Facilities for Wood Science and Technology
Our facilities and classrooms are located in Nutting Hall and AEWC Center on the University of Maine Orono campus.
Courses in wood sculpture and design also taught in the Art Sculpture Studio on the UMaine campus. Additional woodworking
and turning for the Wood Design and Craftsmanship programs are located at the Center for Furniture Craftsmanship on the coast.
The facilities on the Orono campus are multi-use and blend space for both teaching and research or project areas.
Our working spaces range from high-bay facilities with the latest in equipment for large structure construction and testing to
traditional wood shop areas. Students who chose to work for a faculty member during the school year often expand their horizons
by learning of the many diverse ways that wood is used.
In addition to faculty and student offices, Nutting Hall houses facilities
for woodworking and wood machining, and
laboratories needed to investigate the chemical,
biological, physical, and mechanical properties of wood and wood-based materials.
In addition to a standard woodworking shop, the building contains wood chemistry and microbiology laboratories, wood physics laboratory, advanced image
analysis laboratory, and wood machining workshop. A sampling of the research and testing capability
useful for graduate and undergraduate study
includes:
- Tensile, bending, shear and compression testing,
- Biological assays and degradation studies,
- Shrinkage and swelling studies of wood products,
- Non-destructive evaluation of wood-based materials,
- Densiometry measurements,
- Vacuum-pressure delamination studies,
- Thermomechanical analysis,
- High-resolution fiber imaging,
- Soil block testing,
- Moisture and drying studies.
Center for Furniture Craftsmanship is a year-round,
nonprofit woodworking school on the coast of Maine. The mission of the Center for Furniture Craftsmanship is to provide the best possible education for people who want to design and build functional, beautiful,
expressive work out of wood to the highest standard of craftsmanship.
Students come from across the United States and around the world.
In 2004 the school had 320 course enrollments from 37 states and six
foreign countries. Participants are professional and avocational
woodworkers for whom furniture making and turning are,
fundamentally, means of self-expression and opportunities to add
meaning to their lives. The Center is widely recognized as one of
the top schools for those who want to achieve uncompromising
standards of excellence in craftsmanship and design. Our faculty are
professional furniture makers and turners with exceptional technical
expertise and generous teaching skills, who have demonstrated
significant engagement with issues of design. Faculty come from
across the United States, England, Canada, New Zealand, and
Australia.
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The AEWC Center is THE premier facility in the world
for structural wood composites teaching and research activity.
Students are exposed to state of the art equipment and processes that are found in industry, but at no other single teaching facility.
Classes and labs are taught right at the Center. 
This state-of-the-art facility is one of the only locations in the world
that is capable of doing both research and development of advanced engineered wood composites materials. All testing is done on
site. The AEWC aids Maine businesses in utilizing Maine's natural resources
effectively while also helping these businesses to become more competitive in the national and global markets. Most of our students
choose to become involved in projects with our center faculty. For more information, please visit AEWC Lab.
For more information about the AEWC center, please download the following pamphlet in pdf format (~ 420 KB):
WST_AEWC.pdf
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The Sculpture Studio, formerly known as the Fire Station, has
4,200 square feet of space and houses the sculpture program in the
Department of Art. Courses taught in this building include Beginning
Sculpture, Intermediate Sculpture, Foundry, Rustic Furniture, and
Raku Pottery. The facility has extensive woodworking and
metalworking/welding equipment, as well as furnaces for melting
bronze and aluminum. Plaster, clay, and stone are also used in the
studio.
