understanding of how to sharpen other tools (e.g., skews, parting tools, scrapers). If you would like advice on your own tools, you are welcome to bring them.
This class is strongly recommended for students who have completed Intro to Woodturning or are enrolled in Intro to Bowl Turning. The class is required for any turners who wish to use BARN turning tools on an ongoing basis.
Participants will also learn about the leadership structure within the shop and about opportunities to participate in helping everything run smoothly. Volunteer jobs range from serving as safety monitors to helping on Maintenance Mondays.
Instructor: Jeff Williams
Help build a Tiny House for one of the Tiny House Villages that are providing warm, secure shelter to homeless people in Puget Sound communities.
BARN is partnering with the Low Income Housing Institute in Seattle on this community service project. LIHI, a non-profit organization that is one of the largest providers of tiny houses in the nation, is providing plans and materials; BARN will provide the volunteer labor.
This will be the second Tiny House built by BARN volunteers. The picture shows the first house soon after it was installed at the Friendship Heights Village, located at 12245 Aurora Ave N in Seattle. The village has 40 tiny houses that serve approximately 55 formerly homeless people.
As with the 2021 house, the one being built this year will be insulated and dry, but it won't have a kitchen or bathroom. Each village provides shared dining and bathing facilities.
The plan is to build the house over nine sessions in June — Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays from 1 to 5 pm. BARN members with experience in residential construction will supervise the work of up to five other volunteers each day. Volunteers of all skill levels are welcome to participate. Besides helping people who need housing, volunteers will also learn how to build a small building using a variety of tools
Most work will be done outdoors, so please dress appropriately. You must wear safety glasses and closed-toe shoes, tie back long hair, and avoid loose-fitting clothing and jewelry. We recommend bringing your own safety glasses.
This class is open only to current safety monitors in the Woodworking Studio.
If you are a safety monitor for the Woodworking Studio and have limited experience with the Festool Domino, this class is for you. It is designed to help you better understand what's involved in safe — and unsafe — use of this tool. If you haven't used this tool, it's also a chance to get hands-on experience.
The class is free but enrollment is limited, so please register.
To use the shop, you will also need to attend our free one-hour Orientation to the Woodshop class.
Woodshop Tool Safety 1 will qualify you to use the following tools during Open Studio time and in classes that require certification in these tools:
Wear safety glasses and closed-toe shoes, tie back long hair, and avoid loose-fitting clothing and jewelry. We recommend bringing your own safety glasses.
This class has a pre-requisite. Please see below.
Once you learn how to handle a carving knife safely and make basic cuts, there is still much more to learn. This class will combine instruction and hands-on practice to help you read, understand, and work with wood grain.
You will look at wood grain as you carve a variety of shapes, which will help you better anticipate grain changes, work to the strength of the piece of wood and get your best results. You will be able to apply lessons learned while carving the shapes to your future carving projects at all stages of the work, from planning to carving to finishing.
You must wear safety glasses and closed-toe shoes. We recommend bringing your own safety glasses.
Instructor: As a third-generation woodworker, Jeff Iller learned about woodworking tools and knives early on. By high school, he was winning ribbons with his wood carvings at his hometown fair. Around 1996 Jeff found room for a shop and he has carved ever since. He’ll carve most anything, but prefers to innovate with the working tools to carve multiple parts inside one piece of wood and to make physically detailed and accurate carvings of women's faces. Carvings on the entry sign to the BARN Woodworking Studio shows the quality of his work.
Iller says he was taught early on that he could make anything from wood. He is still trying to prove that statement wrong.
Learn the basic features of VCarve Pro, a popular program used to make signs, engravings, intricate inlays and imported 3D shapes and models on computer-controlled routers. VCarve Pro is easier to learn than Fusion 360, the other 3D design program taught at BARN, and can be used for projects on both the large CNC router in the Woodworking Studio and the small CNC router in the ETA Lab.
Session 1 will be in the ETA studio where you will use the VCarve Pro software to design an 8x16" sign. You will prototype your design on ETA's laser cutter then in session 2, you will meet down in the wood shop to carve it on the CNC router.
Please note: To take this class, you need a laptop computer with a mouse and a working copy of VCarve Pro 11 already downloaded to that computer. Download a free trial at www.vectric.com. The software requires a PC or a MAC that has Windows installed. There is no time during the class to download the program. If you have questions or run into problems downloading the program, please email the instructor for help. If you don't have a laptop you can bring to the class, you may use an ETA studio desktop computer with the required software already loaded.
Instructor: Al Ebken is a retired ocean engineer with many years of computer and computer-aided design experience. (In the picture, he's using the Woodworking Studio's CNC router to make parts for face shields to protect against coronavirus infection.
Friday, June 10Monday, June 13Wednesday, June 15Friday, June 17Monday, June 20Wednesday, June 22Friday, June 24
Instructor: Charles Sharpe
Monday, June 13Wednesday, June 15Friday, June 17Monday, June 20Wednesday, June 22Friday, June 24
This class has prerequisites. Please see below.
Make two bowls 6 to 7 inches in diameter in this two-session class as you build your woodturning skills and learn some of the special techniques and insights needed for bowl-turning.
The best (and most fun) way to hone your bowl-turning skills is to use green wood for the blanks. In this class you will turn two green-wood bowls, working on smooth and efficient cuts. In the first session, you will learn the best bowl shape for a novice turner, how to safely mount the blank on the lathe, and how to use a scroll chuck and bowl gouge. You will also learn how to maintain even wall thickness, and how to treat the bowl to prevent cracking while it dries. In the second session, in addition to turning a second bowl, you will learn the basics about balancing grain and which Northwest woods are best for turning.
By successfully completing these two sessions and turning two bowls, you will have a good understanding of the process and techniques, and be qualified to turn bowls of this size independently during Open Studio time in the BARN Woodworking Studio.
While this class is oriented to novice turners, it is also appropriate and useful for experienced turners who have predominantly used scrapers and wish to acquire or improve their gouge skills.
Photograph by Joy McCallister Photography.
Wednesday, June 15Friday, June 17Monday, June 20Wednesday, June 22Friday, June 24
When you're planning a project, do you choose wood by color? By how hard it is? By its grain pattern? The right answer usually involves several factors, but it really depends on what you want to build.
This class, which is part of BARN's Woodworking Basics series, will start with a discussion about how wood grows and how that influences the look and performance of lumber. You'll learn about moisture content and wood movement, and how that should influence the wood you choose for various projects. You will also learn why the best option in some cases isn't natural lumber but a panel product such as plywood or even particleboard.
Wednesday, June 22Friday, June 24
In fine woodworking, everything starts with the wood. Before you can focus on joinery or fancy details, you need to make a board foursquare, with surfaces that are flat, straight, parallel, and square. And then you need to cut the lengths, widths and thicknesses you need, in a way that positions the pieces where the grain direction makes the most sense. In this class, you will learn techniques and strategies that will help you custom mill wood to the precise dimensions you need. You’ll learn:
Friday, June 24
When it comes to woodworking, the router is one of the most versatile machines in the shop, and quite possibly the most confusing and under-utilized. Learn the basics of this wonderful machine and how to best use this tool – both mounted on a router table and controlled by hand.
We will look at the different sizes of routers and their purpose, the various ways to handle each one, the range of bits for routers, and joinery possible with a router. A practice project will be constructed within the class to give you practical, hands-on experience.
