Japanese carpentry classes here and there

This one is more of brainstorming, if you have any ideas please comment. In the spirit of open source woodworking I want to crowdsource some ideas. (Soon I will be crowdsourcing tools for poor chileans too.)

Today, I got the 6th student who wants to take the carpentry course, in november. They guy is in Hong Kong right now. Which got me thinking... we are in a really globalised world, we can buy in buyee last week and EMS would be here monday if the package were not again in the warehouse since we were not here when they came. The thing is, for a 40% more in shipping than americans, we can have the same quality tools that you have there in the north with your all your dealers and stores and big cars. I still cannot get a shitty red king here but whatever, we are not so backwards.

What I mean is... there are not so many places in the world where you can learn japanase carpentry, and I'm not talking of roof or pagoda building, but the basics, simple joinery, get your crap sharp and the like.

So this is how it goes around the internet:

Dictum 130eur/day for saw horses and sharpening, slightly more for roof. Max 8 participants, they use shitty dozuki to cut joints.  Das scheisse ist deutsch auch. 10 days of classes per annum

Chris Hall 175usd/day no tools, no food, best teacher?  8 participants

Daiku dojo 115/day Big project, nice weather, fat guys.

Gonzalez 30eur/day best saws in town, food, you get to use my tools. Max 4 participants.


To put things in context:

(58 usd/day minimum wage USA)
(57 eur/day minimum wage DE)
(13 eur/day minimum wage CL)

Dictum teaches in one day saw horses and sharpening. Chris Hall has 3 days in set-up and sharpening. I do one or two hours of sharpening each of the three days. You cannot make people who never used a plane before square the wood for the saw horses and cut them in a day, so they must learn with machine-squared wood in dictum. I'd say they do 3 hours sharpening, 2 theory, 3 saw horses. I guess that Chris in 3 days explains you all there is to know about japanese tools. How much of that can enter into a novice is something I don't know. I guess he's thinking of people who has the tools but haven't been able to take the full potential out of em.

I did sharpening, planing and squaring, and I think that was it first day. Second day the saw horses were finished, I did some glue up to show them, and made them cut a double mortice. Third day should be a box and how to sharpen saws and tap the ura. (My rationale was: don't over complicate things. Give them a tool that works, and once they are used to it, tell them how to set it up.) I'm thinking of people who never had a plane or a kanna in their hands before, they haven't read all the blogs, check all the instagram and watched all the videos.

More math. Germany has 80million people. Dictum gives 1 day classes for 80 people per year, that's one class per million people a year. Chile has 17million, I gave 3 days clases for 2 people, that's one class per 2.8 million people a year. I'm making another one in August with 3 people it seems, so that would put chile on top of germany measured as days of japanese classes per capita. (I'm sure we are beating them already in number of hand made ryoba per capita.)

Now, continuing with the idea... project mayhem joints take between 2 hours and 4 hours. Dictum has an "advanced" class with more complex joints. You cannot teach more than 3 joints in a day I would say, people cannot absorb so much.

And would that work? If somebody comes and does the lay out for you and you cut only the joint, are you learning? I like project mayhem "open" problems. We do not need to stick to the millimetre to a plan, but see what works best with what we have and try to understand it. And fail a lot, each failure is a well learnt lesson, one that you won't forget.

Perhaps give the joint for the next week as an exercise, people need to bring it done next class, and then talk, compare and give the correct solution and cutting order? That way you would get the "aha!" moment that we get when somebody else does one joint better than we did. That's also very important.

Why I'm thinking of this? Well, Francisco, that's the guy in HK right now, says he would like to take the 3 classes per month for a few months. That got me thinking on how to organise something more long term education.

Eventually I think the solution is to give an introductory course, 3 maybe 6 classes, and that grants you access to the workshop. The workshop has some communal equipment and you are free to use it. Of course you need to pay for it too, we need to renew the sharpening stones, kanna, files, etc. You also need to pay in time: sharpening for others, keeping stones flat, preping some wood for the next class. You pay for what you use, quite literally. Blades are used up, so are files. Should not be hard to estimate the cost for keep it sustainable. Invest surplus in the workshop. Keep a lab book, note how much you sharpen in a stone (or how much hollows in one session) and that gives you the cost of one sharpening. Same with kanna. And you pay it forward: after using the planes, they go to bed sharp, so next person finds a perfectly usable kanna each time.

Opa used to have in the good times 3 or 4 apprentices at the time. Now it's just him and Frauke, and sometimes me, and the workshop feels lonely.


Ok, to recap. Let's think how the ideal course would be. I like the way Chris has it, with days, so I'm gonna do the same and put it here. Comments and suggestion always welcome

Day 0: (Meet up to check the tools, people, pay the fee)
- Take a look a the tools.
- Plane one face each.
- Saw something.

Day 1:
- Sharpening plane blades.
- Set up japanese workshop (planing beam and others).
- Squaring sawn timber with kanna.

Day 2:
- Sharpening chisels.
- Lay out and cut saw horses.
- Show edge joint and glue up.
- Female double mortice for large saw horse.
- (After classes, make oak wedges and split some wood with them.)

Day 3 (tomorrow):
- Sharpening saws.
- Ura-dashi and repair old kanna.
- Resawing wood by hand.
- Dovetailed box. ( I don't think we finish it :/)

Day 4, 5, 6?

Joints from the saw a la Jason. 1 day of project mayhem. Hopper? (for what kind of people is the hopper useful? Keiran wants to make a marimba and fix some guitars, Jose is making tables and the like...) Shoji/precision working?

I will ask the guys tomorrow what do they want to learn next, if they would like another session and what about a community workshop.

Finally, all these planing is very person dependent. First day Keiran was sharpening a few hours while Jose was just practicing sawing, so they develop in different paths, which I think it's really valuable for them. And one of the reasons I don't want to have more than 4 people, I want to have focus enough and make it personal so each one is able to go at his own pace.

So, what ya think? Will you start offering lessons in your workshop too? Remember, 3000 daiku for Edo 1800.