OUR STORY
Why We’re Here
Sound Foundation Woodworking academy was started on the premise that we could bring people who enjoy creating and building things together. Through the years I’ve been to many woodworking courses and I always hear very similar stories. People have a passion for building things but don’t have the knowledge, or tools to do what they’d like. Some people don’t want to make the investment into tooling having little experience, and some are intimidated by the idea of starting on their own. Hence the Sound Foundation Woodworking Academy.
My involvement in woodworking started when I retired from racing sports cars and took up playing the guitar. I found that though I didn’t know it, I had been taking pictures of one particular guitar at concerts even before I had an interest in playing. Once I started playing it just made sense to have a guitar like it. So I went out to buy it. Unfortunately through research I found it was a one off custom guitar so it wasn’t available. I sought out custom builders but none could come through with it. I love to learn so I decided well, if I could build race cars I could certainly build a little guitar and went to school. Kind of a lofty endeavor a guitar being my first woodworking project, but I didn’t know any better. Fortunately.
My 3 week course ended up with my first guitar taking just over 300 hours to finish. During that time the person who designed the guitar, Jonny Lang, found out I was building it. He graciously met me, was genuinely interested in seeing it and was amazing playing it and letting me play the original. We need more people like Mr Jonny Lang in this world. It was a dream come true for me.
I had such a wonderful experience with the guitar build that I then sought out learning other skills and found the woodworking community an amazing place. The people I’ve experienced have been outstanding. Extremely helpful, non judgmental, and passionate about what they do. This inspired me to become more and more involved and I saw an opportunity to share and bring people together by building a school. We’ll have multiple levels of classes. From open free nights with Boy and Girl Scouts where they can come in and use the facilities to build for their merit badges, all the way to week long classes like learning how to build your own workbench. In between we’ll have joinery classes, like hand cut dovetails and mortise and tenon. We’ll have cutting board classes where you can design your own cutting board and build it. Classes to learn how to sharpen all your hand tools and we’re a place you can purchase some of the best in the market. Two of my favorite classes are the Japanese tool chest class, and the Dutch tool chest class. I happen to like tools, but I love how these two encompass a lot of different skills sets and are useful as well once built. Some of the bigger classes starting first of 2020 will be end tables, stools, and hope chests. We’ll be adding classes throughout the year and taking input for what others would like to see. Send us an email with your suggestions!
Let’s build something together!
Mark Luna
Owner/founder
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