This year, you don’t have to travel to Japan to learn traditional Japanese carpentry skills. That’s because we have Kohei Yamamoto of Soma Kosha and Jon Billing of Big Sand Woodworking of Japan teaching an exclusive Japanese Carpentry Workshop at our location in eastern Kentucky. We’ll go in-depth and hands-on with hand tool setup and usage, center line layout, cutting joinery, and more. This is a rare opportunity to work closely with top tier professionals. You do not want to miss this — seriously. After a very successful first year of Japanese Carpentry Workshops, we’re introducing a new Advanced level course in 2024!
Workshop Details
- Workshop Dates:
Japanese Carpentry Workshop: Fundamentals (6 days) — June 1-6, 2024
(FULL — register to get on waitlist and 2025 class announcements)
Japanese Carpentry Workshop: Advanced (6 days) — June 9-14, 2024
(FULL — register to get on waitlist and 2025 class announcements)
(Note: we have spaces remaining in our August Timber Frame Workshop)
- Location: South Slope Farm, Berea, Kentucky (map)
- Costs and Discounts:
$1590 Early Bird Discount (register 30+ days in advance)
$1790 Regular Registration (register less than 30 days in advance) - All-inclusive: Workshop includes camping accommodations, and 3 delicious home-cooked meals a day
- Instruction by professional carpenters, Kohei Yamamato and Jon Billing
- Natural building tour — get an up-close look at a variety of natural building methods during your stay, including clay-straw, natural plasters, & more
- Instruction provided in English
Food and Dining
This is an all-include workshop experience. We provide all meals during the class. The lovingly prepared meals will largely consist of hearty organic vegetarian dishes featuring local ingredients. You won’t go hungry with us! In fact, you might have a hard time leaving the table after each meal. We do our best to accommodate dietary restrictions and food allergies. (We’ll follow up after registration to make sure we have your preferences on file.)
Lodging and Accommodations During Your Stay
All accommodations are included in the cost of the workshop. Here is what you can expect during your stay:
- Ample camping space close to indoor facilities
- Access to composting toilets
- Heated outdoor shower facilities
- Phone and internet available on-site
- Library with large collection of Japanese architecture & natural building titles
- Easy 15 minute drive into town for any town needs you might have
About the Workshop Location
The Japanese Carpentry Workshop is located 15 minutes outside of Berea, Kentucky (view map) at South Slope Farm in the gorgeous Clear Creek Valley. Located on 28 acres of hillside pasture and woods, our farm sits in the middle of a rural community with many folks dedicated to art, music, community building, permaculture, and sustainable food. We are pleased to be surrounded many friends and neighbors who want to live creative, intentional lives.
Berea is a small town in central Kentucky, home to an active population of craftspeople, artists, woodworkers, musicians, social activists, and homesteaders. Berea has a longstanding tradition of diversity, social justice, environmental responsibility, and community service. The historic Berea College is the first interracial and coeducational college in the South, and its influence on the town remains to this day.
Workshop Schedule
Students must arrive the afternoon prior to the official workshop start date. For example, students should arrive between 4:00-6:00 on June 8 for the June 9-14 workshop. We’ll start with a leisurely dinner and introductions around 6:30 p.m. The workshop will end around 4:00 p.m. on the final day. Please factor this in to your travel plans!
Our daily schedule will follow the same general structure each day:
- 7:30 A.M.: Breakfast
- 8:00 A.M.: Begin morning work session
- 12:00 P.M.: Lunch break
- 1:00 P.M.: Afternoon work session
- 5:00 P.M.: Pre-dinner free time, shower, relax
- 6:30 P.M.: Dinner
- 8:00 P.M.: Evening presentation or activity
We’re Bringing The Masters To You
We’re absolutely delighted to have Kohei Yamamoto of Soma Kosha and Jon Billing instructing our Japanese Carpentry Workshop series. Kohei and Jon are incredibly talented and dedicated to a high degree of quality and detail. They’re also just all-around wonderful human beings. We are absolutely privileged to have them here for our workshops.
The Story of Soma Kosha
Kohei-san started Soma Kosha in 2013, specializing in a traditional style of building that began thousands of years ago in Japan and was the standard until WW2. After the war, American building practices began to be popularized. However, buildings that were meant to last for hundreds of years such as temples and shrines continued to be built with traditional techniques handed down and perfected for generations in Japan. Kohei-san worked firsthand on these structures and wondered why homes and other public buildings weren’t built this same way. Now Soma Kosha works on temples, shrines, teahouses, homes, and other public buildings — repairing and building new in the long tradition of the Japanese master carpenters. See more at somakosha.com.
The Love of Hand Tools: Kohei Yamamoto
Kohei-san was raised in Okayama, Japan. After high school, he started working in a Mitsubishi car parts factory and soon realized it wasn’t what he wanted to do long term. He started a one year program to find new employment and took a course on furniture making. In that one year, Kohei-san fell in love with hand tools and decided he wanted to work with them for the rest of his life. His teacher told him to become a temple carpenter if he really wanted to use hand tools for a living.
Kohei-san worked as a temple & shrine carpenter for nearly 9 years before starting his own company, Soma Kosha. Kohei-san passed his examinations for both second and first class licensure in Japan as an architect. He also won first prize in his exam for first class licensure as a carpenter (for building a hip roof model with finish jack rafters in less than 4 hours from scratch).
Furthering His Craft: Jon Billing
Jon Billing got his start in woodworking in 2003 when he attended a guitar building program at SE Minnesota Tech College in Red Wing, Minnesota. Spending 2 years at the guitar program led Jon to pursue other forms of woodworking including furniture making, cabinetry, carpentry, and woodturning. While pursuing a degree in art between 2010-13, Jon worked with artist Aaron Spangler which led to further exploration of the craft through carving.
After deciding to shift his focus from art to more craft oriented work in 2016, Jon began work with Yann Giguere of Mokuchi Woodworking. Through work with Yann, Jon quickly fell in love with the tools and techniques used in traditional Japanese woodworking. Wanting to delve deeper, Jon and his wife moved to Japan in 2019. For 3 years, Jon worked with Soma kosha, building traditional homes and further developing his skills and knowledge of traditional tools and techniques. Jon currently designs and build furniture out of Big Sand Woodworking, a small studio in Tokyo.
Japanese Carpentry: Fundamentals
Our Japanese Carpentry Fundamentals Workshop is an essential introduction to understanding Japanese carpentry principles, hand tool use, and joinery. We’ve designed this class to set students on an incredible path of discovery into the vast world of Japanese carpentry. It’s recommended that you have at least some previous woodworking or carpentry experience. However, those with minimal woodworking experience are still welcome and encouraged to join and learn.
- Layout using traditional center line methods with ink pen and sashigane (square)
- Chisel, hammer, and hand plane deep dive: tool setup and fine-tuning
- Blade sharpening methods with waterstones
- Hand tool practice for cutting joinery including saws, chisel (nomi), hand plane (kanna)
- Finishing wood surfaces using a finely tuned hand plane (kanna)
- Hewing lesson with an adze (chouna) and axe (ono)
- Timber framing history in Japan and ishibatate design principles
You can find our suggested Japanese woodworking tool list here.
Sign Up for 2024 Fundamentals Workshop
Japanese Carpentry: Advanced
Do you want to take your Japanese joinery skills to the next level? The Japanese Carpentry Advanced Workshop expands on all of the skills learned in our Fundamentals workshop. Students will spend time cutting their own individual partial 1/4 scale model of a traditional frame using a variety of joinery and assembly methods. We will incorporate both square and irregular material. This is the best opportunity to gain more depth in the process of layout, cutting, fitting, and assembly. Those who want to eventually build a full size Japanese timber frame are encouraged to join us.
- How to acquire, select, and orient material
- Lessons in joinery selection, building design and layout, building proportions
- Layout using traditional center line methods with ink pen, ink pot, and sashigane (square)
- Scribing round and irregular material for a tight fit
- Hand tool practice for cutting joinery, including saws, chisel (nomi), hand plane (kanna), etc.
- Finishing wood surfaces using a hand plane
- Students can take their model home at the completion of the workshop
Note: you should have completed our Fundamentals workshop (or an equivalent Japanese joinery that includes hand tool setup, sharpening) to attend this course. Contact Ziggy if you have any questions! You can find our suggested Japanese woodworking tool list here.