Don Williams and I are deep into the guts of his book on H.O. Studley’s tool cabinet and workbench – doing everything we can to get the book out in March 2015 – just in time for the exhibit of the chest at Handworks.
We have found a hole in the visual record of the cabinet that we would like to fill. The cabinet was on display at the Smithsonian as part of the exhibit “Engines of Change: The American Industrial Revolution 1790-1860” in a vignette with several other tool chests for various trades. Though the exhibit lasted almost 20 years (late 1986 to mid-2006), the Studley tool cabinet was included for perhaps only a third of that time, probably 1994-1999.
We know that thousands of woodworkers saw the cabinet during this exhibit. But we do not have a photo of the cabinet in the display. Do you?
If so, please send an e-mail to Don Williams. If your photo fits the bill it could end up in our forthcoming book on the cabinet and workbench.
If a students shows me a tool during class and asks: “Should I s….”
I cut them off. “Yes.”
I have found that when you ask yourself if a tool is dull, the poor pathetic thing is way past being dull and is on its way to getting chipped and trashed. I think you need to sharpen an edge before it actually occurs to you to sharpen that edge. Sounds impossible, but it’s not.
I sharpen a lot, and it is part of the rhythm of my day. As I finishing planing up panels with a jointer plane, I stop to sharpen the tool before I take on the parts for the lid – even if the plane is performing well.
When I chop dovetails, I touch up the tool between each corner of a carcase – even if the chisel is keen and cutting well.
This is the opposite of the way I was taught to evaluate edges. I was told: “The surface of the wood will tell you how your edge is performing. If the wood looks bad, it’s time to sharpen.”
While that makes sense on one level, I don’t want the wood to ever look bruised or scraped or chunked out. So I sharpen the smoothing plane several times a day if this is the day I’m smoothing things.
This approach not only ensures my parts will look their best, it also removes most concerns about what steel your tool is made of. If you keep an edge wicked sharp (and nothing less) then it really doesn’t matter if A4 steel holds an edge longer than Q4.
After building 27 Roorkee chairs myself and teaching students to build 35 more, I’m ready to make a DVD to share the turning, joinery and leatherwork necessary to build one of these campaign-style chairs.
I’ll be filming the DVD at F+W in about a week. I don’t have a release date for the project, but the company is fast – very fast – at editing these videos and bringing them to market.
This weekend I’m prepping all the parts to make two chairs so we have parts to work on that are at all different stages of the construction process. This prep work is probably overkill because I can now build one of the these chairs in about two days. But I was a Boy Scout and we learned to “be prepared” (in my troop that meant “be prepared to have your tent urinated on by bullies”).
One of the fun aspects of this project is I’ve asked Jason Thigpen at Texas Heritage Woodworks to hand-stitch stitch the arms for this matched pair of chairs, which are going to a customer right after Thanksgiving. Jason makes a lot of cool stuff, including shop aprons and tool rolls. I plan to order an apron from his as soon as I wear out my current one.
The DVD will be aimed at the general woodworker who has never turned or done leatherwork. We’ll be using only one turning tool to make all the chair parts on a midi-size lathe. The leatherwork will be done with basic hand tools – mostly a utility knife and a rotary punch.
And we’re definitely going to cover finishing with shellac and wax – I’m going to make the case we should show how to do it with an inexpensive HVLP system.
If you can’t wait for the DVD, the complete instructions to build the chair are covered in my latest book, “Campaign Furniture.”
When designing a French workbench (or any other style, really), one of the most common hang-ups for new woodworkers is determining how much the benchtop should overhang the base at the ends of the bench.
When I design a workbench that doesn’t have an end vise, I usually use an overhang of 12” to 15”, and I make the overhang equal at both ends of the bench. Simple. And it looks good.
When you add an end vise into the equation, some bench designers become a bit uncertain. Is that cantilever too much? And when you are building a smaller workbench – say 6’ long – then real worry begins to set in. Will the bench be stable?
Here’s how I go about proportioning things.
With An End Vise on a Big Bench If your bench is 8’ or longer things are pretty simple when adding an end vise. Determine how much overhang you need to accommodate the end vise, usually somewhere between 13” and 20”. Use the same overhang on both ends of the bench and you are pretty much done.
Because of the thick top of the French bench, the cantilever isn’t a problem. A 4”- to 6”-thick top is plenty thick enough to resist gravity and the weight of the vise.
If, however, you are making a short bench, things get complicated.
With An End Vise on a Short Bench Here’s a typical problem: You want to put a Benchcrafted tail vise on a 6’-long bench. You need about 19” overhang on one end. If you made the overhangs symmetrical – 19” at both ends – then your workbench’s base is only 34” long. That’s ridiculous and unstable.
What do you do?
One solution is to use a small overhang on the end opposite the end vise. This is the solution used by the modern European-style workbench with its massive tail vise. This solution works just fine, though the bench loses its symmetry. But hey, it’s a bench, not fine furniture.
The other downside is that the bench – like European workbenches – becomes less stable. If you or your fat friend plops down on the cantilever, then you might get an unexpected thrill ride. I have seen this happen dozens of times, especially at Woodworking in America when people are setting up benches in the Marketplace.
Or Use No End Vise If you are willing to eschew an end vise, your bench will be less expensive and easier to design. Plus, you can easily use A.-J. Roubo’s dimensions and proportions to draw a bench that is – to my eye – beautiful.
At the top of this blog entry is a detail from Plate 11 from “l’Art du menuisier” on which I have overlaid the known dimensions from Roubo’s text. I do not think that everything in his drawing is perfectly to scale. However, I do think that Roubo is showing a 9’-long bench, which he says is the standard size. If the bench is indeed 9’ long, then the planing stop, the legs and the stretchers are all correctly scaled and match his text. (The mallet is a different matter).
If you want to follow Roubo’s drawing, then make the overhang 12” or a little longer.
One side note: What if you are making a 12’-long bench? Do you need a third set of legs in the middle? I think you can avoid this complication by making the top thicker – 6” or a bit more – and by using an 18” to 24” overhang on the ends.
John needed an advance copy of “l’Art du Menuisier: The Book of Plates” so our box supplier could measure it and make a custom carton – no one wants a $100 book with bumped corners.
The bindery sent this early bound copy – without the cover stamp, which is weird.
The book will start shipping next week. Order here before Wednesday to get free domestic shipping. After that date, shipping will be significant – this book is whopper-big, thick and heavy.
