February 2022 Virtual Meeting – Roy Underhill

Tuesday, February 1, 2022 at 6:00pm

Roy Underhill is a renown American woodworker and television show host, and was the first master housewright at the Colonial Williamsburg reconstruction. Since 1979, he has been the host of the PBS series The Woodwright’s Shop. Along with This Old House, which debuted the same year, it is the longest running PBS “how-to” show.

He is the author of several books, including “The Woodwright’s Eclectic Workshop” and “Woodwright’s Shop: A Practical Guide to Traditional Woodcraft”. In 2011 he gave a presentation at TEDx Raleigh, sharing the value of ingenuity and living in the present.

Underhill has started teaching traditional woodworking in a classroom environment he calls “The Woodwright’s School”. Many hand tool aficionados hold Underhill in extremely high regard and refer to him with the shorthand “St. Roy.”

Roy will demonstrate how to lay out and cut the classic through dovetail, the half-blind
dovetail for drawers, and the rising dovetail (just to irritate people). We’ll cover many
variations in technique and the reasoning behind them. You’ll learn the three joints as well as
the foundation skills for continued work.

Directions