Anselm Fraser, principal of the Chippendale school, is writing a series of exclusive articles for The Woodworker magazine. Here’s the second of his articles. Last month I looked at the mental benefits that woodworking can bring, citing a book Flow: The Psychology of the Optimal Experience by University of Chicago psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. He describes …
Tom Smyth from Bristol has taken inspiration for his steam-bent oak garden bench from recent work he carried out repairing the roof of a listed 400-year-old timber framed barn in Hampshire. Although the scale of the roofing project was rather different, the principles of fashioning oak into strong and enduring structures are much the same. …
This week we’re concentrating on giving our professional course students a very real grounding in veneering, because we’ve had the internationally-recognised Scott Grove with us. Scott, from the USA, is a larger-than-life figure in the world of veneering and this week has been an exciting and fun time for the students. Scott has been coming …
Eion Gibbs from the Scottish Highlands was the first student to enrol on our intermediate course last year, while he recuperated from pneumonia. He loved the month-long course so much that he enrolled on the current professional course. He’s now working on his first major project, a quaint and fanciful cupboard with no less than …
Now that we’re approaching the halfway point in the professional course, it’s exciting to see the students’ first projects begin to take shape. We particularly like John Vaughan’s console table, which is now starting to look like a table – although much work lies ahead. He’s currently working on the drawers and is busy hand …
