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.
While conducting a plane-tuning seminar on Wednesday with toolmaker extraordinaire Chris Vesper, I got the opportunity to pick through his tool collection. I had no idea he was a tool collector. He is. And he has devoted about one-third of his living space to his collection.
His collection of plane irons (and chipbreakers) is remarkable. I could have spent a week examining them. But the tool in his collection that blew my mind was a Lancashire rebate plane he had sharpened and tuned up.
This is a user-made plane. Words and photos really don’t do it justice.
In essence, it is a cast brass rebate plane with a skewed cutter (snecked!). Instead of having a fence below the cutter (like a moving fillister plane), this plane has a sole that extends above the cutter and cutting surface.
This remarkable feature allows you to do several things:
Cut rabbets of any width by dropping into a gauge line. The more you plane, the more stable the tool becomes. So you can really bear down and remove some meat once you get the tool started.
Easily alter the floor of a rabbet with a little wrist twist. This allows you to clean up rabbets with ease.
The tote encourages you to push the sole into the corner of the rabbet and to remain square.
The escapement/lever cap of the tool throws the shavings onto the bench and not into your hand.
The brass sole gives you a sharp arris that lets you start in a gauge line.
Vesper was kind enough to let me try the plane out on some King William Pine. I used one of his marking gauges to lay out the rabbet. And within a couple strokes I was a rabbeting fool.
I surmise that this is a tough tool to make. It has a skew cutter, an unusual sole and a wild (but very comfortable tote). So I wouldn’t hold my breath in hopes that someone would make it for the modern market.
But if you see one, drop your small children and watermelons and grab the tool. Buy it. You won’t regret it.
Though I use mostly Western tools in my work, I have a deep respect for the craftsmanship and design of Japanese tools. In fact, before good Western tools became widely available, I had lots of Japanese saws, chisels and knives in my tool chest.
So this weekend I was thrilled to spend hours poring over the vintage Japanese tools offered by Tetsuro Izumitani during a hand tool event at the Melbourne Guild of Fine Woodworking. Izumitani is a former furniture maker who now brings vintage Japanese tools to Australia to sell.
He offers items that I’ve only read about or seen in books – incredible saws and hundreds of Japanese chisels of all shapes. I picked his brain for almost an hour on chisels as he showed me what to look for in a quality Japanese tool, from the file marks to the forge-welded laminations.
But the best part was an item that wasn’t for sale.
Underneath the selling tables was an old Japanese tool chest that Izumitani had brought back from Japan. It was simple, of course, but striking in its form, utility and hardware. He graciously allowed me to measure it and take photographs. (Apologies for the crappy photos. The sun was high and the shadows were driving me nuts.)
After the show I went back to my hotel and made a SketchUp drawing of the chest, which you can download here.
The woodworkers who were with me said it was made from “Oregon pine,” which is most likely another name for Douglas fir. The joinery is all nails and finger joints. It’s beguiling enough that I definitely want to build a few – once I can find a good source for the dome-head nails.
I think that building the chest would be an excellent one- or two-day class that would introduce people to basic saw, plane and chisel skills.
