A Women's Carpentry Class
Learn to salvage wood otherwise destined for a dumpster and then safely use power tools to create something useful and beautiful!
The knowledge, skills, and tools of carpentry, homebuilding, and the woodworking arts are disproportionately more difficult to access for women due to centuries of social dynamics which excluded women or established norms that made such spaces inhospitable to women.
This workshop aims to demystify these skills, tools, and knowledge and empower women in a safe and inclusive context. Seasoned mentor and carpenter Erin “Soupy” Campbell will guide participants in building their unique version of a portable camp “X” chair made from salvaged pallet wood. No gatekeeping, no judgmental atmosphere, just a fun, safe, and educational opportunity for you to leave not only with your own chair, but with increased competence to tackle home repairs and creative projects on your own.
No tool experience necessary! We’ll cover:
-
Basic measuring and marking technique
-
Safety equipment and emphasis on safety practices
-
How to determine hard vs soft wood, and which to use when
-
Power vs hand tool usage
Power tools taught:
-
Drill
-
Impact driver
-
Circular saw
-
Chop saw
-
Table saw
-
Jig saw
-
Palm sander
-
Sewing machine (for those who want a cloth seat back)
Each participant’s chair will be unique, depending on the wood you’ve salvaged and your own design decisions and creative flourishes. You might finish their chair and have time for adding a stain, building a second chair or another project. There will be plenty of pallets and scrap wood available, and Soupy will also have plans on hand for bluebird boxes, floating shelves and corner shelves.
Who is this for?
All skill levels welcome!
This workshop is open to all women - trans, cis, and non-binary folks are welcome!
Location:
With the exception of our expedition programs, most of our courses are hosted within a 30 mile radius of Charlottesville, VA. The diverse nature of our programs is best served by a constellation of sites that includes both public and private land. To protect the safety and privacy of our host site partners as well as the safety of our participants, we do not disclose the addresses or coordinates of our sites online. Upon registering for a course — or no later than 2 weeks prior to its start date — all participants will receive details and directions to the public, pre-course meetup location, from which we will caravan to the host site.
Instructor(s)
Erin (Soupy) Campbell has been a mentor, teacher, facilitator and wilderness guide for more than 20 years, serving as a lead mentor at Living Earth School for more than a decade. With a focus on wilderness skills, nature connection, wildlife tracking, and carpentry, she strives to integrate hands-on skill development with a commitment to heart centered connection and community care. While her diverse background includes training with some of the most respected wildlife trackers and naturalists in North America, she also has a masters in Conflict Transformation, teaches restorative justice in the community and at the graduate level, and works as a facilitator of restorative justice cases in central Virginia. We are proud to have her in the mix at SRI, as she brings the kind of integrative imagination for human flourishing that resides at the heart of the Stone River vision. An avid mountain biker, paddler, and nature nerd, she lives in central VA in a tiny house she built herself, and operates Carpentry Coach LLC, running hans-on workshops and helping homeowners accomplish their own projects.
Erin (Soupy) Campbell
