Keepsake Box Beginner Woodworking Workshops

Traditional Box Making • Dovetail Joinery • Woodcarving

Explore and Embrace Your Creativity

There is a special satisfaction in working with your hands and watching yourself make something beautiful from a few simple pieces of wood. In this workshop, you’ll experience that process firsthand as you build your own handcrafted heirloom keepsake box using traditional woodworking and carving techniques.

Designed for the beginner woodworker, the class brings together hand-cut dovetail joinery, brass hinges, and decorative woodcarving. You’ll learn how to lay out and cut dovetails, fit and assemble the box, and then add carved details that make the piece uniquely your own.

But this workshop is about more than just making a small box. It’s an introduction to the enjoyment and satisfaction of craftsmanship—learning to work with your hands, understand the tools, and turn an idea into something that is real.

By the end of the workshop, you’ll leave with a beautiful handcrafted keepsake box that you made yourself, along with traditional skills you can bring to future woodworking and carving projects.

No previous woodworking or carving experience is necessary.

This workshop is also a great next step for students who have already taken the Bare-Bones Fundamentals Workshop and want to continue developing their woodworking and carving skills.

Our school is located in Gloucester, Massachusetts on Cape Ann, about 50 minutes north of Logan Airport in Boston. Students come to our woodworking and wood carving classes from throughout New England, including Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Maine, Vermont, Rhode Island and Connecticut, as well as New York, New Jersey and across the country. If you're searching for beginner woodworking classes, a dovetail woodworking workshop, a keepsake box class, or wood carving classes near you, don't necessarily let distance determine where you learn. Students have traveled to the Calvo Wood Carving School from nearly every state in the U.S. to learn traditional woodworking and woodcarving skills in a hands-on workshop setting.

Student Gallery