As I was making the final adjustments to the drawers on this teak campaign chest, I was reminded of another reason I like lower workbenches.
When I need to trim up a typical chest carcase or drawer, a lower bench ensures I can place the drawer on the floor and dress the dovetails. No platforms or other jiggery. Just drop and go.
But the No. 1 reason I like lower benches is that I can get my weight over my handplanes so I don’t have to use my arms when dressing panels and boards.
I started with a 38”-high bench in the 1990s and have steadily reduced my working height as I became better with hand tools. My current bench is 34”. The massive French oak workbench I’m finishing up this week will be 33”. I am perfectly comfortable at Megan Fitzpatrick’s bench, which is 28” (I think).
Disclaimer: I don’t give a flying ^&%$ at a rolling doughnut what bench height you use. You’ll figure it out.
This is the only opening in a tool chest class until 2014 I believe.
If you can ditch work that week, contact the school’s director, Bob Van Dyke, via e-mail or phone: bobvandyke@sbcglobal.net or 860-729-3186. During this class we’ll be building the chest out of some outstanding Eastern white pine – Bob is a wiz at finding beautiful stock.
And we will be eating at Frank Pepe’s pizza. A lot. Perhaps until I am sick.
I am a nosy teacher. During classes, I always like to poke through my students’ tool collections (with their blessing, of course) to see how they have modified their tools.
This weekend, I stumbled on a honey of a bird-cage awl.
One of the students in a class at Kelly Mehler’s School of Woodworking was an accomplished turner who was new to the world of “flat work.” He had some nice tool handles.
By far the best was the handle he turned for a bird-cage awl kit he’d bought from Czeck Edge. (The kit is $20 and is available here.) He’d turned the handle from she-oak, an Australian timber, and used what he termed “an English profile.”
The awl was perfect. The little peak near the ferrule allowed you to use your fingers to push the tool into the work instead of your palm.
If you are considering making one of these tools for yourself, I highly recommend the above handle pattern.
As I rushed out of the shop to drive to the French Oak Roubo Project, I snapped this quick photo of my teak campaign chest to keep with me, like a photo of my sweetheart during wartime.
I hate to leave a project at this stage – all the hardware is fitted and just needs to be screwed down. Then I just have to make a couple small repairs and do the final clean-up before applying the finish.
Installing the pulls was the most difficult part of the project. After a cock-up with a powered router (and getting spanked for it on my blog at Popular Woodworking), I read all the readers’ thoughtful (cough) suggestions and ignored them completely.
The best way to install these pulls has absolutely nothing to do with a router. But it does use electricity. The secret weapon: a cheap flatbed scanner.
The rest of the work was with a good chisel and a mallet. I could not be more pleased with the fit.
The finish on this piece is going to be fairly minimal. The basecoat will be a couple coats of garnet shellac – Tiger Flakes from Tools for Working Wood. These are the best flakes I’ve encountered so far. And then I’m going to apply a coat of satin lacquer because I’m quite good at that finish, and I like the way it looks.
But before I can get to that, I will spend the weekend teaching a class at Kelly Mehler’s School of Woodworking on building precision layout tools. It’s a fun class in a verdant location. But a little bit of my midbrain will be fixated on Monday when I am reunited with my chest.
I have never counted how many benches I have brought into the world, either through my hands, by teaching classes or writing books.
No matter what the number is, I can tell you that this bench will be my favorite. Not because the design is perfect – it’s a direct copy of A.-J. Roubo’s bench in plate 11 of “L’Art du menuisier.” And not because of the material – we’re using 18th-century French oak. It’s a great design and it’s great material, but the reason I love the unfinished bench that is now hanging out the back of my Nissan Xterra is because of the people I built it with.
Woodworking is a solitary endeavor for the most part. So getting to build a workbench with a bunch of guys, day in and day out, was new. I didn’t have to teach people how to cut a mortise, a tenon or a dovetail. There was no hand-holding.
And together we brought 16 benches into the world. What kind of designs? Who cares?
What height? Don’t care.
What kinds of vises? Lots.
The joinery? All kinds. All good.
Look, based on my writing you might assume that I like one kind of bench over all others. That’s not exactly true. My favorite kind of bench is the one that gets used.
When we kicked off this French Oak Roubo Project on Sunday night, I made a pledge to those participants who might use their bench as merely a decorative object (kitchen island? Dining table?). I vowed to sneak into the house and leave a flaming bag of poo on the benchtop.
Now, I’m joking, of course. I don’t think I could actually poop into a bag. (I haven’t tried since I was in Cub Scouts.) And I don’t think it would be all that flammable.
But still, the point I’m trying to make is this: Even if it’s a hollow-core door on sawhorses, it’s an awesome bench if things get built on it. There are other designs that might make it easier for you to hold the work, but if your hollow-core door inspires you to build birdhouses or highboys, then it’s a good bench.
In fact, the only thing that sucks about this class is that I have to leave it a day early. I managed to cut my sliding dovetails (yes, by hand) and rough out the through-mortises (yes, with a drill), but I didn’t get the whole thing assembled.
But I will.
When it’s done, I know that some people will wail about it. I will not add finish to it. I will tooth its benchtop. The leg vise will not have a parallel guide or a garter. And I’m going to use a toothed metal planing stop, which will surely mark my workpieces and utterly destroy my handplanes.
Despite all that, I will build a lot of cool s#$t on it.