The Resident Mastery Program is an intensive study program in the art and craft of fine furniture making. Come and transform your woodworking and your life. Learn the art and the craft of building fine furniture with Master Craftsman Gary Rogowski.

While on sabbatical in 1997 Gary was inspired to launch The Northwest Woodworking Studio as a means to offer hands-on woodworking classes to the people who were starved for a traditional approach to furniture making. The program was not designed as an art based approach, but as a down-to-earth approach to building furniture made to last. He looked around and saw too many people who had been stuck in  jobs for the past 25 years that gave no compensation for the soul. They may have earned plenty of money, but got no satisfaction. As corporations learned to pare to the bone many people lost jobs. They looked to crafts like woodworking and furniture making to find some comfort, enjoyment, and perhaps a job. As more schools closed their shops he saw the opportunity to create a curriculum with a soul that actually promoted skill building and design for the ages.

The Resident Mastery Program is a nine month immersion that will change the way you work. This is an approach that will not only teach you how to build furniture that will last for generations, but also how to design it for beauty and practicality.

At The Northwest Woodworking Studio, we teach skills in furniture making. These are time honored techniques at the bench and in the machine room. These include accurate lay-out and measuring, hand cutting tight dovetails, and putting together sweet fitting mortise and tenon joints. Sharpening is an important skill that we teach early on that will transform your woodworking. We show people the beauty of the hand plane. How this amazing tool saves you time when you know how to tune and use one.

We build projects useful for your bench or your home that teach these skills like making a wooden hand plane, or shop drawers, and a tool cabinet. These teach fundamental techniques that we begin perfecting day one of the Resident Mastery Program.

Power tool use is an important aspect of woodworking and our fully equipped machine room provides you with the right tools for the job. We also teach hand tool skills for shaping wood with file, scraper, and spokeshave.

As the term progresses, we also introduce you to the incredible material of wood. We show you how to buy the best lumber. How to saw for the best yield from your boards and how to safely and accurately mill up lumber.

We also work on a variety of finishing techniques that will make each piece of furniture a thing of beauty. From the simple application of an oil to shellacs and and varnishes. Students learn how to choose the right finish, how to hand apply and brush on finishes, and finally how to rub out properly.

The Mastery Program is also founded on the idea that design is a vocabulary and design principles are important to any woodworker. We do exercises focused on improving your skills as a designer so that you emerge from this program with a sense of your own aesthetic values. Drawing, drafting, and modeling techniques all come into play when we design at the Studio. These skills will help you design better, stronger furniture with a style that will last throughout the years.

Each Resident student designs seven major pieces throughout the term starting with boxes and moving through tables, cabinet construction, and finally a Signature Piece. These projects are chosen to illustrate certain techniques and methods of construction from solid carcase work to frame and panel construction to hand cut dovetails to bending wood. These techniques also teach students how to design cabinets for use, tables for wear, drawers for a sweet fit, and all pieces for beauty.

Finally we teach business practices for selling your work. Whether or not you plan to become a full time professional maker, solid business practices will help you define your goals, improve your marketing and professionalism. Taking good photos of your work is essential and we go over lighting and framing techniques. Developing a portfolio of furniture is another important tool. We work on expanding your work to show the range of pieces you can build. We talk about how to draft a business plan with consideration for the demands of business and craft in this economic climate.

We don’t sell classes at The Northwest Woodworking Studio. We offer an experience. One with additional benefits and outcomes. The furniture making skills you acquire as a student will serve you long into your work as a furniture maker. It is a value added experience that promotes the value of working wood as a way of being in the world.