Thread: Sturt 12 week course - week 1

Just finished the first week and I have to say - Michael Fortune is not only a genius furniture maker (as evidence by his work, his personal commissions from the Gov General and his chairs he can charge $10,000 for) but is also one hell of a nice guy! Rather than having a strict day by day curriculum sorted, he has divided the time into four projects - the first being titled "the object of my reflection" which he said should be a combination of a mirror and a shelf. We spent a good part of the first three days working through Michael's nine-step design process and applying it to our projects. Each of the four of us have come up with something completely different - and now Michael is using the projects to teach the necessary joinery, machine techniques etc. (He's a huge bandsaw advocate and much prefers it to the table saw, spending about an hour on the table saw and at least four on the bandsaw - including getting us all to help him tune the bandsaw in the workshop) It's a great way to teach, and keeps us all totally engrossed. My particular project design is small, but involves some bent pieces - so rather than discard it for lack of experience, we spent most of Friday learning the process of vacuum bag bent laminations - which was both a surprise and a blast. We've also been shown just a glimpse of the many jigs and real-world-commercial applications that Michael is going to share with us.

Us 'kindy kids' had drinks with the 'big kids' (the 12 month course) on Friday afternoon and they are all green that we have Michael as our teacher. Obviously they are honing, mastering and perfecting high level skills, and we're only skimming along the surface picking up the candy - but a couple of the younger ones were a little ticked that they were still flattening their planes after two weeks, and we were having such a great time.

The four of us are amazed that this course hasn't filled all six spots - I don't know how well it was advertised, but I suspect if proper word was out that Michael Fortune was teaching it would have been packed out - not that we're complaining for a second, we love the personalised attention. Just feel sorry for the school that they missed out on the fees.

Will try to keep you all updated - am driving to Mittagong during the week, and back to Sydney to work 30 hours over the weekend. Exhausting, but well worth it!