Last night I dragged myself home after five days of building 16 workbenches at the Marc Adams School of Woodworking. All of the benches turned out fantastic for two reasons:
1. Wonderful (yet inexpensive) material. We used Horizon Wood Product’s Roubo “bench bundles.” For just $650 per bench, we got some amazing 12/4 and 8/4 ash for the bench. It was all cut to manageable lengths, perfectly dry and clear. Out of the 16 benches, we had only two small, tight knots.
Another testament to the quality of the wood: Due to a mistake I made, I ordered 15 bench bundles for 16 students. We still were able to squeeze out a perfect 16th bench from the material supplied. Without a doubt, I will use Horizon again. The service was outstanding. Pete Terbovich, who handles the bench kits there, is great to deal with.
2. Teamwork. At some bench classes it’s difficult to get students to work together on everyone’s benches, hauling tops around, milling material that is not for their bench, assisting with layouts and goodness knows what. Not this class. These were special students.
I’m back on the road next week – I leave Tuesday for The Woodwright’s School, where I’m teaching a class in the Dutch Tool Chest and filming two more episodes on Roy Underhill’s Show “The Woodwright’s Shop.”
So if I haven’t answered your recent e-mail….
— Christopher Schwarz
P.S. Day 1 and Day 2 of the bench-building class are covered on my blog at Popular Woodworking Magazine. The music is from freemusicarchive.org and is by the Freak Fandango Orchestra.
There is only so much book and video editing I can do before my head starts to feel like a wheel of gouda. Lucky for me, I can go to the shop at any point (What are they going to do, fire me?) and clear up my digital daze.
This weekend, I’ve been working on a couple of long-time-coming personal projects. One is a 16th-century square that I’ll be writing about later this week. The other project has been to finish my Holtzapffel workbench, which I began building almost seven years ago.
Today I finally added a shelf, which is made from maple that has been shiplapped and beaded. The shelf pieces are nailed to four ledgers that are screwed to the stretchers between the legs – pretty standard stuff.
For the most part, I use cut nails in my shop because they hold better and look better.
I was reminded of this today because the nails were a bear to drive. That’s because I was nailing through maple and into old yellow pine. Also, I had correct-sized pilot holes for my 6d nails.
What is a “correct pilot hole?” It’s a hole that doesn’t allow any of the boards to split and that permits the nail to really wedge everything tight. If your boards are splitting, you are doing it wrong. If the nails are easy to drive, you are (again) doing it wrong.
Here’s how I determine the pilot hole for any given situation.
1. If I’m nailing soft white pine, I do an experimental joint to see if I can get away without a pilot hole. Sometimes I can. Great success!
2. Otherwise, I select a drill bit diameter that matches the diameter of the tip of the cut nail. For many furniture nails in casework, this is 3/32” or so.
3. Then – and this is important – I make a test joint with the pilot hole in the same material I’m going to nail and with the pilot the same distance from the end of the board.
4. And then – and this is even more important – I drill the pilot hole to a depth that is only two-thirds the length of the nail. (For example, if the nail is 1-1/2” long, the pilot should be 1” deep.) If your pilot is the full length of the nail, then the joint is too weak. The nail should be difficult to drive. Conversely, if your pilot is too shallow, the nail is likely to bend before it reaches full depth.
I didn’t make this stuff up. This is information in the old books. Ignore it at your own peril. Or use drywall screws.
I like to read and discuss old texts and try to figure out what the authors are trying to tell us. When I read about using hand tools I prefer texts that were written before the use of electricity. Nicholson’s “The Mechanic’s Companion” was one such book. His brief description of a joiner’s bench and the accompanying plate piqued my interest. Why all the holes and how does it work? Only one way to find out: Build it.
Because this bench is the results of hundreds of years of development, I tried to stay true to the text and plate and build the bench with a similar mindset as the original users. One task of a joiner was to finish the interiors of houses, so the joiner built a bench 10’ to 12’ long from common materials and made all of the doors windows and mouldings on site. My guess is that by the time the project was finished the bench was pretty much used up so he just unscrewed his vise and left the bench, building a new one at the next job.
So what did I learn as reached back into the past and shook the hand of Peter Nicholson?
One of the great features of the English Joiner’s bench is that it is made from common construction materials. There is no need to search far and wide to secure a thick piece of wood. You just go to the lumberyard and buy standard construction planks. There is no need for major glue ups or material preparation. A 10’-long workbench is no problem if you need one.
The construction is simple with basic hand tools – just a handsaw, brace, a few bits, hammer, framing square and a jointer plane. Because of the way the bench is built, the top is practically flat when you are done with assembly. And the bench is solid and stable.
Softwood from the lumberyard is grippier and doesn’t dent your project. This was a bit of an epiphany for me: The bench dents instead of my project because the bench is made from softer wood than the hardwoods I use in my furniture-making. The softwood top doesn’t polish up like a hardwood top, so the projects don’t slip around as much as I am working on them. Shiny and slippery are not your friends on a benchtop!
It’s cost- and time-effective: $100 and a weekend. If you want a low bench for planing and a taller one for assembly and close-up work build two benches! If you move, you can leave your old bench behind and build another when you get to your new place. All you have to do is toss your Dutch tool chest in the car and go!
It’s functional. While you might have to retrain yourself to work with the bench, its planing stops and holdfast holes, it doesn’t take long to get the hang of it. My first Nicholson had a vise, but after reading Joseph Moxon, I left off the vise and now use the double-screw vise he describes. So I have a bench with no vises – just a crochet, planing stops and holdfast holes to hold the work. Of course, you can also just drive nails into the benchtop to hold your work as well. The first Nicholson bench I built back in 2008 sported a split top that grew out of information from George Ellis’s writing on a Planing Board and spawned a split-top revolution that continues to this day. The bench in forthcoming “The Naked Woodworker” DVD is an outgrowth of the 15 or so English benches I have built with friends and students since the first one.
This morning I completed installing the new leg vise on my Holtzapffel workbench that is powered by the Benchcrafted Classic Vise and Crisscross. Installation took about four hours – spread out over the week – and was straightforward thanks to the crazy high quality of the Benchcrafted components and the excellent installation instructions.
The new vise set-up is remarkable. I’ve never had a leg vise that works so well.
While the installation was simple, it’s not for the bolt-it-and-go crowd. You need to be on your A-game to get the vise to run smoothly. The mechanism has plenty of “forgiveness” for small inaccuracies. But everything will go together with less frustration if you take your time and pay close attention to the details.
I’ll be interested to see how the mechanism fares in the long haul. So there’s only one way to find out: Get back to work.
Next up: a shelf for the Holtzapffel and an almost-vanished tool from the 16th century.
— Christopher Schwarz
P.S. Read our Lost Art Press Statement of Ethics for information on how we buy our tools.
P.P.S The music is “Vernon Jackson” by The Brought Low.
Consists of a platform A B C D called the top, supported upon four legs, E, F, G, H. Near to the further or fore end A B is an upright rectangular prismatic pin a, made to slide stiffly in a mortise through the top. This pin is called the bench hook, which ought to be so tight as to be moved up or down only by a blow of a hammer or mallet. The use of the bench hook is to keep the stuff steady, while the joiner, in the act of planing, presses it forward against the bench hook.
D I a vertical board fixed to the legs, on the side of the bench next to the workman, and made flush with the legs: this is called the side board.
At the farther end of the side board, and opposite to it, and to the bench hook, is a rectangular prismatic piece of wood b b (Editor’s note: this is likely an error as the plate is labeled d d), of which its two broad surfaces are parallel to the vertical face of the side board: this is made moveable in a horizontal straight surface, by a screw passing through an interior screw fixed to the inside of the side board, and is called the screw check (Editor’s note: sic. “Check” is correct). The screw and screw check are together called the bench screw; and for the sake of perspicuity, we shall denominate the two adjacent vertical surfaces of the screw check, and of the side board, the checks of the bench screw.
The use of the bench screw is to fasten boards between the checks, in order to plane their edges; but as it only holds up one end of a board, the leg H of the bench and the side board are pierced with holes, so as to admit of a pin for holding up the other end, at various heights, as occasion may require. The screw check has also a horizontal piece mortised and fixed fast to it, and made to slide through the side board, for preventing it turning round, and is therefore called the guide.
Benches are of various heights, to accommodate the height of the workman, but the medium is about two feet eight inches. They are ten or twelve feet in length, and about two feet six inches in width. Sometimes the top boards upon the farther side are made only about ten feet long, and that next the workman twelve feet, projecting two feet at the hinder part. In order to keep the bench and work from tottering, the legs, not less than three inches and a half square, should be well braced, particularly the two legs on the working side. The top board next to the workman may be from one and a half to two inches thick: the thicker, the better for the work; the boards to the farther side may be about an inch, or an inch and a quarter thick. If the workman stands on the working side of the bench, and looks across the bench, then the end on his right hand is called the hind end, and that on his left hand the fore end. The bench hook is sometimes covered with an iron plate, the front edge of which is formed into sharp teeth for sticking fast into the end of the wood to be planed, in order to prevent it from slipping; or, instead of a plate, nails are driven obliquely through the edge, and filed into wedge-formed points. Each pair of end legs are generally coupled together by two rails dovetailed into the legs. Between each pair of coupled legs, the length of the bench is generally divided into three or four equal parts, and transverse bearers fixed at the divisions to the side boards, the upper sides being flush with those of the side boards, for the purpose of supporting the top firmly, and keeping it from bending. The screw is placed behind the two fore legs, the bench hook immediately before the bearers of the fore legs, and the guide at some distance before the bench hook. For the convenience of putting things out of the way, the rails at the ends are covered with boards; and for farther accommodation, there is in some benches a cavity, formed by boarding the under edges of the side boards before the hind legs, and closing the ends vertically, so that this cavity is contained between the top and the boarding under the side boards; the way to it is by an aperture made by sliding a part of the top board towards the hind end: this deposit is called a locker.
— Peter Nicholson, “The Mechanic’s Companion; or, the elements of and practice of carpentry, joinery, bricklaying, masonry, slating, plastering, painting, smithing and turning…” (1811). The image is from my 1845 edition, published by John Locken, Philadelphia. The entire book can be downloaded and read for free on Google Books via this link.