If I could write 10 more books like “Ingenious Mechanicks,” I would be a happy guy. The book is exactly what I thought I would be doing as a writer and woodworker:
- Find an ancient workbench or tool that has been forgotten (such as the Roman workbench)
- Travel to foreign countries to research these kinds of workbenches. Find that there is still a 2,000-year-old example in a museum basement
- Visit it. Measure it. Get to pick it up
- Build a reproduction and work on it to find out how it works.
That is the script for “Ingenious Mechanicks.” But there’s more. We flushed thousands of dollars away trying to translate a 1505 Germanic codex on early workbenches. I went into a volcano (the one that destroyed the earliest known workbenches). And I got to sort through thousands of old paintings to gather the clues for how these old benches were used.
“Ingenious Mechanicks” is one part travelogue and one part experimental archaeology. Add to that the fact that the low Roman workbench has never gone extinct – it has just become invisible to our modern eyes.
During the last decade I’ve built dozens of these low benches for our shop and for other woodworkers. They are, in many ways, the perfect workbench for the modern era.
They are low, portable and fit anywhere. If you don’t have room for a workshop, a low workbench can serve as a coffee table during the day and a workbench at night. They are portable – you can throw one in the back of a car and take it on vacation.
And they open the world of woodworking to people who struggle with tall workbenches. Since writing the book, I’ve seen lots of woodworkers with mobility limitations embrace the form.
But most of all, you get to sit down when you use them. These benches change the ergonomics for many operations. They allow you to conserve your energy. And they are great for sawing up stock – or even eating your lunch.
“Ingenious Mechanicks” is the slowest-selling book of my career. But it is my favorite. And based on all the Roman workbenches I now see popping up in shops all over the world, I know that the book’s time is coming.
And every day that I sit on my Roman bench and start to work, I know that time is soon.
— Christopher Schwarz
They’re good for us old guys too.