A New Designer Maker Year Begins
DESIGNER MAKER · SEPTEMBER 2026
A New Designer Maker Year Begins
September has brought a new group of Designer Maker students into the workshop, with 13 students joining us across our two and three-term courses.
Starting With the Tools
As always, the course began with tool preparation and sharpening. It isn’t necessarily the bit everyone is most impatient to get started on, but it underpins pretty much everything that follows.
Before making begins, the students spend time preparing their planes and chisels, flattening and polishing blade backs, setting up their planes and learning how to produce, and maintain, a properly sharp cutting edge.
We use the Scary Sharp system in the workshop, working through abrasive films on float glass to produce a very consistent edge. Once the initial preparation is done, keeping an edge sharp becomes a much quicker part of the normal working process.
From Sharpening to Making
With the tools prepared, the first proper project is our octagonal breadboard. It’s a relatively simple looking exercise that introduces a surprising amount.
Starting with ash, the students board joint their timber, plane it accurately to dimension and mark out and create the large chamfers entirely by hand.
There’s no sanding to finish the surface at the end. The aim is to finish straight from the hand plane, which very quickly teaches you the importance of plane set up, technique and recognising when an edge is starting to lose its sharpness.
Learning to Work to the Line
Next comes the Chinese Puzzle, where things start to become considerably less forgiving.
The project is an exercise in accurate marking out, dimensioning components with the shooting board and, crucially, learning to pare accurately back to a marking line with a chisel.
It requires patience. Designer Maker students will often make the puzzle two or three times before they’re happy with it, but that’s very much part of the exercise. The skills developed here feed directly into the joinery that follows – particularly dovetailing.
On to the Dovetails
The group has now moved on to dovetailing. Everyone has completed their first test joints and they’re currently working through their dovetailed bookends.
There have inevitably been a few gaps in some of those first test pieces, but from what we’ve seen, the standard is already excellent.
At this stage it’s very easy to look at a first attempt and wonder whether you’re ever going to get them properly tight. They will. They always do.
For some students, the challenge is accurate marking and learning to pare cleanly back to the line. For others, it’s simply learning to slow the whole process down. There’s a natural temptation to rush towards the finished joint, but developing the patience to work methodically and concentrate on each individual stage is an important part of the training in itself.
A dovetail isn’t simply a sawing exercise. At this stage we’re deliberately using the chisel to pare back to the marking lines, developing the control and accuracy needed for fine furniture grade joinery.
Interestingly, these first projects follow the same progression available to members of our Online Course – from tool preparation and the octagonal breadboard through to the Chinese Puzzle and dovetailed bookends. So while the Designer Makers are tackling them here at the school, our online students can have a go at working through the same exercises from their own workshops.
FROM THE WORKSHOP
A New Direction
A few of the photographs in this update also come courtesy of new 3-term Designer Maker student John Whittaker, who has joined us after a rather different career.
With a Master’s degree in Chemistry, John has spent the past 15 years working as an oil and gas engineer, with his career taking him from the Saudi Arabian desert and West Africa to South East Asia, before spending much of the last decade working in the North Sea.
He’s now swapping that world for the furniture workshop and has started a new Instagram account, @whiteacrestudio, where he’ll be documenting his progress through the course.
Give him a follow if you’d like to see how the journey develops over the coming months. Thanks to John for letting us use some of his workshop shots here too.
JUST THE BEGINNING
Plenty More to Come
We’re only a few weeks into the new Designer Maker year, so there’s a long way to go yet. For now, though, the foundations are being laid: sharp tools, accurate marking, controlled hand skills and, perhaps most importantly, the patience to keep trying when something doesn’t quite work first time.
We’ll be following the progress of this year’s two and three-term students as they move through the course, so we’ll be back with plenty more from the workshop over the coming months.
Applications are now open
Our next Designer Maker courses begin in September 2027. Find out more about studying furniture making with us in the Lake District.
JOIN US IN THE WORKSHOP
Upcoming Courses
If you’d like to develop your own furniture-making skills with us, we have a few remaining places on our upcoming short courses, as well as applications now open for our longer courses in 2027.
2-Day Pencil Box Course
Two October dates available — an introduction to precision box making and fine furniture techniques.
Introduction to Fine Furniture Making
A full week in the workshop developing essential hand-tool skills and introducing the techniques behind fine furniture making.
5-Day Joinery Table Course
Build a beautiful solid timber table while developing traditional furniture-making and joinery skills.
5-Day Tri Table – Lamination & Veneering
Five days exploring curved laminations, veneering and contemporary furniture-making techniques through our Tri Table project.
12-Week Furniture Making Course
An intensive 12 weeks developing the hand skills, joinery and furniture-making techniques needed to take your work to the next level.
Starts 19th April 2027 · Applications open → SEPTEMBER 2027Designer Maker – 2 & 3 Term
Our most comprehensive furniture-making courses, taking students from core hand skills and joinery through to designing and making their own furniture.
Find Out More · Applications now open →
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