“The Anarchist’s Workbench” is covered under a Creative Commons license that allows you to use the information any way you wish for non-commercial purposes.
I am thrilled to see people take advantage of this license. Here are two (no, three) good examples that also help the woodworking community at large.
‘The Anarchist’s Workbench’ Audiobook
Ray Deftereos of the Hand Tool Book Review podcast did a remarkable thing. He recorded an audiobook of the entire work. Every chapter. You can download and listen to them for free here at SoundCloud.
I am most appreciative of Ray’s work because this helps reach people who don’t learn as well via the written word, or those who have imparied eyesight, or parents are so busy with their families that reading a book takes a back seat to diapers and homework.
Ray does a great job in general in reviewing books on handwork. And he’s not all afraid to cut a book to ribbons when it deserves it. Check out his podcast and subscribe here.
3D Model of the Workbench
Jeremiah Dillashaw of Sojourner Works has made a great 3D model of the bench you can download. It’s a .3dm file he made in Rhino, which will open in Fusion and other programs. You can read more about the file here and download it (for free, of course).
If you know of other resources that use the book and might help others, please let us know. Oh, I almost forgot. The most Banjo-tastic Mattias Hallin is documenting the bench’s construction process on his blog here. He’s doing it all by hand, so it should be fun.
— Christopher Schwarz
Oh.
Thank you, Chris, for the mention – although I’m not altogether sure I belong in such comparatively august company as that of Ray Deftereos and Jeremiah Dillashaw …
Also, for the sake of clarity (and honesty), I should say straight away that it will be mainly by hand: a drill press is definitely going to be involved in certain jobs. Also for clarity, I’m not doing by hand for any reasons of philosophy or ideology. It’s just that I have the hand tools to do it with to (ahem) hand, but not the machines.
And a wee warning: the blog is, alas, in Swedish. Not the photos, though. 😉
Just one more thing: more banjo to the people (and more people to the banjo)! 🙂
Cheers and thanks again, Chris!
Mattias
Thanks for making this available! I’ve been working on my bench after finally moving the slab from the garage to the basement (where it sat for nearly six months after the drive back from Lindsey Caudle’s in NC). Hopefully I can get it finished in the next few months!
Oh wow, the audiobook sounds great! You hit the cut nail on the head. As a father of 2 who is going back to school for a degree program and simultaneously studying for work related certifications, reading another book is pretty difficult to manage. But audiobooks are perfect for the 20-30 minute commutes. Thanks Ray and Chris!
Well, I guessed Danish only because I’ve friends… Looking forward to following banjo’s build in pictures. I built the bench last fall / winter when I retired from behind a desk. Great fun and educational. BTW, Chris, the book is super. Set on my old bench all the months I was building the new. Thanks for bringing the book to market those years ago. Helped me keep most of my sanity in retirement’s early days and it’s replaced that silly old corporate desk in my daily life now. If I can continue to get 4+ hours a day at the bench, we’ll, I might just live forever!
Can the Swedish blog be translated into English?
If you mean, will the author (me, that is) translate it into English, I’m afraid that is unlikely to happen – the forum were I’m posting is Swedish, so I don’t think it’d be appreciated there if I were to switch to English, nor do I have any plans to also write about it elsewhere where English would be an option. ‘Tis sorry I am – I went for that forum mainly because I’ve been active on it for several years, and now that I’ve started there, I’m kinda loath to go elsewhere.
However I believe that various browsers these days are able to provide at least a rough-and-ready translation, usually by calling upon Google Translate or some other form of machine translation. I just tried this myself in Google Chrome and it came up with at least understandable English.
Sure, some of the more technical terms (and various Swedish colloquialisms) are not translated very well or are turned into more or less gobbledygook. For example, the Swedish word for a hand or panel saw is fogsvans, which we’ve borrowed in a bastardized form from the German Fuchsschwanz, a word that literally means “fox tail”. One can sort of see why: there is a kind of resemblance of shape betwen a fox’s tail and a hand saw.
Apparently, though, Google Translate doesn’t know the Swedish word fogsvans and instead of “hand saw” gives “joint tail”, by splitting the term into component parts that it does know, namely fog = “joint” and svans = “tail”.
Still, I’d say that the gist is there, and in conjunction with the images ought to be decipherable, at least to another woodworker.
Cheers,
Mattias
Just in case it would be of help to anyone, I further checked how those pages in Swedish could be machine translated, if one’s browser does not have the facility inbuilt, and found out that it can easily be done through Google Translate: just copy the link of the web page you want translated, paste that link into the original language box, set original and target languages as appropriate, and the same link will appear as a clickable one in the target language box. Click on that new link, and you’ll be taken to a translated version of the web page.
And, for further ease of understanding, here is a short list of terms I’ve found that GT didn’t manage very well:
hyvelbänk, lit. “planing bench”, GT gives planer bench, should be workbench
klyva, lit. “split”, GT gives split, should (ususally) be rip here
klyvtandad, lit. “split-toothed”, GT gives split-toothed, should be filed rip
fogsvans (from German for “fox tail”), component words lit. “joint” and “tail”, GT gives joint tail, should be handsaw
nå, lit. either “reach” or “well”, GT opts for reach, should be well as in “well now, next up is …”
rikta, lit. either “aim”, “direct” or “joint”, GT opts for aim or direct, should be joint
rätskiva, lit. straight disc”, GT gives *straightening disc or straight plate, should be straight edge
kort rubank, no literal translation, GT gives short rubank, should be jack plane
lång rubank, no literal translation, GT gives long rubank, should be jointer
vindlattor, lit. “wind lattices”, GT gives wind bars, should be winding sticks
vinkelhake, lit. “angle hook”, GT gives angle bracket, should be try square
ämne, lit. “subject”, “topic”, “matter” or “substance”, “material”, or “blank”, GT opts for subject or topic, should be blank
strykmått, component words lit. “ironing” or “striking” or “coating (with paint)” and “measure”, GT gives ironing measure, should be marking gage
skrubbhyvel, lit. “scrub plane”, GT gives scrubber, should be scrub plane
knast, lit. “knot (in wood)” (can also be an insult!), GT gives knob, should be knot
Finally, the classic Swedish-English Technical Dictionary by Einar Engström is available for free online here.
Hope this helps – machine translation still is what it is, i.e. far from perfect.
Cheers,
Mattias
I listen to all manner of podcasts and audio books at work and on the commute. Perfect! I’ve got the physical book, but haven’t had the time to get all the way through it, so this will be great!
And none of these alternate forms would exist without the Creative Commons license. When the FSF started the GNU project, many thought you couldn’t make money with it. Later the term Open Source came about for less restrictive software licenses. Creative Commons very likely was influenced by those licenses.
Red Hat, Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Amazon, IBM and many other software companies have been using, contributing to, creating and making money with Open Source for decades now. It’s no longer the exception for software, it’s the prefered way to develop software.
I’ve enjoyed seeing more authors using Creative Commons and am looking forward to more. Thank You!