When I make a DVD, the producers always give me a certain number of free copies to give to my mom or (in the case of some really dull DVDs) to use as drink coasters.
As a result, I have 19 copies of “A Traditional Tool Chest in Two Days” sitting on my desk right now that I would rather be somewhere else. I have enough drink coasters.
So we are going to sell these DVDs at half price to our loyal blog readers. Instead of $24.99, you’ll pay $12 plus domestic shipping.
Why did I call it the “traitor’s” tool chest in the title? Read here.
We only have 19 of these. So if you want one, click now or forever hold your mouse.
Leave it to Jeff Burks to turn up a bunch of images of early trestle tables that I haven’t seen before.
As you’ll see from the gallery below, these trestle tables are of the old variety – two independent horses that are topped by a large board, suitable for carving up your meal (or your unliked saint).
Most of the horses have three legs, though there are some that have interesting feet that are flat on the floor. Also interesting is how many trestles have decorative panels between the legs.
One warning before you start browsing these images: A few are a bit on the graphic side. If you ever wondered about why these tables were covered by tablecloths when people ate at them, this set of images should help you answer that question.
As always, thanks to Jeff Burks for the original source material here. His research and publishing here speeds our efforts at Lost Art Press.
Now that “To Make As Perfectly As Possible: Roubo on Marquetry” has been birthed, or put to bed, or sent to press, or whatever cliché is appropriate (I only know that my part is done), we now draw your attention to the curtain marked “To Make As Perfectly as Possible: Roubo on Furniture Making,” behind which the work has continued unabated even through the seemingly endless tribulations of Roubo on Marquetry.”
See, I am learning from Roubo: one paragraph, one sentence, no problem.
Much of “Roubo on Furniture Making” is fairly straightforward, seeming all the more so after six years of our interpreting and expressing Roubo’s voice. Some days I find I can get through as many as a dozen pages of Michele’s raw transliteration, mostly to clarify the idiosyncratic jargon and syntax A-J employs. This process can be a bit humorous as Michele does not even begin to know what particular tools are (or do), while Philippe – though superbly skilled in their uses – identifies them only in his native French. He never needed to converse in English about the arcane details of 18th-century French woodworking tools, so he is relying on me to phrase things properly in the language of a 21st-century Anglophone.
It is excellent that“Roubo on Furniture Making” is going well because in sheer scale it renders “Roubo on Marquetry”a mere warm-up act: This one is almost TWICE as large as our first volume.
For example, this week I am working my way through (again!) Volume 1 Section 1 Chapter 5: “Some Tools Belonging to Woodworkers, Their Different Types, Forms and Uses,” which contains the much-heralded Plate 11 “Interior View of the Furniture Maker’s Studio” and its ballyhooed image of the French Workbench, the source of much of Schwarzophinia.
Many hands have given at least part of the text for this plate the old college try. I am unashamed to suggest that our 17-page treatment of this plate’s text is as accurate, nuanced, understandable and downright elegant as any thus far.
That text and the remaining passages of the chapter delve excruciatingly DEEP into the esoterica of the 18th-century tool box and workshop. Really, Andy, did you need to give us five pages on the moving fillister plane?
At more than 100 pages of working manuscript, this chapter would make a fine little book all by itself (still, it is barely half the length of Vol. III Section 3 Chapter 13: “Tools and Machines for Furniture Making”), but the thrill of this chapter is a near-perfect analog to my new status of “retirement.” I am busier and working harder than ever, yet I simply cannot wipe the smile from my face.
For the last two years, Peter Follansbee and I have been having a conversation about trestle tables – or rather, we’ve been talking about two different forms of furniture that seem to share the same name.
The term “trestle” is first recorded in the English language about 1400 (“Richard Cœur de Lion” c1330-1450): “They sette tresteles, & layde a borde”). These early references and the paintings from the same period indicate a “trestle table” is actually two or more freestanding stools that are then covered by a board to make a table. It is early knock-down furniture.
Sometime in the last few hundred years, that form has mostly disappeared as a dining table, and the name “trestle table” now belongs to a permanent table where two end assemblies are joined by a long stretcher. The top is joined to the base. Something more like this:
This is basically the form of table that I have at my home, and I love it. It is remarkably lightweight, strong as heck and requires little material to build (the materials for the base cost me $30). I have no desire to replace this table, and I don’t think it could be improved in any way. I even like where my youngest daughter burned through the finish with some nail polish remover the week after I completed the project.
But I need to build another “trestle table” for an upcoming class on the form at the Marc Adams School of Woodworking that starts Monday, July 8. During this class, we’ll spend a day learning about trestle tables from the 1400s to the present so that each student can design a table that suits their minds and materials.
Me, I’m going to build a table like the one shown being dismantled by apes in the early 16th century Flemish painted glass window quarry at the top of this blog entry. The “trestles” are built much like an early sawbench. The top of each trestle is fairly thick, and the legs are tenoned into that thick piece. Each trestle has three legs that are splayed for stability – it looks more like a Windsor chair or perhaps a Roman workbench if you squint your eyes a bit.
I don’t expect any of the other students in the class to follow me down this dark path, so I’ll be loading my laptop with tons of photos of later trestle tables, from the Shakers to George Nakashima.
If you would like to blow off your job and join us next week, there are a few spots open in the class. Click here for details. Otherwise, stay tuned here and to my blog at Popular Woodworking next week as we build a bunch of different tables – all that share the name “trestle.”
— Christopher Schwarz
A trestle from the wreck of the Mary Rose, a 16th-century English ship.15th-century French A-trestles.15th-century German trestles.Another 15th-century trestle.
A 19th-century copperplate press on display at the Dutches Museum in Munich.
One of the most astonishing things about studying early plates in books such as A.-J. Roubo’s “L’Art du menuisier” is that the plates are not simply two-dimensional. There is a great deal of texture. The paper is radically depressed in the field where the paper went through the copperplate press. And you can feel every line.
Last week at the Deutches Museum in Munich I spent the most time in the museum’s section on printing. I didn’t need to read much about the letterpress; we had one of those in college that I played with all the time instead of studying. But the copperplate press and its exhibit were fascinating. The exhibit showed how the thin copper plates were coated in acid-resistant wax and soot, and then how the engraver etched through these top mediums to create the image. Then the plate was dipped in acid to cut the image into the copper.
You can read more about this process on Wikipedia here.
Here is the (uncorrected) description of how the press works from the Deutches Museum.
A great deal of pressure is necessary for the manufacture of a copperplate engraving, in order to press the paper into the cuts and to suck the ink out. Letterpress printing machines with a platen are not really suited to the purpose. In the sixteenth century, presses with their own back pressure cylinders were used for the first time.
With the star wheel, the copperplate printer moves the running board, plate and wooden cloths through between the two rollers. The upper roller produces the pressure, the lower one transports the running board. Due to the high pressure, the printer needs both his hands and also his feet to move the star wheel.
The copperplate press is a reminder of the sheer amount of labor and willpower needed to create a book like Roubo’s in the 18th century. Even though our translation seems like a lot of work (I’m proofing the index today), it pales in comparison to what Roubo and the printers of the day had to do to produce the original volumes.
When I make a DVD, the producers always give me a certain number of free copies to give to my mom or (in the case of some really dull DVDs) to use as drink coasters.
