PLEASE NOTE: There is a one time $25 registration fee for summer classes. If you pay via Paypal, this fee will be applied to your balance AFTER you register so that we can avoid charging you for it more then once.

All classes are Monday-Friday unless otherwise noted.

Tool lists for our summer classes are available on each individual page. If you don't see it check back later as we are still waiting for a few to arrive.

Gift certificates for all of the classes, workshops and lectures are available.

More information:

• Driving directions to the studio.
• Housing options near NWS.
• Call or email for more details.

Find your place at The Studio

The Northwest Woodworking Studio is dedicated to teaching the art and the craft of woodworking.
People of all abilities and backgrounds are welcome to come and use their hands and eyes and hearts to build functional and beautiful objects that will last for generations to come.

Novice: For those with absolutely no woodworking experience. Feel comfortable in class with other folks who haven't laid their hands on hand tools before either!

Beginner: Taken our novice class? Done a little sawing, chiseling, or planing here and there? These classes are for you. However, students with varying levels of experience will all find something of value in these classes.
The Hand Tool Skills series falls into this category.

Intermediate: For students who have taken previous beginning level classes or come to us with a fair amount of woodworking experience. The Workbench Skills series and Masterworks classes fall into this category.

All levels: Refers to Beginning level and upward. Novice level students are encouraged to take the "Woodworking for the Complete Novice" class first.

The Instructors

Brendan Alvistur is our first Resident Mastery Student who will be graduating June 2008. Born and raised in Chico CA, school and then love took him to Galway, Ireland. A passion for woodworking developed while he was in Ireland and it is from there that he travelled to join us here at the Studio.

Dan Biasca grew up on a farm in Southern Oregon where woodworking was a part of the daily routine, building and maintaining houses, barns, wagons and bridges often from timber harvested or salvaged from forests on the farm. Dan has worked as a cabinet and furniture maker since 1976 and is currently making and repairing acoustic guitars in Milwaukie, Oregon.

Brian Boggs has made thousands of chairs. He runs his chair making shop in Beres, Kentucky where he produces some of the finest hand-made chairs in the country. He is a sought after teacher for the breadth of his knowledge, his keen grasp of engineering and tooling, and for the grace of his designs. If you've ever sat in one of his chairs, you know just how good he is at this. He also designs hand tools for Lie-Nielsen Tools Inc. and teaches seminars throughout the Northern Hemisphere.

Curtis Buchanan has been producing Windsor Chairs for a living since 1984. He works in a one man shop building a chair per week using mostly hand tool skills. He is the author of numerous articles on chairmaking and teaches across the U.S. and abroad. He is co-founder of GreenWood, a community-based sustainable forestry initiative in Latin America.

Michael Cullen operates a full-time furniture studio and workshop in Petaluma, California. He teaches, creates and collaborates throughout the United States, Canada and New Zealand.  He is a contributing editor for Woodwork Magazine and has authored over forty articles on such topics as: surface carving, milk painting and bent lamination. 

Roland Johnson first became interested in wood when he was in high school and worked at a lumberyard. As Roland grew, so did his interest, and in 1976 he started refinishing furniture, building furniture, and repairing and building all kinds of things. Nearly 30 years ago, Roland planted hundreds of trees in an old gravel pit, turning it into a wooded retreat where he has built his home and shop. A contributing editor for Fine Woodworking since 2002, Roland is a frequent writer of tool-test articles. His fascination with motors and gears goes beyond woodworking, however, he's also an enthusiastic hot-rodder and the author of Automotive Woodworking (Motor Books International, 2002). Roland is also the founder and president of the Central Minnesota Woodworkers Association. Today, he divides his time between writing, building stuff for himself and his clients, and keeping his 40-acre homestead in Minnesota humming. If you don't find him in the woodshop, try the garage.

Will Neptune is a furniture maker and master-carver working in the Boston area. He credits two summer courses at Boston University in the Program in Artisanry in 1978 with inspiring him to pursue woodworking as a craft. He continued his training by attending the two year furniture making course at the North Bennet Street School in Boston. Neptune went on to teach for 15 years in that school’s Furnituremaking Program. He recently left his teaching position in order to devote more time to commission work. Will continues to teach workshops and also writes for Fine Woodworking magazine.

Gary Rogowski has been woodworking since 1974 and showing work in galleries locally and nationwide since 1976. His work was in the 1989 Oregon Biennial at the Portland Art Museum. In 1991 he was awarded the Oregon Arts Commission fellowship in crafts. He founded The Northwest Woodworking Studio in 1997 with a background teaching wood since 1980. He taught locally at the Multnomah Arts Center, PCC, The World Forestry Center, and OCAC where he was Interim Department Head of Woodworking. He is a contributing editor for Fine Woodworking Magazine with several videos and two books out on joinery.

Chris Schwarz editor, Popular Woodworking magazine, is a long-time amateur woodworker and professional journalist. He built his first workbench at age 8 and spent weekends helping his father build two houses on the family's farm outside Hackett, Ark.-- using mostly hand tools. He has journalism degrees from Northwestern University and The Ohio State University and worked as a magazine and newspaper journalist before joining Popular Woodworking in 1996. Despite his early experience on the farm, Chris remains a hand-tool enthusiast.

Roy Underhill is a former master craftsman at Colonial Williamsburg. He has been teaching subversive woodworking for over thirty years. He is the author of five books on traditional woodcraft and the creator of the PBS series, The Woodwright's Shop.