I recently finished a four day/12 hour introductory woodworking class at Bushwick (ahem, East Williamsburg’s) 3rd Ward (one of the few URLs to actually contain a number). In it, we made a mallet and an end table – but that doesn’t sound that exciting, hence “The Hammer of Justice” and “The Table of Reason”.
Here’s a shot of the completed works:
I highly recommend taking a course like this, if you get the chance. It’s deeply satisfying to work with your hands and end up with a physical object afterwards as proof of what you did (I’m not alone in this, witness the popularity of MAKE magazine).
3rd Ward is also a great place to take a class: they’ve great equipment, the instructors are incredibly approachable, small class sizes plus they get you ‘creating’ right away. Our first class involved a lot of cutting on different saws (mitre, table, band, etc.) and at the end of the class we had a finished mallet. There’s nothing like having a completed work to convince you that you can succeed at the task and make you hungry to try something more complex.