First Shavings: The fall term at Inside Passage

I walked into school on the first day a few minutes late, flustered by my tardiness and the previous fifteen minutes I'd spent looking for the school. Finally discovering it tucked away behind The Gumboot Cafe, I crossed the threshold and entered a space which seemed to exist almost outside of time. One thing immediately stood out: no one was hurrying. I began to relax. Over the next few weeks, I discovered that the lack of hurry was not a sign of laziness; instead, it proved to be a prerequisite for accomplishing accurate and sensitive work.

Ok, here we go. Over the next six weeks or so, I'll recount my time at Inside Passage. This post will cover the first term of the program, which took place last fall and lasted about three months. It is a course of fundamentals. Arriving here with minimal experience, I had a tremendous amount to learn in a short time. Without hurrying. :)

The first week of the program, we learned to sharpen- and little else. Our days consisted of practicing lapping, hollow grinding and honing our plane irons and chisels. We worked toward acquiring the skills necessary to quickly and consistently achieve a sharp edge. I found my hands cramping, my forearms rebelling against their new responsibilities. The calluses I'd once had from ranch work had long ago faded; I was constantly making my way to the first aid cupboard to doctor a blister or abrasion from a misguided pass across the water stone, where I removed skin instead of steel. Though the first week was a good start, sharpening took me probably six months to master.

This week was also my first chance to assess the decision we'd made to come here. Was the instruction worth the tuition? Worth a year away from our families and community? Though we'd done what we could to evaluate this choice ahead of time, the first week of classes was my first true exposure to what we'd signed up for. The school was very well organized, running like an organization many times its size. I met Robert and Yvonne, the couple who started the school and still its primary operators. I found them both to be peaceful souls, full of joy, easy to be around. Robert proved to be both an engaging lecturer and a craftsman of exceptional skill.

The program was advertised as an intensive study of woodworking, and it lived up to its promise. Each week that followed was an onslaught of new information to learn and skills to practice. A few highlights:

We made our own handplanes, a cornerstone of Krenov's way of woodworking and one of our primary tools

We learned some basic blacksmithing, annealing, hardening and tempering O1 tool steel, and made some new tools in the process.

Cabinetmaking fundamentals were applied in the primary exercise of the first term, a small wall hanging cabinet in poplar. Some photos of my first cabinet:

I finished this cabinet on the final day of the first term, with only a few minutes to spare. Although I'd never worked harder, I was pleased to discover that I thoroughly enjoyed the work and was hungry for more. At the end of the fall term, Lara, Gideon and I headed back to Montana for some much-needed rest and family time. We returned after the three-week break for a course titled The Upward Spiral, which would prove to be the most challenging course in the program. I'll cover this in my next post... thanks for reading!