My wife Morgan and I got back from our honeymoon in Italy a couple weeks ago. We focused on eating and walking, but I did see a 15th century riven-oak square thing (wardrobe?) in a museum, so I know they did have respectable trees once upon a time. Now I’m back into writing my book (it’s coming along great), making a settee and a couple bar stools, and thinking about teaching again. Stay tuned for a chairmaking class (probably in December), but first, wheelbarrows.
This is a class that I’ve wanted to run for years, mainly because I want to teach with my friend Peter Ross, the blacksmith. He’s someone you can’t help learning from every time you see him (and I see him a lot) – he has thought more deeply about his craft, and craft as a whole, than anyone I know. We make a good team and I think this class will be a great leaning experience about far more than simply how to make a wheelbarrow. Here’s the details:
Learn traditional woodworking and blacksmithing techniques as you build a handsome wheelbarrow. Elia will help you split a log, shave the parts, split tenons with a chisel, then use dry draw-bored pins to lock the green joints together (some dry lumber may also be used). As time permits, you’ll bandsaw and chisel a wheel from dry oak boards and attach it’s metal rim (alternately, finished wheels will be available for purchase during the class). As you forge brackets and braces for your wheelbarrow, you’ll learn basic blacksmithing techniques from one of the best blacksmiths in the country.
TRADITIONAL WHEELBARROW, October 2nd-7th, 2023
Visit the Wheelbarrow Class page for more info.
About Peter Ross: Peter is a nationally recognized artisan blacksmith. After 23 years as master of the blacksmith shop at Colonial Williamsburg, he moved to rural North Carolina and now operates his own shop. Peter specializes in museum-quality reproductions of hardware and furnishings for historic houses, working mainly with the hand-tool methods used in pre-industrial England and America.
Chairmaking class info can be found on my teaching page.
We’ll be making a wheel similar to this one.
[…] to Maneuver: Traditional wheelbarrows can be quite heavy, especially when loaded. A lightweight option will be much easier to push and […]
You gotta discuss William Carlos Williams if you’re building red wheelbarrows, right?
Yes! I’d never heard of him before, but I like his poetry.
Gotta say, that looks like a fun class. Obscure fact. Studebaker (maker of some nice vehicles that my father and similar aged family friends collect) got its start making wheelbarrows. Saw one of their wheelbarrows in a gold rush town museum once.
That’s a good way to advertise the class – “Take this class and you could become the next auto tycoon.” Ha!