The New Yankee Workshop

After a tour of The New Yankee Workshop to preview the collection of furniture he will build in the first season, Norm visits a "retiring room" at the Hancock Shaker Village in western Massachusetts to find a model for a handcrafted medicine cabinet. Drawing inspiration from a looking glass and cabinet, Norm uses durable red oak and oak plywood to construct a medicine chest of his own design featuring box-joint joinery

A good workshop begins with a well-equipped workbench, and master woodworker Norm uses one from his own shop as a model for the conveniently-sized and affordable workbench he builds in this episode. After a look at a workbench used 100 years ago by the craftsmen at Hancock Shaker Village in western Massachusetts, Norm builds a workbench featuring an oak-edged hardwood top, a bench vice, a recessed tool storage area on top and a shelf beneath.

Norm uses ash, a durable hardwood, to fashion a drop-leaf table featuring turned legs, a top and leaves made from glued up stock. Norm shows how to turn the table legs on a duplicating lathe and reveals a few tricks for making mortise and tenons joints. Using a router and two special bits, he shows how the drop-leaf joint is made.

Norm travels to the island of Nantucket off the Massachusetts coast to look at a handmade blanket chest in a sea captain's house dating from 1790. Incorporating elements of this antique in his own design, Norm builds a blanket chest of pine, lined with aromatic cedar panels.

Norm constructs a bedside table inspired by one found at the Hancock Shaker Village in western Massachusetts. Norm's design, made from pine, features a shallow drawer, table legs tapered on the inner sides and a table top with a breadboard design (glued boards edged with wood on two ends).

Norm demonstrates how to build a bathroom vanity with dovetailed joints. He uses oak and a laminate top with double doors and a flat panel outside and raised panel inside mimicking the Shaker style. The vanity dimensions are 34" high x 38" wide x 23" deep. Inspired by a dry sink he found at a 1790 Shaker house in Harvard, Norm's oak unit features dovetailed joints and a high-pressure laminate top.