In a couple hundred years, if people use children’s books to understand our culture, I think they will conclude – after reading Dr. Seuss – that we smoked a lot of weed.
Or, if they read the Little Golden books, that we were boring blowhards.
Anyway, Jeff Burks turned up an interesting children’s book on the trades that is in both French and English called “Le Petit Musée Des Enfants – Les Métiers.” Or “The Children’s Little Museum – the Trades.”
The book is undated, but Jeff and I suspect it is a 20th-century example. There is lots of good stuff in here – including the opportunity to improve your French skills. After editing Roubo, I read the book’s section on the menuisier without really thinking about it being in French. C’est bon!
The joiner’s shop is a great image – probably the best one in the book. The bench is clearly German, and the planes are definitely later than the ones shown in Roubo. Plus, check out the ubiquitous clamps on an interesting lamination – looks like the ground for a table with a curved and veneered apron to me.
Anyway, download the book and read it to your kids. And hope they don’t want to become tinners. He’s a creepy-looking bugger.
Le Petit Musée Des Enfants – Les Métiers
— Christopher Schwarz
I like the fact that the shop looks like it’s being used. Kinda like mine was this last year. Not neat as a pin and no shavings/sawdust everywhere.
That was fun to read, Chris.
Thanks,
Mike Dyer
About benches, René Rombauts makes a distinction in 1966 in tail vices between “une presse arrière française” and “presse allemande” depending on the closed or open structure of the vice.
Would it be possible to separate the English and French versions so that we can more easily print it out double sided in one or the other? Or just a straight English file?
I’m not mono-lingual (nor entirely multilingual…) but French is not one of my languages.
while I’m not sure about possible copyright issues with changing the PDF file, it shouldn’t be a problem to download the file and then use a program like ‘pdf sam’ (pdf split and merge) to turn the pages into single PDFs and then either print them separately or rejoin them in whatever order you prefer.
Look at that big Roubo hold fast. And a wooden screw tail/wagon vise. Very cool illustration, obviously from life. Too much correct detail.
This is a great opportunity for me to try, once again, to learn the French language. Unfortunately, I didn’t pay too much attention in French class, a great many years ago in school. The only French phrase I can remember is: “Bone jower messy mees, come and tell me who?” At least here the subject matter is interesting enough to keep my attention!
About the weed, they would be correct.