Newstead Wood School - Est. 2025
Newstead Wood School is a place for aspiring craftspeople to gather, learn and pursue the Art & Craft of Fine Woodworking. A place where a wholistic approach to woodworking is fostered and a sensitive and thoughtful approach is encouraged.
With 6 dedicated bench spaces and essential tool kits for students use, Newstead Wood School is well equipped and typical of a small Fine Woodworking workshop. With outdoor workspace space also for those sunny days, onsite saw mill and special collection of classic Fine Cabinet-Making Woods, NWS aims to be a place where passionate craftspeople can immerse themselves in a supportive and creative environment.
Courses offered at NWS are designed to be in three levels, Beginner, Intermediate and Advanced. New students are encouraged to complete a beginner course before booking a place in either Intermediate or Advanced Courses.
While at NWS students have access to Traditional European Cabinet Maker’s style workbenches and Essential Tool Kits.
Testimonials
“I did the two day hand plane course with Lachie and really enjoyed it. I had very little woodworking experience and found Lachie a very patient and clear teacher who was able to guide me to produce a hand plane that looked really nice and worked well. The course was fun and I learnt a lot of processes and techniques along the way. Lachie was also very generous as he helped me to make a hammer and offered plenty of advice about tools, techniques and other woodworking matters. I'd be keen to do other courses in the future!” - Patrick
”I highly recommend Lachie’s timber framing course to anyone interested in the art and craft of timber framing. It was an action packed five days and I thoroughly enjoyed myself. Lachie is a generous and patient teacher who skilfully guided me through the process of laying out, mapping and scribing timbers and who helped me turn a few milled timbers into a complete cross-frame. It was a thrill to see the frame come together and to raise it on the final day. During the course I was introduced to the tools and techniques needed to timber frame and Lachie was very generous with his knowledge. He tailored the experience to my goal to build a small timber frame cabin. We discussed design considerations, design tools, site considerations, milling, timber selection, timber assessment and handling. It’s a testament to Lachie’s skill as a teacher that he was able to guide me, a novice with very little wood working experience, through the process and fire me up with the confidence to begin building.” - Ben
“As a beginner, this was a fantastic course for me. The great thing was that we were at the bench, actually making something, most of the time; in other words, we were ‘learning by doing’ after having been given clear demonstrations and instructions each step of the way. Lachlan kept an eye on us throughout, encouraging us, picking up problems and mistakes and responding to our individual questions and needs for support. The course is brilliantly designed to help build skill and confidence over the week as each step involves multiple opportunities to get some degree of mastery over the different skills covered. I learned so much that the course fee felt like a bargain.” - Charles Potter