Production Masterclass and Sponsorship 2024

The team and I are passionate about realistic training for Australian Woodworkers. In 2022, I visited the top three wood schools in Sweden and came away deeply impressed by the quality of the education and the scale of the government funding. It brought home to me just how sparse the training opportunities are in Australia.

Training woodworkers is both expensive and time consuming. There are no government owned Australian woodworking schools (although some courses are supported with VET, and apprentices can attend TAFE), so all fine woodworking education is done by private teaching workshops.

From our perspective, the lack of emphasis on workshop efficiency is the gaping hole in Australian woodwork education. Most woodworking classes are held in non-commercial settings with a suite of equipment that reflects teaching, not commercial production. Students attend these schools in good faith, but the minute they step out into the “real world” and try to make a living, they realise they lack the vital commercial pace of work.

We ran our first Production Masterclass back in 2018. We imagined that the course would be full of younger makers looking for professional development. The one-week Production Masterclass takes a run of our iconic Waterfall stool from timber selection all the way through to a finished batch. The students use all the jigs, templates, machines, techniques and processes that we have refined over nearly 25 years of this product’s production life. We’ve never had trouble filling the course, but we rarely saw young emerging makers for the obvious reasons; the lack of time and money to attend.

In late 2023, Phil Greenwood, president of the Woodworkers’ Association of NSW, expressed his concern about the lack of suitable training opportunities for young emerging makers. I discussed our experience with the Production Masterclass, and how frustrating it was that so few young people were able to attend it. Phil wondered if the Association could sponsor a young person from NSW to attend and took the idea to the board. Before I knew it, we had sponsorship for one young NSW based maker.

Link to Woodworkers’ Association of NSW Skills Scholarship Application Form 

 

I then approached the Gottstein Trust to see if they would consider sponsor a maker from outside NSW. The board of the Trust voted unanimously to support the idea.

Link to Gottstein Trust Skills Scholarship Application Form

 

 

I then spoke to Callum from Britton Timbers NSW about the Production Masterclass. I pointed out that there was an increasing trend among younger Australian makers to use North American timbers, such as walnut and American oak, instead of sustainable native timbers such as blackwood. Callum spoke to his team and now Britton Timbers are generously sponsoring all the timber used in the Production Masterclass.

 

I’m eternally grateful to the sponsors for making this possible. It’s humbling to have the industry show such faith in our work and training.

Teaching is challenging for us. We make our living by crafting and selling. Dunstone Design has arguably the best equipped traditional woodworking workshop in Australia (no CNC machines, but state-of-the-art traditional machines), with undoubtedly the most experienced and awarded makers, but to halt production, re-organise the workshop and prepare for teaching is a considerable effort. Teaching is essentially revenue neutral; we don’t earn any more than if we were “on the tools”.   But we are uniquely placed to teach a Production Masterclass using a “real” product, the Waterfall Stool, with all the jigs, templates, tools, machines, processes, and cutters that we use in actual production. We can either shout angrily into the void about what should be done, or we can just do it ourselves.

Makers don’t need to be professionals to benefit from our Production Masterclass. Most of the students who have done our previous Production Masterclasses had no intention of making a living from woodwork. Yet they benefit enormously from seeing how professional makers think about the craft process. Woodwork is essentially problem solving and process.

We urge you to enroll in our Production Masterclass. Not only will you learn, but you’ll be able to share your life experience with the sponsored makers.

 

Dear Evan,

It’s a little over a year since I attended your Production Masterclass, and I thought I would write and offer my thoughts on the course after having had time to reflect on it and apply
it to my own woodworking.

My immediate impression after the course was that I learnt a lot and really enjoyed the experience. 12 months later I am still drawing upon what I learned and applying it in my
own workshop.

For me the most valuable aspect of the course was gaining knowledge and insights which have really helped me develop my thinking from that of a maker of one-off creations
towards managing my own small-scale production run environment. I’ve also found that this mindset shift has had a positive effect on my work practices when working on one-off
pieces. I also came away from the course with some new woodworking skills.

I found most of the knowledge and skills I acquired were not specific to chair making but could be
effectively applied to making multiples of almost any woodworking project. I thought the stools were a good choice for the course given they have a mix of unique, duplicated, and
mirror image components and involve so many processes during their construction. I also liked that we used four different timbers and saw how their individual characteristics
impacted on some of the production processes.

Having yourself, Alex, and William all playing an active part in teaching us during the week really added to the experience. I found it reassuring that you each had different
approaches to the same task on occasion and took the time to explain why. No ‘one true way’ preaching at Dunstone Design! I was also very impressed with the approach to safety
within your workshop and the emphasis on the why as well as the how when it came to talking about safe work practices.

I appreciated the chance to work with and discuss the pros and cons of so many different woodworking machines over the week. I had no prior experience with machinery such as
the spindle moulder and had only used much smaller versions of others like Goliath the bandsaw. The knowledge and hands-on experience I gained has already influenced my
own machinery purchasing decisions.

I would absolutely recommend the course to anyone wanting to expand their woodworking beyond a hobby making the occasional one-off project.

Thank you again, Paul (NSW)