Audience
The eight-week Turning Intensive is designed to prepare woodworkers for successful careers as professional woodturners and is also open to amateurs who wish to refine their craft with expert guidance.
Curriculum
The Turning Intensive curriculum leads students through a sequence of hands-on projects that develop foundation skills in all facets of professional woodturning.
Production woodturning – learn to turn production bowls, platters, stair parts, furniture parts, and other objects with consistency, speed, and quality.
Creative woodturning – develop your aesthetic voice by making one-of-a-kind functional and sculptural objects that are turned and carved.
Furniture components – learn to turn and join legs, pulls, finials, rungs, and other furniture parts.
Bowl turning – learn how to prepare and lay out turning blanks, modify and sharpen bowl and spindle gouges for end-grain and side-grain work, and develop new competencies and confidence for creating a wide array of shapes and forms.
Milling – gain competence with the table saw, band saw, drill press, lathe, router, and other woodworking machines for stock preparation, forming, and joinery.
Sharpening – learn how to grind and sharpen turning, carving, and woodworking tools such as gouges, skews, v-tools, and chisels.
Tool making – solve unusual turning challenges by making your own turning tools, jigs, and attachments.
Application Process
Participants are accepted on a first-come, first-served basis. No application is required.
All experience levels welcome.
Enrollment is limited to 11.
Faculty
Lead Instructor Beth Ireland is joined for two of the projects by visiting instructors Dixie Biggs and Matt Monaco.
Beth Ireland has been a professional woodworker since 1983, specializing in turning and sculpture. She holds an MFA from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design, and her work has been widely exhibited and published, including a 2015 profile in American Woodturner. She has also held several prestigious Windgate fellowships and participated in the International Turning Exchange. Beth’s business encompasses everything from production runs of turned balusters to sculpture to one-of-a-kind stringed instruments. She is the Lead Instructor for our Turning Intensive and teaches turning for the Comprehensive. Beth lives in St. Petersburg, FL, and her website is bethireland.net.
Visiting Instructor Dixie Biggs has been a full-time studio woodturner/artist since 1989. With a degree in agriculture and a love of gardening, she often incorporates botanical themes into her work and is best known for meticulously-carved, “leaf wrapped” vessels. Dixie has exhibited in such notable venues as the Smithsonian Craft Show, the Philadelphia Museum of Art Craft Show, and the American Craft Expo. She is based in Gainesville, FL, and her pieces may be found in public and private collections worldwide. Dixie teaches at craft schools, symposia, and clubs across the country and has been featured in Woodturning magazine, among other publications. For more on Dixie’s work, visit dixiebiggs.com.
Visiting Instructor Matt Monaco is a professional woodturner by trade now living in Springfield, MO. A turner now with 20 years’ experience who trained, served an apprenticeship, and worked regularly in the production environment of high-end furniture and pottery producers Shackleton Thomas located in Bridgewater, VT. He specializes in making vessels and lidded containers for the interior design, and high-end furniture industries, as well as for private collectors. Matt has become an in-demand turning teacher and demonstrator for schools and clubs across the country, and carries passion to integrate and bring in new makers and continuing education into the field of woodturning and landscape of fine-turned traditionally made craft. Matt is a Fine Woodworking contributor. His website is monacobowls.com.
The Turning Intensive was featured in American Woodturner magazine, December 2013. Click here to read the article.
Tuition: $6,200
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