About

Skills You'll Learn

Biscuit Jointing, Tenon & Mortise Making, Dovetail Jointing

About the Course

Taking place over four evenings, this course introduces the basics of woodworking to get you set up to start working on your own projects. If you’re completely new to Woodwork, you might want to start with an Introduction to Hand Tools or Power Tools.

Sessions

Biscuit Jointing

This session will cover how to use a biscuit cutter and how to fit biscuits to form tabletops, edge joints and mitre joints. You will learn how to mark the timber so that the slots for the biscuits line up and the wood sits flush together. You will also learn about domino cutters and the difference between and benefits of both biscuit and domino joints. By the end of the session you will have a better understanding of how to make three different types of joint using biscuits, and have an understanding of the use of a domino cutter.

Tenon and Mortise-Making

In this session we will cover cutting tenon and mortise joints using both hand tools and machinery. You will be briefed on the benefits of tenon and mortise joints, what they’re best used for, and practice two ways of cutting the components, with demonstrations of alternate techniques. By the time the two hours are over, you should have multiple methods to making tenon and mortise joints for things such as table bases, stools and storage.

Mitres

This session focuses on making a square structure out of batons. You will achieve this by learning how to cut mitres (45 degree cuts to join two pieces of timber, creating a 90 degree angle). This will be demonstrated and practiced on a chopsaw, bandsaw, mitre guillotine, disc sander and with hand tools. You will then learn how to fix the timber together using mitre clamps, and also learn alternate clamping methods in case of restricted tools. By the end of this session you’ll know how to make a simple frame structure that will be a sturdy stepping stone into frame-making and assembling of square structures.

Dovetail Jointing

This session focuses on the marking out, hand cutting and fitting of “through” dovetail joints. You will learn about other forms of dovetail joints as used in furniture making, and also the process of cutting one using a router. By the time the two hours are up you will know how to use various methods and styles of dovetailing and, hopefully, will have successfully fitted a through dovetail joint.