After I told Suzanne Ellison that we had 11 different workbenches here at the storefront, she (perhaps calling me out as a liar) suggested we do quick video tours of them. So, with the help of my daughter Katherine, here’s the first one.
This is the so-called $175 Workbench I built for a 2001 issue of Popular Woodworking. This poor bench has seen so many alterations and experiments, I feel bad for it. But the bench has remained a champ, and I still love working on it.
These short videos are a quick tour with my current thoughts on each particular bench. All the benches are in our shop for one reason: They work. People regularly ask me to rank-order the benches I’ve built, from my favorite to the black sheep. That’s not possible because each one of these benches was built to deal with a certain set of circumstances.
The $175 Workbench was built to see how little money it took to make a functioning bench. And to prove that construction timbers are an excellent bench-building material.
Here are some links to items discussed in the video:
The single-point planing stop is one of my most useful bench workholding appliances (the other two are a holdfast and my leg vise). There are lots of commercial ones available, including those from Tools for Working Wood and Benchcrafted. I like blacksmith-made ones. Not because they function better (they don’t) but because I like the way they look.
Many woodworkers are terrified of cutting a huge mortise in their benchtop. Don’t be. It’s easy work and is worth the trouble. Here’s how I do it.
The wooden section of my planing stop is 3” x 3” x 12”, a historical size. So I lay out the location of the mortise with knife lines and blue tape. Then I chop the perimeter with a wide chisel to keep my opening crisp during the whole process.
I try to drill out as much waste as possible. Here I’m using a 3/4” WoodOwl bit. These chew through benchtops better than any bit I’ve used.
Then I use a jigsaw to remove the big chunks.
Then I nibble up to my chisel line all around the mortise. This is a key step. The saw kerfs break up the waste, allowing it to be easily pared away. And the kerfs serve as a guide to being 90°. When the kerfs disappear, the mortise wall is 90°.
Then I pare away the corduroy-like bits of wooden waste on the walls.
I don’t have any 3”-thick stock. So I glued up the planing stop from two pieces of 8/4 oak. Then I sawed and planed the blank until it was a tight fit in the mortise.
Fitting a blacksmith planing stop looks harder than it really is. The tapered shaft calls for a tapered hole (that is, if you cannot heat up the shaft in a forge and burn it into the block). Measure across the corners of the tapered shaft – that’s the largest dimension.
The biggest dimension is at the top of the planing stop. In my case it was 1”. So I first drilled a 1” hole that was about two-thirds the length of the shaft. Then I measured the shaft at the bottom, corner to corner. And I chose a bit that was about .01” smaller.
If you don’t have a bit that suits the shaft, grind down the corners to match an existing bit.
The goal is that the tapered shaft should wedge in the bottom of the hole. Yet it won’t split the wood. Too loose is better than too tight. That’s because “too loose” can be fixed with epoxy.
Hammer the planing stop into its hole. Then knock the whole thing into your benchtop.
If it gets loose over time, shim the mortise or planing stop with veneer. If it’s too tight, remove the stop (you might need a sledge) and plane it down. After a year or so, it will be tuned up and things won’t move too much.
My oldest daughter, Madeline, has been hard at work in graduate school in Pittsburgh and hasn’t had much time for selling stickers and the like. But recently she really wanted a hooded sweatshirt with the Lost Art Press beehive logo to wear while winter ends.
She made some using American Apparel hoodies and they looked good. So she (with my permission) is now selling them in two colors (black and dark grey) through her etsy store. They’re $55 plus shipping. Printed in America.
Note these are American Apparel, so they run a little slim. Here’s a sizing chart.
If you’ve ever visited our storefront, you might have noticed that we wallpaper the men’s room with all manner of woodworking paraphernalia, from posters to old advertisements to poems.
I haven’t put anything up in the women’s room except a portrait of Juliette Caron. Every time I think to hang something in there, I ask Megan: “Is this too creepy for the women’s room?” And the look on her face says: Yes.
Case in point this vintage German newspaper I just purchased after a tip from Suzo “the Saucy Indexer” Ellison. Do I want this guy smiling at me when I do my business? Probably not, but it’s going in the men’s room anyway.
I hope (government mandates permitting) that you can come see the bathrooms for your own self. We still hope to open the doors to the public on June 13, 2020, for a special open day.
What’s going to be special? Blemished books. We are trucking 14 boxes of damaged and returned books to the storefront for the occasion. They will be 50 percent off of retail – cash only. (No, we cannot put them online. Sorry.) I don’t yet know what titles we’ll have. When I get them here I’ll post a list. But I do know we have a significant number of the now-discontinued “Book of Plates.”
We’ll also have our full line of new books and all the Crucible tools. We can take any form of payment for new books and tools – cash, check or credit.
So get healthy and hope for the best. If June doesn’t work, we’ll reschedule the open day for as soon as it is safe for everyone.
— Christopher Schwarz
P.S. What’s the image above about? Not sure. The blocks of text below it are from an unrelated article. The caption on the image is, according to a translation from Rudy Everts, basically, “When the cat’s away, the mice will play.” Even so, I’m not hanging this one above the Lost Art Press urinal.
If you want a vest, don’t delay. These are time-consuming to make, so this is likely the last batch until fall 2020. They are worth the wait. I wear mine almost every day and have thoroughly broken the thing in. It’s soft, pliable and impregnated with sawdust. I love it. Be sure to measure yourself before ordering to avoid disappointment.
We have had more luck scaling up production of pinch rods. But there is a tremendous amount of hand-finishing with these (like our lump hammers), so we’re still struggling a bit to keep up with demand.
