Twelve weeks at the bench with Kohei Tanaka. Eight makers, three planes, one cabinet you take home on graduation. Hand tools first; machines, sparingly.
A 5-hour 40-minute module on cutting eight pin-and-tail joints in white oak. Paring to a knife line. Saw and a single light tap.
Each module ends with a finished piece you keep. The fourth ends with a tool cabinet you wheel out the door.
Three plane irons, two chisels, one card scraper. By Friday they will all shave end-grain pine cleanly. Kohei does not let you start joinery until they do.
Eight pin-and-tail joints in white oak, paring to a knife line, no shoulders. By the end of the week the joints close from a saw and a single light tap.
Mortise and tenon, haunched, with a floating panel that breathes. Glue squeeze-out wiped before it sets. Door planted, fitted, and hung.
The full build — carcass, frame and panel doors, fitted drawers, hand-cut hardware mortises. Yours to take home, on a wheeled trolley if needed.
Two bedside tables, a chest of drawers, a bedhead — all white oak, all hand-cut, all kept in his own house. Rafael cites Module II as the week the joints stopped fighting him.
A small workshop in Bedminster, six commissions taken in the first quarter. Soraya's first piece for sale was a tool cabinet — built one cohort after her own.
Hiroshi joined Studio Plain three months after Bench 06 finished. His first commission was a sideboard built using the frame and panel taught in Module III.
I had been cutting dovetails badly in my garage for nine years. Kohei watched me cut three, said one sentence, and I have not cut a bad one since. The course paid for itself in the wood I have stopped wasting.
Or write to kohei@workbench.school — replies between cuts.
Eight makers, twelve weeks, one tool cabinet. Applications open in late summer.