Since my first book on workbenches came out in 2007, I have been approached by several manufacturers about producing a “Schwarz Workbench,” where I’d be paid a royalty for every bench sold.
It would feature my illegible signature (my kids say my signature looks like “C-star Slimy”) and be built to my specifications. And that’s the point in the negotiations where I just start laughing.
My fondest hope is that you will design your own workbench that will make it easy for you to work on the faces, edges and ends of boards and assemblies. It will be the perfect size for your shop, your height and your tools. The vises will easily grip the sort of work you are fond of – big, small, curved, flat.
And it will cost you exactly what you are willing to pay: Almost nothing to several thousand dollars.
You can sign the bench as illegibly as you please, and then it will become your signature workbench.
— Christopher Schwarz
P.S. I am perfectly willing to enter into negotiations for Schwarz-signature suppositories or toilet-seat covers. I have a lot of particular ideas about those that will blow your mind.
Hey buddy, wanna see some edited proofs of the A.J. Roubo translation? Read on.
Lost Art Press will have a booth at the Lie-Nielsen Hand Tool Event next weekend, and yes, we’ll have the first 126 pages of “To Make as Perfectly as Possible: Roubo on Marquetry” for you to look over. And if I can get it printed out in time, I’ll also have a nice color proof of “By Hand & By Eye” by George Walker and Jim Tolpin.
Details and directions to the Popular Woodworking Soviet-era bunker are here.
As always, the Society of American Period Furniture Makers will be there in force doing demonstrations. Even if you own every Lie-Nielsen tool made, these demonstrations are a great reason to go. The schedule of demonstrations is here.
Plus, lots of toolmakers to chat up and an opportunity to test-drive their tools.
We’ll have our full range of books and DVDs for sale at the show, including our newest book “With the Grain” by Christian Becksvoort. Plus my Dutch tool chest and the Milkman’s Workbench. And a partridge in a camphor laurel tree (Got to get Australia out of my head.)
This is always a great show. Free. Hope you can make it.
For those readers who are squeamish or easily offended, stop reading now.
For the rest of you, here is a little nugget of workbench history unearthed by Jeff Burks. It was published in the April 5, 1903, edition of the French illustrated newspaper Le Petit Parisien. Headlined: “Un étrange suicide,” it detailed the odd suicide of the joiner who ended his life with the help of his workbench.
Below is Jeff’s quick translation of the text. You can read it in the original French here.
A Strange Suicide
This is obviously a particular case of madness, that of the strange suicide of this joiner from Sainte-Ménehould, with whom all the press is occupied. Mr. Lemaître, the joiner in question, was sick for a long time; He was, in addition, suffering from paranoia; his rationale seemed very shaken.
Tired of suffering, he resolved to finish his own existence. But he did not use, like so many others, poison, the revolver or the rope; He wanted to be guillotined. He very patiently sharpened a spade, so it would be keen as a razor; he tied it to his joinery workbench, which had been loaded quite heavily with wood; then, using a piece of wood as a brace, he lifted his bench to 60 centimeters in height and spread himself on the ground so that, by removing the piece of wood, the spade would strike his neck.
These tragic preparations had taken a fairly long time. With a chisel, Mr. Lemaître knocked out the brace that was holding the workbench and the spade descended suddenly, working as a guillotine blade. Indeed, the carotid artery was severed and the head weakly attached to the body. The doctor who was called found him dead.
Because Chris is on the other side of the globe, things have been coming along with the drawing table.
The web frames were nailed through the sides with $25 worth of Peter Ross’s finest. What a pain adventure that was, trying to get the right combination of pilot hole and clearance hole.
The drawer box had be squared and the back nailed on. Then I realized I hadn’t prepped the sides. Now I have two (or more) choices: try to dodge the nails with my plane, use Chris’s and claim ignorance as to how those nicks got in Raney’s smoother, or use a random-orbital sander.
The frame for the table side of the project is ready for glue. Now I just need to figure out how to thicken tenon cheeks. I am sure something will come to me, possible involving JB weld, spit and O+. (Voice from Australia: Luke! Glue shavings or veneer slips to the tenon cheeks to thicken them.)
Sugar pine and walnut will be used for the drawer boxes. I plan on making two extra drawers to get some practice before I start cutting such a visible joint. Lord knows I need to knock this part of the project out of the park.
Now for the controversial part of the post:
Had I to do it over again, I would use a Festool Domino. This isn’t an historical reproduction; it’s for my wife who values looks and sound construction over righteousness. At my skill level, most of my work needs a fair amount of love and blue tape to make it look right. I want my work to look great, not just right. Though for the rest of this project, I am going to stay the course using the same techniques I have used so far.
To an American woodworker, the Melbourne, Australia, workshop of Alastair Boell is a place both familiar and strange at the same time.
Boell, a graduate of the North Bennet Street School in Boston, has lots of old American iron in his shop:
• A Tannewitz 36” band saw he bought for $750 from a business closing down. It was in unrestored condition. He pulled the whole thing apart while in Boston. Re-sprayed it. Replaced the bearings and took it apart to get it into the shipping container. Alastair guesses it was built in the 1950s.
• An Oliver 24” patternmaker’s jointer built in 1922 for the American Navy. It even has a Navy yard number stamped on it and its price – $1,933.22.
• Oliver patternmaker’s lathe built in the 1970s. It has 8’ (and a bit) between centers.
What is somewhat strange is all the timber. Alastair has taken an enormous interest in salvaging urban lumber – including lots of species that are hard to get in Australia. So the rafters are packed with all sorts of odd timbers – I don’t know if I’ve ever been in a shop that was filled with such a wide variety of species.
And then there’s all the Australian accents, the upside-down weather and the colorful idioms from the students and Alastair – bless his cotton socks.
All in all, it’s just similar enough to an American shop that you can work comfortably on your own on the machines. But it’s just strange enough that you have really weird Australian-themed dreams.
Alastair and his wife, Jacqueline, run the Melbourne Guild of Fine Woodworking in a light industrial area inside the neighborhood of Box Hill. Box Hill itself adds another layer of surreal for Americans because it’s filled with Asians who all speak with an Australian accent.
The Boells started the school in Box Hill five years ago after returning to Melbourne from the United States. At first, Alastair began working at a nearby not-for-profit school, but after 18 months he left. Then he worked at another not-for-profit school and had a bad experience. He decided to start his own school.
The Melbourne Guild conducts three sorts of classes – open classes, where students bring their own projects. Specialist classes that cover a particular topic. And Masterclass series, where Alastair brings in people such as chairmaker Peter Galbert.
“All the inspiration for all of this is from the United States,” Alastair says. “Everything is emanating from the U.S. at this point – the tools, literature, teachers, revival in hand skills and old machinery.”
In addition to the school, Alastair runs a timber business with a couple other partners that cuts and dries salvaged timbers from neighborhoods, botanical gardens and other urban places.
“I always loved the idea of salvaging timber,” Alastair says. “You can source your own material. Plan your project. Mill your components. Finish it. Use it. Hand it off to your children. The total cycle. There is no other medium I know of that you can have that same journey with.”
The business – Big Sky Timber – is the result of Alastair meeting Pete McCurly, who makes sculpture and has devoted his life to Australian trees.
“When Peter he was a teenager he spent years protesting old-growth logging,” Alastair says. “He lived in a tent. Pete’s very passionate about trees.”
The business came together when Tony, a childhood friend of Alastair, became interested in salvaging urban lumber and invested the money needed to get the business going.
Now if all this seems like a lot to take on for one guy, you’re right. Alastair might be one of the busiest people I’ve ever met.
This morning he was working in the shop on some milling for some bent-laminations. Then he and Pete moved some massive blackwood logs using a crane truck and spent the afternoon positioning a huge hydraulic duplicator lathe. Later he and his family set up for an evening seminar for 50 woodworkers and cleaned up the place afterward into the late hours.
It is, in his own words, a crusade to improve the craftsmanship of his countrymen. What’s obvious is that he has the energy (and family support) to do it. What isn’t as immediately obvious is how highly skilled Alastair is at the bench. The only two testaments to his mastery at the school are his workbench and his tool chest from North Bennet – both fairly low-key objects at first glance. (His graduation project – a stunning and complex Federal piece – is in his bedroom at home.)
While Alastair wasn’t around, I spent some time fiddling with his tool chest, looking at his joints and trying to figure him out through his work. Personally, I think Australia is lucky to have him, and I wish we Americans had been fortunate enough to keep him.
