I’ve seen a blurry photograph of a detail of Chester Cornett’s chairmaking workbench and read Michael Owen Jones’s description of the bench in “The Craftsman of the Cumberlands.” At the time I thought: That sounds like a Roman-style workbench.
And yesterday I found out that I was correct.
Brendan Gaffney and I visited the storeroom of the Mathers Museum of World Culture in Bloomington, Ind., to view artifacts related to Cornett. And we got more than we bargained for. In addition to some of Cornett’s traditional chairs and rockers, the Mathers also had Cornett’s incredible “bookcase rocker” (more on that from Brendan in a future entry), a chair made by Cornett’s grandfather, Cornett’s worn-down Pexto drawknife, his worn-out dumbhead shavehorse and his workbench.
Located on the top rack in the storeroom, the workbench is a segment of a log with four staked legs. The workholding consists of three pegs that Chester could wedge his work between – exactly as described by M. Hulot in his 18th-century book on turning and chairmaking.
I’m pretty sure that Cornett didn’t read Hulot. So it is an amazing thing to see this low Roman-style workbench made by a 20th century woodworker who lived in the wilds of Eastern Kentucky. Did he come up with the idea for the bench himself? Was it something he learned from his family members who also were chairmakers?
The bench is 11” wide at the top and the benchtop is 10” from the ground. The log segment is 4” thick at its thickest point and about 62” long. The four legs are about 1” to 1-1/4” thick and wide x 8” long (minus their tenons).
So this is just another data point showing that low workbenches, as described in “Ingenious Mechanicks,” haven’t disappeared.
During the last few months we have released a lot of material, including two books, a chore coat and the return of five T-shirt designs. We never intended all these new products to come out at once (with more in the wings).
This happened because we don’t operate like a typical publishing business that releases books timed with the seasons of the year. Instead, we release books when there is nothing more we can do to them to make them better. As a result, we have both dry spells and this current deluge of excellent material, including our latest book.
We have just sent off “Cut & Dried: A Woodworker’s Guide to Timber Technology” by Richard Jones to the printer, and it is scheduled to ship in mid to late May. This book was a massive undertaking by Richard, who sought to explain everything a serious woodworker needs to know about wood in language and terms intended for the artisan.
There are, of course, lots of excellent scientific papers and tomes available that explain wood as a construction material. Most of these resources are written for wood scientists. Others are written for project managers at large construction firms. Still others are aimed at the large cabinetshop that deals with sheet goods almost exclusively.
“Cut & Dried” is not like that. Richard has spent his entire adult life as a professional woodworker in the U.K. and the U.S., and has worked at the highest levels of craftsmanship. His goal with “Cut & Dried” was to explain an extremely complex and technical topic – wood technology – in terms that any serious woodworker could easily grasp. And he skipped the stuff for making buildings, bridges and plywood boxes.
This book is massive – 9″ x 12″, hardbound, with 336 pages on heavy coated stock. The entire book is in full color with a full-color dust jacket. As a result, this book is $65, a price that includes domestic shipping.
If you order during this pre-publication period, you will receive an instant pdf download of the book, which is searchable and (of course) portable. After the book is released, the pdf will cost $32.50.
“Cut & Dried” is intended to become a reference for any shop that deals with solid wood. It is carefully organized so you can find the answers to problems at the bench, or questions at the drafting table.
Here is the detailed Table of Contents, which makes that point better than any blog entry from me:
As always, all our books are produced entirely in the U.S., using the highest-quality materials. Our books’ signatures are sewn for longevity – we don’t offer glued-together pages spit out by a print-on-demand copier. We work with printing plants that care deeply about the survival of the printed word in this age of cheap information.
One more point: We keep our books in print as long as authors are willing to do so. Every standard book we’ve released in the last 11 years is still in print. So even if you can’t afford “Cut & Dried” today, it will be here in 18 months (unlike a traditional publisher) for you to purchase at that time.
— Christopher Schwarz
P.S. Numerous retailers, including Lee Valley Tools and Classic Hand Tools in the U.K. have expressed interest in selling this title. So look to those retailers if you are in Canada or the U.K.
Hey kids: Don’t eat soft wax. But you can buy it for your woodworking here.
Katy and her boyfriend, Michael (at right), are taking time off from their busy spring break to make some soft wax for you. As always, it’s available in 4 oz. tins. Every tin is handmade by Katy (and with Michael the very polite trainee), packaged in a tin and shipped out entirely by teenagers.
It’s awesome stuff for the insides of your casework. It is great for leatherwork and renewing finishes that look dried out (our real estate agent uses it on old trimwork in houses). You can make it yourself – we’ve published the recipe for everyone to use. But it’s not made with the same sass and panache that come from the Katy Schwarz.
Also, she uses primo ingredients. Cosmetic-grade beeswax. Domestic turpentine. And teen sass. Get some here before it’s gone.
You might look at the photo above and say: “Schwarz is a slob. Look at the mess of tools piled in his tills.” I don’t see things that way – open tills allow you great flexibility. The only problem is if you’re someone who doesn’t like their gravy to touch their peas.
Public service announcement: Gravy is good food.
When I look at the photo above I see something different that makes me crazy. Look at the soiled and oily area in the middle of the tills. Here’s a closer look.
Yup, those darkened bronze pulls on the tills are like lederhosen on a lizard – totally useless. When you work in a chest with tills you grab them by the middle to move them. Why? Because after a few months of use, your tightly fit tills begin to rack. It’s almost impossible to prevent. Each till is 8” wide x 36” long, so it doesn’t take much for them to jam if you grab them by one pull or by a corner.
(Duncan Phyfe had a novel solution to this problem, which I’ll discuss some day.)
Go you grab the till with one hand to move it in place and use your other hand to grab the tool you need. The pulls are for show.
But that doesn’t mean you should do a crap job of fitting your tills in the chest.
I fit the till bottoms first, then I build the dovetailed tills a smidge smaller than the perfectly fit bottoms so I don’t have to plane anything to fit.
Today I fit the six till bottoms for these two chests. It’s fussy shooting-plane work. A shaving too far results in a rattling, trembling bottom. Strive to get the bottoms moving forward and back with just a finger and without the aid of wax. That’s when you can call it done.
And here ends the worse SEO’d article I’ve written in a long time. Sorry in particular to the people who were referred here from termblingbottom.com.
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