Highland Woodworking Chair Class

I just got back from teaching Chair Building and Design at Highland Woodworking in Atlanta. It was a class full of enthusiastic woodworkers, and we covered a whole lot of material. The most fun for me was on Sunday afternoon, when we tackled designing a chair as a group, complete with building a full scale prototype. I was excited about this; it’s one thing to talk about what the various criteria for designing a chair are, or to go through construction techniques. But it makes it much easier to see what all of this means in the context of actually going through the process.

So almost everyone sketched out an idea, a doodle, or just a seed on an idea of a chair on the whiteboard, and we discussed, made choices, modifications, and then started in on a prototype. And a few hours later, we actually had something we could sit in, walk around and critique.

I’ve got one more weekend of teaching/travel (the Texas Woodworkers Show in Kerrville, TX) and then I can stay put and start to think about getting more of my shop work done. It’s been a busy teaching season. I’m looking forward to the break!

The whiteboard during our group design exercise

Working on the prototype

Thanks to Bartee Lamar for letting me use these photos he took during the class!