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Welcome to the first email newsletter of the Maine Coast Craft School.
This where we will communicate what’s happening with the school, workshops, tool sales and community events. (We’re not doing Facebook or twitter, but Kenneth does occasionally post some photos on Instagram, there’s a link at the bottom of the page for that - it looks like a little camera).
We expect we’ll be sending out a newsletter like this each month for the next few months - there’s a lot happening during this first year of the school!
But after that things should taper off and we’ll only grace your email box
once a season or so.
Feel free to email us, stop by, check the website,
or write us real, paper letters if you want to be in touch.
If, on the other hand, you don’t want to be in touch,
go to the bottom of this page and you can unsubscribe.
We’re hoping to keep our list to only those who
really want to receive email from us.
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So here’s the news -
tools:
There has been much interest in the tool sales business we are starting.
To a large extent, people are interested in tools from Sweden which we will be importing, now that our friends at Country Workshops have decided to pursue a simpler life and retire their tool business. We will therefore now be the US distributors for tools from Hans Karlsson and Svante Djarve, tools which Drew Langsner determined were some of the very highest quality woodworking tools around. They are all hand made and the family-run workshops will probably average just two shipments of tools to us per year, it will take them 5 to 7 months to fill an order.
We placed out first order with both toolmakers in November (and just so you know, these 1st orders were fairly small since we are starting our business with a minimum of cash). We’re hoping to see these tools sometime in the late spring, but Elsa Djarve emailed a few days ago to say that they are currently working on an order which they received in September, so it might be summertime before we get ours.
We will keep you informed!
We are not taking pre-orders or doing pre-sales, since selling something we don’t yet have in hand seems problematic.
Once they are available, all our tools will be available for sale on line through our website.
Angela is beginning work on our online store and Kenneth is actively searching out domestic distributors and toolmakers to help fill the demand for high quality tools. He is working with one local blacksmith on a new carving axe design and also a block knife design.
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workshops:
We are very excited that so many people are interested in our workshops in traditional woodworking. Making that education available is truly our passion, and we’re really looking forward to the coming summer and fall’s workshops.
To give a bit of background, The Maine Coast Craft School is largely modeled after Drew and Louise Langsner’s Country Workshops in NC. Kenneth was a summer intern there in 1995 and it turned out to be a piviotal moment in his woodworking career. We connect strongly with the Langsner’s philosophy and way of life and we are very grateful and pleased to be carrying on the educational tradition that they founded 40 years ago.
Our summer workshop schedule is still somewhat fluid -
We have added a four day kid’s workshop August 28th - 31st.
There is only one space left in that class though.
We’ve connected the two kid’s workshops at the beginning of July into a single, week-long session, Monday - Friday July 10th - 14th. (since parents’ work schedules tend to preclude a Wednesday day off)
The Welsh Windsor class has been very popular, we are considering adding another workshop to accommodate all the interest. Please be in touch if you’re curious about that, as the dates are still flexible and we might be able to custom-fit it to your schedule!
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our ‘new’ school building:
Kenneth and our dear friend Andrew Donaldson will start working to reassemble our salvaged, early 18th century timber framed building soon. They will be cutting fresh lumber and joinery for any pieces that need re-creation or replacement. We plan to assemble the pieces starting later this month and the timber frame should go up sometime in April.
We’ll make sure to send some photos out for those of you that can’t make it to the party.
Our workshops will have just 4 or 5 participants each, we use no power tools and we’re solar powered, entirely off-the-grid. Therefore our building will be small, simple and managable — a cozy (and these days, highly unusual) setting, very conducive to learning green woodworking.
Kenneth and our friend Dan Asher (last year’s CW intern ) will be heading to the Langsner’s in May for a couple of weeks to help finish restoring a vintage travel trailer and build a yurt-style outhouse. On their return to Maine, they’ll bring with them a load of student tools and teaching aids that Drew has made available to us.
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internship:
We are pleased to include a position for an intern
or apprentice at our school.
This year, we have two interns who will split the season between them;
Lily Howell will be with us at the beginning of the summer,
she grew up in Tallahassee, Florida.
Brennan Wierzba will then arrive from the southern tip of Vancouver Island at the beginning of July and stay until after the final workshop ends shortly before Halloween.
Our interns will be participating in all the workshops and helping out with our homestead between classes.
Offering a work-trade option for aspiring woodworkers has been a very important component of the overall concept of our school, in part due to Kenneth’s many positive apprenticeship experiences.
We honor our friend Fritz Musser, student-of-the-world extraordinaire, by dedicating this apprenticeship position to his memory, so that we will have the opportunity to say his name and tell his story often. Fritz was in the process of hiking from the Caspian Sea to the Baltic Sea, through Azerbaijan and the country of Georgia this past summer when he was killed. He would certainly have been working beside us on building this school if he were here with us in Maine, as he had planned to be.
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- So that's it for now.
all the best to all of you,
Angela & Kenneth Kortemeier
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We are sending this newsletter out to several people
on our friends & family list by forwarding it to them.
Please feel free to do the same if you know
someone who might be interested in our work!
If you would like to be on the list to
continue and automatically receive newsletters
in the future, you’ll need to sign up
HERE or on our website, mainecoastcraft.com.
If you don't sign up you won't get our emails.
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the Maine Coast Craft School, LLC
Kenneth and Angela Kortemeier
260 Old County Rd
Bristol, ME 04539
mainecoastcraft@gmail.com
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Coming up next time: raising the timber frame!
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