Ben Willis Woodcraft

This course will be held over six Tuesday evenings and result in the creation of a beautiful three-legged bar stool.  You’ll learn how to cleave and shape green (unseasoned) timber to create the legs and frame for the stool using a variety of traditional woodworking tools such as the drawknife and spokeshave. Using further old-school tools such as the adze and travisher, you’ll learn how to sculpt the seat of your stool to a comfortable saddle. In the assembly stages, we'll explore some traditional joinery techniques which you’ll use to...

This course runs over six consecutive weekday evenings between 7 and 9.30pm. The project is to fashion a beautiful bench or side-table from live-edge timber, using traditional green-woodworking techniques. The design is based on the traditional ‘pig bench’ used historically as a piece of agricultural equipment, but it makes an excellent dining bench or occasional table in the modern home. You’ll learn the process of crafting the legs and undercarriage of the bench from green timber using traditional hand tools such as the froe, drawknife and spokeshave. You’ll then smooth...

The Welsh stick chair is the vernacular style of Windsor chair that evolved west of the border several hundred years ago. They’re simple but striking, and will grace any hearth with a charismatic presence. Over this seven-day course in a beautiful woodland workshop you’ll be taken through the process of crafting a Welsh stick chair from log to finished piece. You’ll fashion the legs, spindles and other frame parts from locally sourced ash using a range of simple tools, including drawknife and spokeshave. You’ll also use an adze and travisher...

London’s only dedicated greenwood chair-making course takes place over 12 weekly sessions; it’s a commitment, but in the end, you’ll have made your own Windsor-style chair and learned many new skills along the way. You’ll learn how to fashion fresh timber, straight from the log, into billets for the chair’s main components – the legs, stretchers and spindles – using an axe, drawknife and spokeshave. Then you can try your hand at turning these parts on a traditional foot-powered lathe, a magical process that is thoroughly addictive. You’ll then make...

This course will run over two consecutive Saturdays between 10am and 5pm and involve the creation of a beautiful three-legged Windsor-style stool using traditional chair-making tools and techniques. You'll learn how to split freshly felled timber straight from the log, then fashion the legs of your stool with a variety of simple hand tools such as the axe, drawknife and spokeshave. You'll then use an adze and travisher to shape a comfortable saddle. This process is called bottoming. No smirking now! Finally, you'll be taken through the process of assembling...