We’re pleased to announce that our newest course is now available for purchase – and we think this one is going to make a world of difference for every woodworker who signs up.
Jigs can be valuable devices for guiding and aiding in repeatable, accurate cuts and joinery, but they can also become a hindrance to skill development. Just as training wheels can be useful for learning to ride a bike, eventually they should come off if you want to truly enjoy the experience. If you struggle with accuracy or efficiency without external aid – if your crosscuts dip and your kerfs wander, if you get paralyzed in laying out dovetails properly without a template, or if you just want to gain both precision and speed in cutting joinery, this course is for you.
Beginning with an in-depth skills assessment, Joshua Klein walks through a series of hand-tool exercises to practice dexterity, accuracy, and speed. Though some of these tasks may appear simple at first, you will quickly realize that there’s more here than meets the eye.
Finding inspiration in the no-nonsense shop manuals and textbooks of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Joshua gets right down into the nitty-gritty of hand tool use. How accurately can you rip to a line? How squarely can you cut with a backsaw? How efficiently can you plane a board to final thickness? How quickly can you cut a set of dovetails? These skills, and many others, are addressed and developed as the course unfolds. Each section builds on the last, culminating in a final build: a beautiful sliding-lid box that encapsulates all that you have invested in these skill-building exercises.
Featuring over 5 hours of video and other valuable course material, Skills Over Jigs: Vital Exercises for Hand-tool Woodworkers is designed to stretch you, to challenge you, and to grow your confidence in the precision and ability of your own two hands. From freehand honing to dovetails by eye, from accurate resawing to ripping without angst, the rewards of dedicating yourself to working through this course with care are myriad. And as with our other courses, we are launching this one at an introductory price of just $19 – it increases to $25 at the New Year.
Also note that our M&T Daily Dispatch subscribers will save a further $5 off that price (this additional discount is good through December 2). So, if you’ve been interested in checking out the Dispatch, now is a great time. It’s only $5 per month – cancel at any time. Once you’ve signed up for the Dispatch, you can access the Skills Over Jigs discount code to use during checkout.
-Mike