Port Townsend

I've been privileged to teach in a lot of places, but I would seriously be hard pressed to recall one as naturally beautiful and fun as Port Townsend. Obviously it isn't in my neighborhood, actually, it's almost as far as you can get in the lower 48, but I will definitely be returning.





Here are a few shots that I took while wandering around the town.

There a lots of lovely old Victorians and gardens pop up everywhere.

On clear days, you could see snow capped mountains across the Sound. But alas, my ailing camera couldn't capture them.
The school itself is located in Fort Worden State Park which has a huge array of cool old buildings that all sorts of businesses and schools.

The building that houses the school is small, but highly functional.

As a matter of fact, I found something there that I've never seen. Tim Lawson, Jim Tolpin and John Marckworth have equipped the shop with the full sets of sharpened, yes sharpened hand tools for each student. It was a pleasure to reach for a chisel or plane to find it in top working order.

And the photos above only show the shelves. Each bench has a full set of layout tools and just about everything you need. They even had an array of drawknives and spokeshaves. I wish we had talked more before I went or I wouldn't have shipped my froe out there, they had plenty.

Here is Tim warming up while we built the kiln on Sunday before the class.
And here are the students shaving away. They recently built the shavehorses and they performed beautifully. I love it when the students work on good shavehorses because the quickly come to appreciate how efficient they are.

By day 6 we had all of the chairs assembled, and I was very pleased with the quality that the students achieved.

The last item worth mentioning is the food. Everywhere I went there was a new place to get great coffee, food or beer, my kind of town. I've discussed returning with Tim and have already started plotting to get Sue out there for a well deserved vacation.