A free course: twelve films, my shop notes, and my feedback on your work as you go. The first course of a school that opens soon.
Start the free course →You've watched
a thousand videos.
Have you had a single lesson?
In most videos, nothing ever goes wrong.
At your bench, it does. And you're alone.
In this school, you're not alone.
Everything I know is free on YouTube. What you can't get there is someone to look at your work and tell you the truth about it.
Make a Krenov plane from a single blank, in twelve films that show the whole process from start to finish. The films are on YouTube. This is what you get here that YouTube can't give you:
This is how every course at the school will work.
From the hall to a film, a photograph of your work, and my answer.
Silent, half a minute. The question and the answer are an example.
I trained at the Inside Passage School of Fine Cabinetmaking under Robert Van Norman, who trained with James Krenov. I've taught hundreds of students at the bench, and I build furniture to commission.
More than technique, I teach an attitude: a quiet presence at the bench, and the habit of looking closely. At the wood, at the tool, at your own work. Everything else grows from that.
Refael is not only one of the finest craftsman to come out of our school, but has a gift for sharing his passion for the craft with others.
Rafael is an excellent teacher and an inspiring person. With great patience he teaches an impressive range of techniques, to a high standard. The real magic is his philosophy of work, which looks for the balance between machines and traditional hand tools.
Rafael teaches clearly and precisely, with enormous patience and attention to every detail, from planning the board to the fine lines before the finish.
It's easy to see that he truly loves working with wood. You feel it in how much he knows, and in his view that the work shouldn't be rushed and that the process matters no less than the finished piece.
One curriculum, taught from A to Z: six pieces, each asking more of you than the one before, starting with a cabinet. Long lessons with nothing cut, the pitfalls named before you reach them, and my eye on your work at every step.
It opens when it's ready. The list hears first, and the first fifty keep the founding price for life.
You have a workshop. Good machines, and a drawer of fine hand tools you don't fully trust. You have never been sure whether that is the tool or you.
You have built things for years. Everyone says they are beautiful. You know something is missing, and you can't say what.
And nobody has told you the truth. No one who would know has stood over a piece of yours and said what is wrong with it, and why. That is what this school is for.
