During the last year I’ve heard a lot of smack talk about the traditional French-style workbench, which many people simply call a “Roubo” because it is featured in “L’Art du Menuisier.”
In fact, my first drubbing came in 2005 when I built my first French bench. A prominent woodworking writer delivered this salvo: “That bench in Roubo was intended for joiners, people who did house carpentry. Not for cabinetwork. You have chosen the wrong bench to build.”
This is bullcrap.
Not just because I call it bullcrap, but because the archaeological record and the written record say it’s crap.
Roubo’s five-volume work isn’t just about house carpentry and house joinery. It’s also about carriage making, fine furniture, marquetry, parquetry, veneering, finishing and garden furniture. While Roubo certainly knew about other benches (he illustrates a “German” one in one volume), he chose to illustrate the classic French bench in almost every instance throughout all his books.
So yup (sarcasm fully engaged), this bench is good only for heavy work like this.
Or coarse work like this.
You’d only make sash or wainscot on it, like this.
No fine cabinetry would be built on it, especially nothing dovetailed.
The beauty of the French form of bench is it’s a blank sheet of paper. You can easily adapt it for any work – heavy, light or in-between. It is easy to build – you need to know only one joint, really. Beginners don’t need to learn to dovetail a skirt around the top or install complex vises. Heck, I worked for a year on the French bench without anything you would call a vise – just a crochet and holdfasts.
If you process stock by hand, it’s heavy enough for fore-planing. If you’re a router wizard, it’s an expansive deck of places to clamp things to – completely unobstructed.
If you are somewhere in-between these extremes, you will be fully satisfied.
The French bench has downsides. It requires more wood than some other designs. The pieces can be too heavy for some woodworker who work alone. You might have to glue up a lot of boards to make the top or search for a thick slab (which really are not hard to find).
But the bench works like crazy, I prefer it over every form I’ve worked on or built.
I understand that some woodworkers see benches like a hemline. This one is in fashion. Now that one. Ooh, no one builds benches like Ian Kirby’s anymore. And that’s fine. You can run down the design because it’s so ubiquitous. Or because I like it.
But don’t look like a fool and say the bench is for crude work only. The ghost of A.J. Roubo is likely to pay you a visit one dark night.
— Christopher Schwarz
Amen brother.
I built a Nicholson style bench as my first bench, but I’m gather parts for a French bench because after using my bench for a while, I see what you mean about clamping. I use my bench for a lot of different things, and the all sides ability to clamp is the key to versatility.
My next bench will speak a little french for sure.
Benches are the new Sharpening. People love to dump on anything that doesn’t fit with what they know. Also, opinions are like…. everyone has one. 🙂
It works every time. When you want Chris Schwarz to demonstrate something in depth, just tell him he’s wrong. He can’t resist. 🙂
Good to know because I’m knee deep in shavings making mine. It’s interesting to see a few variations on the crochet detail. I like the idea that this bench is a starting point and can be modified to fit one’s work.
I have been seeing this lately in the (gasp!) dreaded forums when in that people are saying things like “gaaah… ANOTHER Roubo???” or “when was the last time you have seen anything other than a Roubo???” and not in a good way either…
Who cares?
They work well so they get built a lot, no matter what the nay sayers would like to think. Besides… They look bad ass too!
As for joining the legs to the top within the french design, it there a benefit to the sliding dovetail over the regular tenon design. Any preference?
Steve,
If you are going to use a twin tenon, then the dovetail makes it way easier (this is from experience). If you are going to use a single tenon, then obviously just use the tenon.
When pressed for time, I make one tenon. When I want to do something that looks cool, I use the dovetail.
Huh. According to Fig 7, they are perfect for making Bouillabaisse as well. That IS one versatile bench!
Funny, I thought it was fondue. 🙂
Ugh, not ANOTHER rectangular bench! It’s high time the rectangle was put into retirement alongside such tired forms as the scalene triangle and the (shudder) tangential quadrilateral.
What do you mean there are only rectangular benches? I don’t know would have possessed someone to make this.:
http://moustachioed.tumblr.com/post/39683319147/what-i-want-to-play-with-this-for-a-while
I have no experience with any kind of bench, but I really like the way Steve explains stuff!
It’s ridiculous to attribute a slab on 4 legs to the french just because Roubo had privileged access to an early printing press. Surely a solid surface workplace has a 1001 uses and its origins go much further back in history. (If he was a cook, it might have turned up there too)
…and obviously this ‘prominent woodworking writer’ does not know the difference between a jointer and a carpenter.
Now crochets, that’s a topic best left to be covered by PWM’s new editor 🙂
Are you implying I know something about crotches?! Goodness.
You see, I knew you could weave in the feminine side to this topic! Maybe there’s more to crochets than I ever considered!
Bench Wars. Nearly as boring as Sharpening Wars.
Just build a bench to whatever design takes your fancy, sharpen up your tools by whatever method works for you, and MAKE STUFF!
Amen.
Preach it my brother!
Exactly David!
I disagree completely………Bench wars are EXACTLY as boring as sharpening wars….
The dude sitting at the bench doing marquetry apparently has hooves. Or perhaps he is some freakish half-man, half-child, half-goat concglomeration…
I invented a word. “Concglomeration:” A conglomeration, in ill repair.
Hi Chris,
Love the post! I have been through 2 benches, building #3. First one was kitchen counter on top of kitchen cabinets that I salvaged out of the basement of a church. I found out within 2 weeks of installation that you can’t clamp anything to it without ramming a knee in the cabinet door.
The second one is the current its a double layer MDF wrapped with a skirt that is 4″ tall and 1 1/2″ thick. with drawers 6″ away from the front. I can clamp things to the top now, but with the MDF core and a cabinet undernewath I am stuck without dog holes and I have needed them many times. So I have to cobble together some horrible contraption that holds the work in place, where the horrible contraption is clamped at the edge, and woe’s me if I need to clamp anything farther from the edge as 1.5″!
So what am I building for #3? A nice Roubo, made out of yellow pine 2×12’s from the lumber yard, with single tenons, nothing fancy, but heavy, strong, and cheap, and flat. I bet that sounds familiar!
As for the other benches: #1 went to the trash, #2 will become my automotive repair workbench so I can spill motor vehicle liquids all over the thing and replace the top in a few hours after its ruined. #3 will probably be my last woodworking bench, unless I get the Schwarz-en-bench disease and have the need to build many to prove the point that these benches are one of the top all-around workbenches
All that to say thanks for opening my eyes and actually the rest of PWW folks showing me the way to best practices of being a woodworker. Tangent: It is amazing the differences in methodology between Wood Mag, PWW and Fine Woodworking Mag (the 3 I subscribed to).
I am just waiting for a Workbench 3 book.
What I truly like about the Roubo are all the modifications people have made over the single slab, split top, tool tray, no tray, back hanging tool caddy, and the near limitless number of vises. It is almost time for me to start building my own.
What is the reasoning behind the split top again? I hear everyone mention them, but I can’t say that I’ve ever heard the justification yet. Is it just because they have small planers or think it is easier to flatten or something like that?
Pete,
Check out the construction notes at Benchcrafted’s site:
http://www.benchcrafted.com/PDF%20Files/Bench%20Plans/BC_SplitTopRouboNotes_Jan13.pdf
When I needed a bench I bought your book and doubted between the English one and the French bench. First the English bench looked easier and cheaper to build. But on looking into it further, the English one looked like a lot more work with the torsion box and all that. So, when I scored a stack of fir beams, the decision was made in favor of the Roubo. And the thing has done heavy duty now for about 5 years and is still going strong. Very strong. Of course I could also have build the English bench with a solid top, and then it would have been pretty easy to build too, and I would probably have been happy too.
Living in Central Europe, of course I should have build a German type. But it was way out of my comfort zone in woodworking at that time.
So I guess all this means: Thank you for writing that book.
Those are some of the fanciest woodworkers I have ever seen!
Yep, those guys know how to dress. One must always be gentlemanly in the shop.
The stuff they’re wearing isn’t really in style anymore, but I still like to go super formal in the shop. Tuxedo, or if i’m feeling lazy, shirt and tie with a sharp looking blazer.
Oh, and I don’t understand the vice in fig.10 at all. Where is that screw screwing into? How did they make a threaded hole like that?
Chris, on an episode of TWS, explained to Roy that this is a mistake by the illustrator. The unit should be on top of the bench.
Disregard my last. The plate shown in TWS is not the same as plate 10 above.
How about an official Lost Art Press T-shirt that says: ” I like my wench and my bench, French. Period.” (Get it?) With a pick of a beautiful woman, in a french maid outfit, posing on a Roubo.
I’ll buy one!
Put me down for an XL please!
Epic!
You can’t where a shirt like that when your wench is a red headed Irish lass.
HAHH….Where is my coffee!!
Haha, people are hilarious!
I find it infinity interesting how hung up people on minutia in (internet) woodworking. Oh the existential crisis of the workbench! What that hell is traditional anyway? Who’s tradition? Who cares? My bench is a Irish-French mutt (mcmaster/roubo) it was built out of necessity, the next bench will be full blue-blooded-gerard-depardeo-cheese-eating-french damn it!
The french bench is awesome, although I am sure other benches work well for other people too . I am sure you could make a pile of cinderblocks into a totally functional workbench, I just don’t know why you would want to.
Internet woodworking minutae….Yes, if I could find a way to agree more with you I would. I agree so much that it borders on scary. How old are you? Do I have a long lost twin I don’t know about?
I believe Gerard Depardo is now a Russian. What does a Russian workbench look like?
In Russia, the bench works you.
Hahaha! Lots of red milk paint and built for at least 20 wood-workers.
Perhaps all the griping about Roubo type benches is due to the fact that many of the people blogging their builds go on about all the hardwood they’re using and w.i.p.photos showing lots of expensive hand and power tools? The vice hardware that gets installed on most of the ones I’ve seen isn’t usually cheap either.
I can’t say I’ve seen too many SYP roubo’s posted lately.
Is that a fondue pot in fig-7?
Pretty sure it is hot sand used to darken the edges of inlay pieces.
It seems humorous to think so but if we have a dose of reality in these replies, I would say the gentleman is shading marquetry pieces with hot sand.
Of course it is a staged scene as he is resting his hand on the edge of the pan which should be hot enough to do serious damage.
I have been planning to (read: procrastinating) build one of these french benches for a couple of years now. I find the functionality argument from your first book impossible to refute, and there is little else of much concern for a workbench in my book.
If there’s one thing that would cause me to start right in tomorrow, it would be finding a slab. Somehow I think I might be too cheap for what I find though, and I’m not really sure where I should be looking for one (I’m in eastern MA). My current plan is trolling the sale palettes at a somewhat-nearby lumberyard until something heavy, hard, and 8′ long shows up that I can laminate together (yes, I know any wood will do). But reading your words that finding a slab isn’t that hard, makes me feel inspired to take a crack at it.
Anyway, the point is this: I would love to be convinced that finding a workbench-worthy slab is actually easy to find (and dare I say, affordable).
Ask around – there is probably some guy with a portable sawmill in your area that would custom cut a slab for you. Check on the web.
I love my Roubo. When I finished flattening the top, I kissed it. I know I built the right style when I bump into it and I’m the one that moves, not my bench. The only thing it can’t do is make me a turkey sandwich.
Was it a French kiss?
Not to brag, but I got a lot farther than that on my first date with the French…
I have been planning to (read: procrastinating) build one of these french benches for a couple of years now. I find the functionality argument from your first book impossible to refute, and there is little else of much concern for a workbench in my book.
If there’s one thing that would cause me to start right in tomorrow, it would be finding a slab. Somehow I think I might be too cheap for what I find though, and I’m not really sure where I should be looking for one (I’m in eastern MA). My current plan is trolling the sale palettes at a somewhat-nearby lumberyard until something heavy, hard, and 8′ long shows up that I can laminate together (yes, I know any wood will do). But reading your words that finding a slab isn’t that hard, makes me feel inspired to take a crack at it.
Anyway, the point is this: I would love to be convinced that finding a workbench-worthy slab is actually easy to find (and dare I say, affordable).
Craigslist is your friend.
Here in the Midwest, I can always find bench-worth slabs for the picking.
Old wood is good. And Massachusetts has a lot of old wood.
First glance suggests you are right about craigslist–I don’t know why I didn’t think of getting wood that way before. Time to start trawling! Thanks for the tip.
Chris, when are you going to say something about the criss cross you ordered? I installed mine several weeks ago and it works like a charm. I had to hand mortise into the leg which took some time, other than that, it was easy per the good instructions.
I haven’t gotten to finish the installation!
It’s on the docket for next week now that my tool chest fits in my car. Whew.
Indeed, craigslist is the way to go. I’m also in Massachusetts. It’s easy to find common grade hardwood lumber on craigslist here for $1-2/bdft. The oak for my roubo cost me $100. If interested, you can click my name to see pictures of my bench.
I don’t understand why people get religious about benches. Don’t think too much. Keep it simple
and don’t forget the mass.
I quite liked the french bench. I must be doing something wrong.
In the past I have used torsion box top on saw horses, a poor attempt at a Shaker bench and now my Roubo inspired French bench, and nothing compares to my present bench. So for me I have gone French and I can’t go back!
Tous saluent le banc français!
(All hail the French bench)
I’m going to disagree one little bit. I don’t see how slabs are always so much better than a laminate top. I’ve come across a handful of them and they all needed as much work to get them bench ready as doing a glue up.
Slabs just look cooler. They are not better functionally.
That is very true.
The only downside to my french bench is it takes a good 45 minutes to put on my undershirt, shirt, ruffle, cuffs, waistcoat, coat, breeches, stockings and shoes before I can toast my marquetry. Some nights its too much of a bother.
Touché!
I built a work bench once, 40 years ago. I satill use it daily. It even has a shelf underneath the top. It was made out of 2×4’s I stole from a construction site across the street. Nothing fancy Just a good solid work bench. I have made some addtions and tweaks to it over the years. I put some 1×6’s around 3 sides of the outside so tools and pen,s pencils and other things of such ilk would not roll off onto the floor when I casuallytassed them on the bench. I also bored some holes for bench dogs. It is 7 feet long, 31 inches deep and 3′ 1 inch tall and weighs 554 pounds
Holy Crap! How many 2×4’s weigh 554 pounds?
about 75 2xx4x8 hemolck
I forgot to mention The 6 inch bench grinder and a 6 inch n=metal vice I placed at opposite ends
What is also balderdash is the notion that the continental style bench, generally speaking, and the tailvise specifically, only became common after the onset of the machine age of woodworking and that it is therefore inferior to Roubo and Nicholson style benches for hand-prepared stock.
Some bloggers are knocking any bench that is not their design. Make it simple and out of cheap wood, they say. Anything else is a waste of time and money. Crap I reply. My benches are neither cheap nor simple. Hard maple, ash, mahogany and walnut. They look good and cost a pretty penny. Not bragging, just stating a fact. I also use my benches. Yes they look good, but they have dings and scratches from use. I just like my shop furniture to look good. Makes me feel good every time I go into my shop. Isn’t that what a hobby is about? Enjoying the time you spend doing it? If someone enjoys making their shop look good, why is that a bad thing? If you are not making furniture for a living, then make whatever the heck you want as long as you enjoy it. I have no agenda. Their is no master woodworking bucket list of projects I must do before I die. I flit from one project to the next as it tickles my fancy. I built benches because I needed them but also because I wanted to. I built a campaign chair because it looked cool (thanks Chris). I liked the leather working so I got more and more tools and made a Saddleback Leather style bag. Now I am making a poker table. For Christmas I made my mom a custom Noah’s Ark with all the little animals made out of exotic woods. Who knows what is next.
Do what makes you happy. Build the bench you want and can afford. If that is Borg lumber on the cheap, great. Make it the best you can and use it to make something you want to make. If you can afford exotics for your bench, then by all means go for it and enjoy. Moral is make something and enjoy the process. Carve a spoon (I just did my first out of Koa I brought back from Hawaii). Was a fun project. Build a mallet. Why? Because you might need one and they are a kick to make.
It is fine to want to build a house full of furniture, but it is also fine to just want to build “stuff”. I feel like a little kid, but one who has a really cool set of tools. I make everything from sets for the high school drama dept to pieces for my wife to use for the model homes she decorates.
I know I am rambling a bit, but the whole “build the proper bench or else” attitude kinda grates on my nerves. Chris has always said, build the bench you want and need. He has reviewed the major styles in his books and given the pros and cons for each. Decide what works for you and go. The Roubo just happens to be the “little black dress” of the woodworking world. My God, did I just say that? Well it is. You can do just about anything with a Roubo style bench. But the main thing is to enjoy woodworking. So build a bench, then build stuff. Whatever stuff you want. On whatever bench you want.
French benches are better, because they surrender to my whims.
Bench envy….. The only person who should care is the person using the bench, the rest of the discussion is like discussing the mating habits of northern twits on the lost isle of sarcasia.
I just built a Roubo patterned after the drawings in your book. I just made it a foot shorter. It was a great experience and I thoroughly enjoy the bench
The person who would criticize a Roubo has never used a Roubo.
I had not really noticed before, how the chisel racks on the backs of the benches are guarded by skirt boards so that your chisels don’t snag your coattails. A good safety feature if your bench is not against a wall!
I noticed that, too. When I put up a chisel rack it will look like this.
A proper French reply to a Roubo hater:
HATER: That bench in Roubo was intended for joiners, people who did house carpentry. Not for cabinetwork. You have chosen the wrong bench to build.
SCHWARZ: You don’t frighten us, English pig-dogs! Go and boil your bottoms, sons of a silly person. I blow my nose at you, so-called Arthur-king, you and all your silly English kaniggets. Thppppt! Now go away or I shall taunt you a second time-a!
I have a Nicholson, see you at Agincourt!
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers — joined in the serious business of keeping our food, shelter, clothing and loved ones from combining with oxygen. K Vonnegut
My Roubo bench has allowed me to become a better woodworker. I fell in love with hold fasts and a leg vise watching Roy back in the Eighties. I thought the holdfast was the thing to have. I cannot believe it took me thirty years to build a bench that uses them. Thanks for writing the book Chris and no way would I ever part with my bench. Mine is made out of Zapote Wood, dense, heavy, and reddish in color. I love it. Really, if I ever move it will be the first thing on the truck.
I don’t want to split hairs, but for historical accuracy I suggest, Roubo’s answer to someone who questioned the suitability of his bench for cabinet making was probably: “Chèr monsieur, je vous trouve trés emmerdent. Si vous me ne laisser pas en paix, je trouverais une nouvelle maniere d’emploier le servant”. Or roughly translated, “That’s bullcrap – if you don’t leave me alone I am going to find a new place for my holdfast”
Were bowsaws used in Roubo’s time to cut dovetails? Are bowsaws used in our times to cut dovetails? I’m a little unclear what Frank Klausz used when he does fine work and another great lover of the bowsaw, Tage Frid, seems to have liked a gents saw for ‘tailing.
(The half-witty of this post is writing something almost completely off topic)
Hi Chris and all,
Not to change the subject (for the record I’m on the anti-dogma side of the question of how to use any tool, bench, or technique) but I can’t help but notice the final Roubo plate in your post is illustrating a type of vise I’ve never seen before. It looks like a cross between a Moxon twin-screw and a leg-vise-type mechanism turned horizontal. Anyone ever use/build anything like that before?
It piques my interest because I’m on the verge of finishing up my own slab-and-big-legs bench and I’ve considered making a Moxon vise add-on. The attractive thing about the device pictured in the plate is the single handle. I’ve never used a Moxon, but I’ve always wondered how you hold the panel you’re clamping in the vise while turning two handles. Let’s keep it clean, please.
Anyone have any (informed) thoughts on that thing?
There is quite a bit of play in the Moxon. You hold the material and tighten one side, then switch hands and tighten the other side. I usually end up touching each screw at least twice before I’m satisfied with the hold. I may not be informed, as I only get to use a Moxon style while a guest on someone elses bench.
I believe that vise in the last plate to be exactly a shoulder vise turned horizontal. But I have no knowledge beyond my own assumptions through observation.
Thanks for the perspective tsstahl. But I’m having a hard time imagining how that might be a mistakenly-drawn shoulder vise, unless I’m confused about what I’m looking at in the drawing.
It looks to me like a horizontal chop applying clamping pressure in a direction perpendicular to the length of the bench via a screw on one side and some sort of pinned parallel guide on the other side, with the work held between the guide and the screw in the same way a a twin-screw vise holds the work between the screws. Am I reading that drawing wrong?
Regardless, now I’m twice as curious and wondering if you could make a twin-screw vise with only one screw and a guide/pin system and if it would be worth a flip. Seems like you’d get a pivoting/pinching action and maybe clamping pressure would be too uneven along the length of the workpiece? Anyhow, I’ve never seen the like before, and I happen to have one extra wooden screw and nut assembly lying around the shop . . .
I returned to the thread earlier today to correct myself, and replied to you in the process. The plate 10 above is NOT the plate with the mistake shown in the The Woodwrights Shop episode with Chris and the Moxon vise. I see exactly what you see, a shoulder vise rotated 90 degrees clockwise.
My Roubo bench has allowed me to become a better woodworker. I fell in love with hold fasts and a leg vise after having uilt my ench. I thought the holdfast was the thing to have. I cannot believe it took me twenty years to build a bench that uses them. My original bench out of hard maple only had dog holes. The only hold fasts that seem to work for me are the ones made by Gramercy Tools. Thanks for writing the book Chris and I followed your recipe almost to a tee and no way would I ever part with my bench. Mine is made out of southern yellow pine, dense, heavy. The top ended up being too nice .I ended up building an MDF cover with matching dog and hold fast holes I really like it. You can see pictures of it on my site http://www.jacalawoodworks.com