Jimmy Clewes Leads Weeklong Woodturning Intensive at Marc Adams School

The proposition is concrete: $1,050 in tuition, five days on the lathe, and a curriculum that moves from bevel angles and sharpening systems through tight-fitting lids and finished boxes. Jimmy Clewes, who holds a place on the United Kingdom's Register of Professional Woodturners and carries more than 35 years of turning and teaching experience, will lead the intensive at Marc Adams School of Woodworking from April 20 to 24, 2026, as part of the school's Higher Education program.

Clewes structures the week around a deliberate skill progression. The opening sessions focus on sharpening: tool profiles, system comparisons, and the bevel geometry that underpins everything else a turner does at the lathe. From there the curriculum moves into spindle work, covering the skew chisel, roughing-out gouges, spindle gouges, and parting tools, before shifting into bowl turning and square turning techniques.

The finished-piece targets give the week its clearest measure of progress. Students will work toward completing a symmetric box, an oyster box, and a well-proportioned bowl. Each form isolates different demands: the oyster box in particular requires lid-fitting precision that rewards clean, repeatable cuts rather than hopeful scraping. The course addresses lid-fitting explicitly, a detail that separates this workshop from intensives that treat enclosed forms as an afterthought to open bowls.

Color, surface treatment, and the aesthetic principles behind pleasing curves fill out the later sessions, tying technical execution to the visual reasoning behind form decisions. For many returning hobbyists, that conversation about why a curve works is harder to find than basic tool instruction, and Clewes has built a significant part of his international teaching reputation on exactly that ground.

Total cost runs to $1,115 when the $65 materials fee is added to the $1,050 tuition. The course listing was confirmed on the Marc Adams School website on April 4, 2026, nine days before the first session. With a five-day window and a named instructor who also maintains his own private teaching studio in Las Vegas, seats are unlikely to remain open long.