Episode list

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 project.

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 builds a bathroom vanity whose design is inspired by a dry sink he found at Fruitlands, a 1790 Shaker house and museum located in Harvard, Massachusetts. The vanity, constructed of oak, features dovetailed joints, a high-pressure laminate top and Shaker-style double doors with a flat panel on the outside and a raised panel on the inside.

After a look at a pine trestle table in a Shaker house on the island of Nantucket off the Massachusetts coast, Norm constructs his own easily-disassembled trestle table of cherry, a hardwood which, if kiln-dried, resists twisting or shrinking over time. Norm shows how to glue up the boards that comprise the expansive table top and demonstrates how to make the two trestles and the stretcher which connects them.

A visit to the "Stone Bank" at Old Sturbridge Village inspires Norm to build a freestanding bookcase with a cornice detail at the top, adjustable shelves and a removable base made of pine. Norm makes his bookcase from birch plywood, which is more stable than solid wood and offers a smooth surface for painting.

Norm demonstrates how to build a chest of drawers using Ponderosa pine. He cuts and planes the wood, glues the boards fro the top and sides. He also illustrates how to build the drawers including the drawer case, the frames, and the base.

Norm travels to the Hancock Shaker Village in western Massachusetts to gather ideas for his own design for a candle stand. Returning to his workshop, Norm shows home woodworkers how to build an exact replica using power tools, including a lathe, router and band saw.

In the kitchen of the Fitch House at Old Sturbridge Village, a "living history" museum in Sturbridge, Massachusetts, Norm shows viewers an early American hutch, known in its day as a cupboard (a hutch was for rabbits). Norm returns to his workshop to build his own model, a modified chest of drawers made of knotty pine, featuring a base cabinet with raised panel doors and an open shelf section topped with a decorative crown-molding detail.

Norm demonstrates how to build a slant-top writing desk with tapered legs, a shallow desk drawer and a nest of small drawers and open bins fitted into the top. Constructed mostly of maple.

In the parsonage at Old Sturbridge Village, a "living history" museum in Sturbridge, Massachusetts, Norm admires a built-in comer cupboard in the house's parlor. Norm's own design for a corner cupboard, constructed back in his workshop from pine and plywood, incorporates a top section closed in with glass-paned doors and a base cabinet with raised panel doors.