Roy Underhill picks up the grungiest wooden jack plane you’ve ever seen and cradles the old tool tenderly in his work-hardened hands.

The tip of the plane’s tote is missing. The iron is dark and short. The wedge looks like it has been struck by a thousand golf balls. The entire stock of the plane is covered in a jet-black substance, with the exception of three areas: the plane’s sole, its tote and a hand-shaped area at the toe.

“It’s covered in mutton tallow,” Underhill says about the plane. “They used it on everything. A lubricant.”

If a proper collector picked up this plane, he would do one of two things: Clean it until it gleamed or heave it into the burn pile with the rest of the world’s grungy jacks. But for Underhill, this plane is almost a holy relic.

“This is the rarity I’m into,” Underhill says. “See where his hands were? This plane saw a tremendous amount of hard use.”

This Greenslade handplane belonged to Robert Simms, a traditionally trained English joiner who later worked restoring pieces for Colonial Williamsburg. Simms got the plane from another joiner before him. And now Underhill has it. But the tool isn’t under lock and key. It’s a working tool and lives in a tool chest.

As Underhill explains the plane’s provenance he picks a thick shaving from the tool’s mouth. It’s a fresh curl of pine or ash that he’s been planing in his new shop and woodworking school in Pittsboro, N.C.

This plane is one of the dozens of tools Underhill has been sharpening and tuning in preparation for the first classes of The Woodwright’s School, Underhill’s latest venture in woodworking education. After 30 years of writing and hosting “The Woodwright’s Shop” television show on PBS, Underhill has decided to also offer classes in the style of hand work he demonstrates on the show.

Part of the Town
After he decided to open a woodworking school, he had to find the right location. So Underhill scoured the North Carolina countryside until he happened upon Pittsboro, a tidy town of 2,500 outside the bustling cities of Raleigh, Durham and Chapel Hill. There he found a storefront with big bay windows that looks out on Hillsboro Street, the town’s main drag.

In addition to the other occupied storefronts, Underhill’s school is next door to a vintage-looking ice cream parlor (complete with tin ceiling) and directly in front of an appealing city pub (complete with taps serving Red Oak, a local microbrew).

“Even the people who live here say it’s Mayberry,” Underhill says about the town. “How about another piece of cherry pie?”

Then he mentions the photographer down the street who has a wall of unusually dressed Barbie dolls.

“Well, maybe some parts are Mayberry after dark,” he says with a laugh.

Pittsboro has a bit of an artistic bent. There are lots of local potters, “It seems every third person who visits is a potter!” he says. And he’s met beekeepers and musicians. “And everyone seems to have a Ph.D.”

Underhill has been receiving local guests with gusto as he has been setting up his shop because they are all part of his master plan.

Teach the Young and Local
The Woodwright’s School is unlike any other in the country. For starters, the shop has only hand- and foot-powered tools. There are 10 excellent Hoffman & Hammer woodworking benches – very heavy and equally German. All of them face the bay windows and are equipped with a basic complement of hand tools – from carcase saws to bench planes – all sharp, set up and ready to go.

The walls are lined with tool chests brimming with more hand tools. A shelving unit at the rear of the room holds rows of moulding and joinery planes. Another bookshelf is stuffed with old woodworking texts.

In each of the bay windows at the front of the room are the sharpening stations. One is for saws; the other is for edge tools (there’s even an AO binocular microscope there for examining your edges). The middle of the room has a treadle-powered table saw, lathe and scrollsaw.

The school also comes with an unusual mission and a set of rules for students.

About those rules: Underhill says students are welcome to bring their own tools, but he asks that you not bring tape measures (“I’ll confiscate them and put them in the storage room,” he says with a wicked laugh.) Also, no plastic-handled chisels. No Japanese pullsaws. “This should look like you have stepped back into a shop class in the 1930s,” he says.

“We’re going to be doing English-style joinery,” he says. “You wouldn’t build a shoji screen with a big Disston. That would be like stir-frying grits.”
He also requests that students turn off their cell phones and wear clothing that would be fitting to the time if possible – no beer T-shirts, please. Of course, Underhill spent many years at Williamsburg, so immersing himself (and others) in a certain time comes naturally.

Why is he so intent on recreating the past?

“This is not about the past,” Underhill says, his arms spread wide toward the workbenches lined up on the shop floor. “Well yes, of course it’s about the past in one sense. But it’s really about the future. The objective is the future.”

As a result, Underhill wants his new school to educate young and local woodworkers about hand-tool woodworking. Though he knows that the school will attract students from all over, Underhill says he wants to emphasize training young people so the craft has a future. And he wants to train locals to help build the community.

In February 2009, Underhill opened his school with a series of one-day classes on basic joinery. The first set of classes filled up in just hours. Those classes will lead to classes on building a tool chest. And Underhill says he’s going to bring in other instructors as well.

Those people will teach a class for a week and then Underhill will shoot a segment with them during the weekend for “The Woodwright’s Shop.”

The Details
What is intoxicating about The Woodwright’s School is how much effort Underhill put into the details. The oilstones at the sharpening station look like they’re from the right era. The bench planes are a mix of metal- and wooden-bodied ones – again, just what you’d see in a 1930s shop.

There’s even a portrait of Franklin Delano Roosevelt hanging on the wall, a sticker in the window for the Works Progress Administration and a huge radio at the back of the room. In fact, the little bit of technology that Underhill allows looks curious and out of place – Underhill uses a digital camera and television to demonstrate work close-up.

There are even some details you can’t see.

“Each workbench comes with one of these,” he says, pointing to a pile of old English and Irish coins. “It’s tradition to fasten one of these to the underside of each bench. They’re for the wee folk.”

So if you’re a jolly European tree sprite who happens to stop by The Woodwright’s School on your travels, be sure to look under the benches for the coin that Underhill has left for you. And do note how the coins are attached. Underhill has gone the extra mile and used authentic vintage hobnails.

But will all this effort pay off?

“This whole thing has been like jumping off a cliff – and then figuring out how to fly,” he says. “We’ll see if it works.” PW

If you want to learn more about Underhill’s new school, visit woodwrightschool.com.



Christopher is the editor of Popular Woodworking and Woodworking Magazine.