I am afraid I have to differ with the person that recommended the Econest course. This "course" mainly consisted of cutting out a Japanese style timber-frame and assembling it. Very little time spent on skills development (some on sharpening and planes) and almost nothing on layout, design or tool selection etc.
There were no teaching handouts or reading assignments for this course and very little time spent actually teaching. The majority of "the course" consisted of labor input cutting the frame. I learned some things about using tools and cutting this timber frame but it was certainly not worth the $850 charged and was not an efficient use of my time in terms of amount learned per time expended. Dale Brotherton is a master craftsman but he seemed much more concerned with finishing the timber frame for his client (the owner of Econest) than teaching timber framing - at least during this course. Experiences working on timber frames (which would be similar to this "course")are available at no cost through the timber framers guild (
https://www.tfguild.org/). If you really want to learn timber framing I would not recommend the Econest courses.
