Please scroll on down for all 2026 course descriptions
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- our 2025 craft school classes have finished for the season -
- 2026 class schedule -
April 17, 18 & 19, 2026 Bentwood Firewood Carrier/Holdall; fundamental hand-tool skills such as riving, steam bending, hand drilling & carved tenons - 3 days, exertion level easy, $ 435 tuition + $ 25 materials fee
April 26 - May 3, 2026 Curtis Buchanan's democratic Windsor chair; sculptural hand-tool chair making - 8 days, exertion level high + requires prerequisite chair course, $ 1,160 tuition + $ 160 materials fee
- MCCS MAINE BUG BREAK ! May 4th to 24th, 2025 -
May 25 - 28, 2026 make a Carving Knife + Leather Sheath; hand-tool & leather working skills, 60mm Lucian Avery slöjd knife blade provided - 4 days, exertion level easy, $ 580 tuition + $ 65 materials fee
- special Kortemeier college graduation week -
June 13 & 14, 2026 Simple Shrink Pots; fundamental hand-tool skills, green woodworking, carving & hand boring - 2 days, exertion level medium +, $ 290 tuition + $10 materials fee
June 17 - 20, 2026 Small Dovetailed Box with Spoon Rack; fundamental handcraft skills with milled pine, "no saw" whittled dovetail carving, chip carving - 4 days, exertion level easy, $ 580 tuition + $ 15 materials fee
June 24 - 28, 2026 Build a Shaving Horse; basic hand tool skills, boring mortises, large-scale mortise & tenon joinery
- 5 days, exertion level med/high, $ 725 tuition + $ 150 materials fee
July 5 - 10, 2026 Spoon Carving Intensive; comprehensive carving skills; spoon layout & design, sourcing spoon wood from trees, axe work, finishing & tool sharpening - 6 days, exertion level easy, $ 870 tuition + $ 10 materials fee
July 14 - 17, 2026 Tramp Art; hand tool skills & design - 4 days, exertion level easy, $ 580 tuition + $ 35 materials fee
July 25 - August 1, 2026 MACFAT / Make a Chair From a Tree; Post and Rung Ladder Back Chair making, fundamental green woodworking skills - 8 days, exertion level high, $ 1,160 tuition + $ 55 materials fee
August 6 & 7, 2026 Restoring Hand Tools / Sharpening; limited to chisels and block planes - 2 days, exertion level easy, $ 290 tuition + $ 10 materials fee. Un-restored block planes available for an added fee.
August 15 to 21, 2026 Welsh Vernacular Windsor Chair Making; hand tool chair making with some individualized design options - 7 days, exertion level high + requires prerequisite chair course, $ 1,015 tuition + $ 125 materials fee
August 29 & 30, 2026 Greenwood Projects / Carving Skills weekend ; fundamental hand-tool skills & green woodworking - 2 days, exertion level easy, $ 290 tuition + $ 10 materials fee
September 3 - 6, 2026 Decorative Chip Carving w/ guest instructor Daniel Clay; precision surface carving and decoration (students can bring their own wooden items to decorate) - 4 days, exertion level easy, $ 580 tuition + $ 25 materials fee
September 9 - 13, 2026 Hand Hewn Greenwood Bowls; green woodworking & fundamental hand-tool skills; axe, adze, gouges - 5 days, exertion level high, $ 725 tuition + $ 25 materials fee
- tuition per day is $145 for all classes -
Please get in touch with us via email if you are planning to register for a class!
- class descriptions for 2026 -
1. Classic Bentwood Firewood Carrier & Holdall; fundamental hand-tool skills, green woodworking, steam bending
April 17, 18 & 19, 2026 - 3 days (Friday, Saturday & Sunday)
exertion level easy
materials fee - $ 25.00
$ 435 tuition + $ 25 = $ 460.00 total
This three day/long weekend class is an excellent introduction to hand-tools and green woodworking. Students will learn how to use essential hand-tools and what it’s like to work directly with a tree to make an elegant, useful carrier and holdall.
We generally use these carriers for firewood at our house, but one can also hold items such as newspapers, towels, magazines, kindling, etc.
This project is based on an ancient Chinese firewood carrier pictured in the 1937 book “China at Work”. Several US green woodworkers that we know of have added to and been inspired by this design. For example, Drew Langsner included it as a project in his 1987 book, “Green Woodworking" and Peter Galbert produced a video with Lie-Nielsen Toolworks in 2017 called “Making a Firewood Carrier”.
A tremendously useful project on several fronts, most especially in terms of the range of foundational skills that can be learned in making it.
Skills learned:
- boring holes at predetermined angels with a hand bit and brace
- making mortise & tenon joinery by hand
- riving with a froe
- squaring wood to a required dimension with an axe and drawknife
- steam bending green red oak
2. Curtis Buchanan’s Shaved Windsor Side Chair; sculptural hand-tool chair making
April 26 - May 3, 2026 - 8 days (Sunday through Sunday)
exertion level - hard - * please note this requires a prerequisite chair course
materials fee - $ 160.00
$ 1,160 tuition + $ 160 = $ 1,320.00 total
This chair is called a “democratic” Windsor by its designer, Curtis Buchanan, due to his conscious plan to use a very limited selection of hand tools for building it. This keeps it more accessible to makers who don’t have a power lathe or a large collection of tools at their disposal, and it also highlights and encourages hand tool woodworking skill building.
The graceful side chair has an air-dried white pine seat with riven, red oak spindles, posts & legs. Students will split, rive and carve some of their chair parts from start to finish beginning with a green log during the class, in order to demonstrate and learn the entire process. This course is our longest one though, totalling eight days, but the chair would take at least two weeks to build if some of the preparation were not done for students. Most of the parts will be roughly shaped and air dried ahead of time. It’s a very full and nicely challenging eight days even so.
This class demands a high level of drawknife skill as we shape complex concave curves by eye -
this means that it’s our most skill intensive class and demands a lot of attention and focus.
- chair legs and undercarriage are shaped with a drawknife
- the seat is sculpted/shaped with an adze, inshave and drawknife
- leg & post mortises shaped with a tapered reamer
- steam bend the crest from a piece of green riven red oak, then shape it and fit it to the chair
- posts, spindles and steam-bent crest all shaped with a drawknife
bore the mortises for the upper part of the chair and finally, assembly of the chair
Students leave with an assembled/completed chair that’s ready for milk paint and oil finish at home.
We’re grateful that Curtis invited Kenneth to Tennessee in 2019 to learn how to make this chair and we acknowledge his support as we’ve added this Windsor to our offerings here at the craft school.
We appreciate this chair because it fits well into the vernacular chairmaking tradition. We carve, shave or whittle all of the parts of this chair with hand tools, and these skills are a wonderful alternative to the predominant lathe-turned chair.
This supports our vision and philosophy of offering hand tool oriented classes which all rely on the same core set of edge tools and skills. Thus these classes and skills offer more accessibility to craft for people with a limited selection tools and working space.
3. make a Carving Knife + Leather Sheath; hand-tool & leather working skills
May 25 - 28, 2026 - 4 days (Monday through Thursday)
exertion level easy
materials fee - $ 65.00
$ 580 tuition + $ 65 = $ 645.00 total
May 25 - 28, 2026 - 4 days (Monday through Thursday)
exertion level easy
materials fee - $ 65.00
$ 580 tuition + $ 65 = $ 645.00 total
4. Simple Shrink Pots; fundamental hand tool skills, green woodworking, carving and hand boring
June 13 & 14, 2026 (Saturday & Sunday) - 2 days
exertion level easy
materials fee - $ 10
$ 290 tuition + $ 10 materials fee = $ 300.00 total
This is a classic greenwood project and the applications are almost unlimited once one understands the principal.
First we hollow the inside of a section of green birch, removing all of the wood except for a thin wall (which becomes the sides of the box) and we cut a groove for the bottom of the box. This bottom piece is not green birch like the body, instead it’s very dry pine. As the fresh green birch dries, it shrinks, thus capturing the dry bottom and forming a tight, clever box.
5. Small hand-cut Dovetailed Box with Spoon Rack;
fundamental handcraft and hand-tool skills, "no saw" whittled dovetail carving
June 17 - 20, 2026 - 4 days (Wednesday through Saturday)
exertion level easy, materials fee: $ 15
$ 580 tuition + $ 15 = $ 595.00 total
This type of wooden, lidded box might be familiar, since they are historically quite common as containers for wooden matches, salt or other small household items. The box can be hung on a wall or set on a shelf or counter, depending on what it will contain and where it will be used.
This class will introduce students to essential and accessible hand-tool woodworking. The simple, small box project will teach participants about layout, design, wood selection and hand tool use and care.
We’ll use local white pine and the box will be assembled using a few small nails and small hardwood pins for the hinged lid.
Once the box has been assembled, we’ll learn about milk paint and also work on decorative carving skills, since this little box is so agreeable to customization with clever embellishment.
As we build this remarkably useful item, students will gain valuable knowledge and hand-tool skills, which are definitely transferable to all sorts of future woodworking projects.
6. Build a Shaving Horse; basic hand tool skills, boring mortises, large-scale mortise & tenon joinery
June 24 - 28, 2026 (Saturday through Wednesday) - 5 days
exertion level med/high
materials fee - $ 150
$ 725 tuition + $ 150 materials fee = $ 875.00 total
Our friend and mentor, Bill Coperthwaite, often said that an important, even requisite project for any maker was to build themselves a shave horse. These are simple devices, yet so utilitarian and helpful, it could be said that the shave horse is an indispensable item in the hand tool work shop.
A shave horse is basically a quick release vise and bench combination.
An item being carved or worked on can be clamped in the vise using a foot lever.
This keeps both hands free to work. The vise is almost effortlessly released and re-engaged, so work that needs to be held securely but also often shifted or turned is made a much easier and safer endeavor through the use of a shave horse.
Shave horses have been around a long time, they were originally found in Europe and migrated to the Eastern United States, where they were used by farmers and rural craftspeople like the Appalachian ladder back chair makers. Shave horses can now be found all over the world, built with a myriad of customizations and used for a remarkable variety of hand crafts.
Students will learn about the history of shave horses, plus we have examples of different styles for people to see and use here at the school. Kenneth will give hands-on lessons on how to get the most out of your shave horse.
7. Six Day Spoon Carving Intensive; comprehensive carving skills - spoon layout & design, sourcing spoon wood from trees, axe work, finishing & tool sharpening
July 5 to 10, 2025 - 6 days (Sunday through Friday)
exertion level easy - materials fee: $10
$ 870 tuition + $ 10 = $ 880.00 total
A wonderful and full week of carving spoons together, for all levels of skill and experience.
We’ll start by looking at trees and natural crooks from which to make curved wooden spoons. Larger serving spoons will allow more room for practicing knife and axe skills, but people will be free to experiment and play with all sorts and sizes of spoons and utensils. Students can experiment with our collection of Scandinavian style carving axes to rough out spoon blanks and get a feel for different weights and styles of axes. We've also got block knives to try for the roughing out process. We’ll discuss layout and design choices before we dive in with straight and curved knives to refine and shape our spoons. Kenneth will introduce a variety of techniques and tool choices, such as bent and dog leg gouges, as alternatives or additions to the standard sloyd knives for carving. Emphasis is placed on designing for curvaceous, flowing lines in these everyday items. Much attention will be paid to proportions and resolving facets in a pleasing way. Because of our small class size (limit of five) Kenneth is able to work with each student to improve and deepen their sense of carving wherever they are in terms of familiarity with design choices, tool skills and previous hand work experience.
8. Ornate carved Tramp Art box; hand-tool skills & design
July 14 - 17, 2026 - 4 days (Tuesday through Friday)
exertion level 1, materials fee: $ 35
$ 580 tuition + $ 35 = $ 615.00 total
If you enjoy carving and whittling, this may be a new way to investigate that interest and apply your skills. This work is similar to chip carving and requires only a few tools, mostly a detail carving knife.
During this workshop, we will be exploring an obscure form of American vernacular folk art. This style of decorative carving was popular with and crafted mostly by northern European immigrants from the 1870’s up until about the 1940’s. It was given the misnomer Tramp Art by antiques dealers in the 1950s as a way to build mystique and increase market value.
We’ll learn more history around the materials typically used, namely discarded cigar boxes and the wood from fruit packing crates. We will see several examples and images of how these complicated, decoratively carved items were utilized - from fancy sewing boxes to remarkable picture frames to entire bedroom sets of elaborately carved furniture.
Students will design and build their own Tramp Art box after learning the straightforward chip carving techniques. The classic notched, stacked layers of thin mahogany boards are used to decorate and elevate cast-off wooden cigar boxes.
Students will also come to understand the repeated puzzle pieces of the “Crown of Thorns” style of folk art, made with a visually enigmatic three-dimensional structure which baffles the eye, until one knows the way that the puzzle fits together.
Hand sawing, design and knife skills will be worked on and gained in this class. Oil finishing and painting will be discussed as well. We’ll keep our hands busy and we won’t let good materials go to waste in this fascinating class all about an authentically American vernacular folk art.
9. MACFAT/Make a Chair from a Tree (Post and Rung ladder back chair making);
fundamental green woodworking skills
July 25 - August 1, 2026 - 8 days (Saturday through Saturday)
exertion level medium to high - materials fee: $55
$ 1,160 + $ 55 = $ 1,215.00 total
Using a minimal assortment of hand tools, students will learn how to craft and assemble this
elegant, lightweight, durable, and very comfortable chair. This is the chair and the class that Jennie Alexander is known for. Kenneth learned this chair from Drew Langsner, who learned and collaborated with Jennie A. and Dave Sawyer, teaching together at Country Workshops over the years. Kenneth in turn has been teaching this style of green wood post and rung chair making to beginning woodworkers since 2004.
This project is a wonderful introduction to a straightforward and simple form of chair making,
it teaches foundational techniques and skills that are used in making more advanced chairs and furniture. We recommend that students start with this class before building the Welsh Windsor chair.
The post and rung chair design is called a ladder-back because the back slats resemble the rungs of a ladder. It has also been called a mule ear because the tips of the back posts are reminiscent of ears. Chairs of this design were an inspiration to the Shakers who appreciated their utilitarian simplicity and lack of ornamentation.
The workshop begins with students learning how to select green logs and then to rive (or split) chair parts with a froe and club. Because we will be working with a freshly felled tree, this type of green woodworking offers a direct connection to the materials used and to an older, more sculptural way of working wood.
The riven posts (chair legs) and rungs are shaped with a draw knife and a spoke shave on a shave horse. Rear posts are steam bent onto a form to create the proper curve for the chair back. Rectangular mortises are chopped into the air dried posts with a mortising chisel, and cylindrical mortises are drilled by hand. Tenons are sized and cut on the rungs by hand. We take advantage of dissimilar moisture content between the air dried posts and the kiln dried rungs to help guarantee a tightening of the joinery from natural shrinkage of the wood as it dries. To fashion the seat, students will learn to weave with twisted natural rush. Finally, the back slats are shaped, steam bent, fitted and pinned in place with small hardwood pins.
Tool use, safety and sharpening will be thoroughly demonstrated and wood finishing will be addressed.
Students will have their red oak chairs assembled and the seats woven by the end of our class time. New for 2024 - We have added a day to the over-all length of this class in order to better allow for proper instruction and completion of seat weaving. In our experience, the weaving takes a full day for most students. Oiling or finishing the chair will need to be completed after the end of the workshop, once the chair has thoroughly dried.
10. Restoring Hand Tools / Sharpening; (limited to chisels & block planes)
August 6 & 7, 2026 - 2 days (Thursday & Friday)
exertion level easy
materials fee - $ 10 or $ 100 if students want an un-restored block plane to work on and keep
$ 290 tuition + $ 10 materials fee = $ 300.00 or $ 400.00 total
11. Making a John Brown inspired Vernacular Windsor chair
hand-tool chair making w/ some individualized design options
August 15 - 21, 2026 - 7 days (Saturday through Friday)
exertion level med/high - materials fee: $ 125
$ 1,015 + $ 125 = $ 1,140.00 total
We will learn to make and assemble a Welsh style vernacular Windsor in this seven day class. The chairs which Kenneth builds (and the way he teaches students to to build them) are based on the unique design and techniques he learned while he was an apprentice with the late John Brown, the self-taught Welsh chair maker.
A pre-requisite for this class is the MACFAT/ Post and Rung Ladder Back Chair class.
Using hand tools, we’ll shape and assemble chair parts, working with both green and air-dried hardwoods. Some parts will be roughed out ahead of time (although this is not a kit) in order to allow for time constraints and various student skill levels.
All necessary specialized chair-making tools will be available for use and materials are all provided.
This is a very full learning experience and students will need to oil or otherwise finish their chairs after the conclusion of the class.
Students will need to be able to transport their chairs home after class.
(finished chairs measure 28” wide, 43” tall, 23” deep.)
12. Small Greenwood Projects; fundamental hand-tool skills & green woodworking
May 3 & 4, 2025 - 2 days (Saturday & Sunday)
exertion level easy
materials fee - none
$ 290 tuition + no materials fee = $ 290.00 total
This course encompasses the heart of coursework here at the Maine Coast Craft School. It’s our most foundational and introductory class where Kenneth teaches essential handwork skills, the bedrock of green woodworking.
This class could also be called Green Woodworking 101, although the unique projects can be enjoyed and useful to highly skilled carvers or educators looking to teach others as well.
We’ll be using two core hand tools, the sloyd knife (‘sloyd’ is Swedish for handcraft) & also a carving axe. We will develop hand and knife skills while carving projects such as butter spreaders, wall-mounted coat hooks made from limb crooks, Shinto inspired foxes and pine whorl whisks. All on a convenient weekend schedule.
skills learned:
- understanding wood fiber/grain
- understanding theory of sharpness in broad terms
- intro to sharpening edge tools - specifically essential/primary edge tools (sloyd knife & carving axe)
- safety: proper technique to keep oneself safe while using sharp tools
- hands-on projects to apply & understand basic concepts in an experiential way
13. Decorative Chip Carving with guest instructor Daniel Clay; precision carving and decoration
September 3 to 6, 2026 - 4 days (Thursday through Sunday)
exertion level easy, materials fee: $ 25
$ 580 tuition + $ 25 = $ 605.00 total
Guest instructor Daniel Clay will be teaching decorative carving skills.
Students may bring their own woodenware items to decorate - wooden spoons, bowls, boxes, etc.
Or they can choose to use pine boards which will be provided as their objects to decorate.
Daniel's amazing book is available here.
It's called “Chip Carving, Techniques For Carving Beautiful Patterns By Hand”.
It's a great read and would be good preparation for this class.
Skills learned:
- design / layout
- using detail knives for decorative chip carving
- multiple repeatable patterns and borders as examples
14. Hand Hewn Greenwood Bowl Carving; green woodworking, fundamental hand-tool skills; axe, adze, gouges
September 9 - 13, 2026 - 5 days (Wednesday through Sunday)
exertion level med/high, materials fee: $25
$ 725 tuition + $ 25 = $ 750.00 total
We’ll delve into the reductive process in our Greenwood Bowl Carving class and learn how satisfying the process of carving out a bowl from a rough section of a newly felled tree can be.
Unlike lathe-turning, hewing a bowl by hand offers wider variation in terms of shapes and symmetry.
We’ll use a froe to split the birch log, then an axe, adze, gouges, spoke shaves and slöjd knives to gradually refine the size and shapes of our wooden vessels. During this thorough five day class, we will explore proper tree selection, layout and design, tool selection, various holding devices, decorative carving, wood finishing, and also edge tool use, care and sharpening.
2024 - based on our experience with this class in previous years, we have chosen to expand it in 2024 by adding a day. Therefore if time allows, students will be led through the process of making a shallow wooden platter and / or shown some basics of decorative carving & encouraged to give it a try.
Participants will come away with instructions on how best to dry their hand hewn bowls, as well as thorough information about the process and materials of oil finishing once their pieces have dried.
"Power machines are unfriendly for they are very noisy and make a lot of unpleasant dust.
Craft woodworking should be a creative activity, with the practitioners as artists.
Surrounded by ugly, noisy, dusty machines the woodworker does not have the environment in which to do good work."
- John Brown, chair maker
