Through Dovetails on the Bandsaw | Did you know a bandsaw can be a dovetail cutting machine? With the right blade, a simple shop-made jig and a little practice, it’s easy to cut through dovetails on your bandsaw. Even if you own a dovetail jig you’ll appreciate the fact that a bandsaw lets you create your own layout. Equal spacing or variable spacing, you’re in creative control of how the dovetail looks.

The Importance of Hand Tools Even in Power-Focused Shops | I like to encourage all my beginning woodworking students to learn to carve a spoon by hand before ever touching a power tool. It is a great way to learn about grain direction, planning for optimal grain strength, and how to sharpen tools to a razor standard, how to shape wood by hand, and how to design in three dimensions. Even if your shop is power-tool focused, having a single well-tuned plane and a small assortment of other hand tools can save time as well as help you to work smarter and safer. I'll share my "core tool" list and how you can use them to save time and money on jig making and refine and fine tune your furniture in ways power tools cannot.

+ Using Free Online Tools to Market Your Work & Yourself (keynote session) | Whether you are interested in selling more custom furniture or creating online content as a way of growing your business revenue streams, there are tons of free tools available online. I'll share about how to best utilize quality photography (even from your cell phone camera) and tell your story to grow your business online through Instagram, YouTube and Facebook. There will be a Question and Answer time for the last 1/3 of the presentation, so come prepared!

How Working with Slabs Can Make You a Better Woodworker | Even if you have no desire to create a “slab project,” there is no reason to shy away from using slabs as your material. In this session, Matt will walk through why creating a project from a slab will enhance your skills as a woodworker. Matt will demonstrate how slabs provide you with more options for part layout, grain selection, and grain orientation. Learn how to source parts from larger slabs, ways to integrate live edges into your work, and different methods for treating the live edge. Likewise, Matt will discuss methods to include slab defects in your work or how to avoid them. Put yourself in the control of your material instead of the sawyer who had no idea what you are making when the wood was sawn.

+ Milling Your Own Lumber (keynote session) | For many woodworkers, the cost of lumber eats up a substantial part of their woodworking budget. Without access to local sawyers and lumberyards, woodworkers buy their lumber at big box stores, typically at a high cost per board foot and with little options on species and cut. But you don't have to be stuck with stores as you only option! Even if you do not have acres of forest, you can still mill your own lumber! Skip a trip to the store and harvest lumber in your own backyard. In this session, Matt will guide you through the entire process from sourcing a tree and transporting logs, to milling the logs into boards, and drying the boards for future projects.

How to keep your Stumpy Nubs | Everyone thinks it can’t happen to them, but workshop injuries affect the experienced as well as the untrained. We all need a refresher from time to time and this course is sure to make you rethink some of things you do in your workshop before disaster strikes. James will discuss everything from table saw and router safety, to the time he shoved a chisel through his hand. Be sure to take notes, this information may just save your stumpy nubs!

Building Better Boxes | Making boxes is a sure way to improve your woodworking skills while making something useful and beautiful at the same time. In this class, you'll learn the details that will improve the appearance and quality of your boxes. We'll cover everything from materials and design to essential skills and finishing.

A Fun, Simple Approach to Carving | In this fresh, informal method to carving, Chris emphasizes a modest tool kit, simple-to-learn techniques, and plenty of opportunity for personalization and improvisation. With this foundation, you'll be able to apply carved details to projects or make stand-alone carved accessories for yourself or to give as gifts

Creating Custom Molding with Molding Planes | Shop-made molding is often used in the shop. A few minutes at the router table can often produce many basic profiles using common router bits. When you need to produce something out of the ordinary however, that’s where it gets a little more complicated. Or does it? With a few basic molding planes and some know-how, you can open up a world of countless profiles without the need to invest in new, expensive router bits.

The Magazine Editorial Process | Meet the editors of Woodsmith and Popular Woodworking magazines and learn what is involved in putting a magazine issue together. You'll also hear what they have in store for the upcoming year.