John Hoffman and I are at Mike Siemsen’s School of Woodworking this weekend to film the first ever Lost Art Press DVD. This project, which yet to have a title, is basically “Fear and Loathing in Minnesota.”
There has been semi-automatic gunfire, some alcohol and peanut butter on hamburgers.
On Saturday, we took a wad of cash to the Mid-west Tool Collectors Association meet in Medina, Minn., and purchased almost all the tools we needed to build a workbench and a sawbench (we had to buy a couple buckets, a framing square and two clamps at a hardware store). Saturday afternoon we fixed up all the tools to get them into working order – including filing the saws, restoring the planes and sharpening the chisels.
Today, on Mike’s birthday, we filmed him building a sawbench and a 7’-long Nicholson workbench. Mike has figured out some really great tricks to get started with little money, few tools and almost no skills. The bench is almost building itself. I think Mike’s philosophy is going to help a lot of people get started building a bench entirely by hand.
Here’s a quick timeline of the morning and afternoon.
— Christopher Schwarz
An apron at 10:20 a.m.Top boards at 1:43 p.m.Legs at 1:52 p.m.End assembles at 2:43 p.m.First assembly at 2:53 p.m.Bearers at 4:20 p.m.Beer at 4:33 p.m.
In all my years of messing about with old workbenches and their holding devices, I haven’t had much experience with the “bench knife.”
In its original form, the bench knife is nothing more than a broken piece of a dinner knife. It is used to secure boards on the benchtop for planing their broad faces. You first butt one end of your work against a stop of some kind. To secure the hind end of the board, you hammer the bench knife into both the benchtop and the end grain of the work.
Edward H. Crussell’s fantastic curmudgeonly “Jobbing Work for the Carpenter” (1914) describes it thus:
The bench knife is a tool of every-day use in Europe, but is not so well known or used in America. It is nothing but a piece of the blade of an old dinner knife about 1-1/4 or 1-1/2 in. long, and is used in lieu of a nail for holding material on the bench. It is used at the opposite end to the bench stop, being driven partly into the bench and partly into the material, as shown in Fig. 257.
For thinner stuff it is driven deeper into the bench. It is easy to apply, can be readily removed with a claw hammer, and does not mar the bench or material so badly as other forms of fastening. It is a good idea to have two or three of these bench knives because it is so easy to mislay them in the shavings.
Thanks to the worldwide butter knife shortage of 1915, ironmongers had to come up with a replacement to the simple broken knife. Most of the solutions that I see in books are a contrivance that drops into a row of bench dogs at the rear of the bench (who has a row of dogs on the rear of the bench?). Then you pull a lever that slides a thin piece of metal across the benchtop and into the end grain of the work.
I think there’s a reason that I have yet to see one of these devices in the wild: They were stupid. If you have a row of bench dogs, you could probably come up with a better way to hold the work than a mechanical doo-dad like the bench knife.
But today I saw a bench knife that I would buy and try.
Advertised in a late 19th-century magazine, this bench knife clamps to the front edge of your workbench and is infinitely adjustable. The obvious downside to this thing is that benchtop thicknesses vary a lot (1-1/2” to 4” being typical). But beyond that detail, I think the thing looks pretty smart.
Several weeks ago I commented on a stick that changed my workshop habits. I have posted a video and explanation of that stick on my blog at Popular Woodworking Magazine.
During some annual inventory activity, John Hoffman and I turned up two cases of books we don’t sell anymore at Lost Art Press. These books aren’t doing anyone any good sitting in a warehouse, so we’re offering them at 50 percent off retail until they are gone.
We don’t have a lot of these, so they likely won’t be around for long. Here’s what we found:
“Workbenches: From Design & Theory to Construction & Use” (19 copies). This is my first book and covers the principles of bench design and construction that I still follow today. We stopped carrying this book because it’s suicide to compete with Amazon.com, and I’ve never been happy that F+W chose to print the title in China. We’re selling it for $15 plus domestic shipping. All the copies are signed.
First edition of “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest” – the tan cover edition. The first edition has a few typos and doesn’t have an index. But you can download the index for free here. And at $17.50 plus domestic shipping, it’s a solid deal. These are signed via either bookplate or directly.
You can buy the first edition of “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest” via this link.
When predicting what a thick workbench top will do, I don’t consult the tables in the Forest Product Lab’s “Wood Handbook: Wood as an Engineering Material.” Instead, I prefer to think that building a thick benchtop is like moving into a haunted house.
Yes, the haunted benchtop is going to give you trouble at first. It’s going to scare the plop out of you when you stare into a gaping crack that seems to open up more each day. Your tools will behave erratically on the new benchtop, like they also have been possessed.
But if you are patient and observant, you will come to an understanding. Soon the ghost will be serving you tea.
Does that magic moment occur when it dries out and reaches “equilibrium moisture content?” No. I don’t think that thick benchtops follow the same rules of moisture loss that we expect from thin stock.
Benchmaker Richard Maguire recently told me about a slab-top workbench that he built from 50-year-old stock. After 50-plus years of drying, it still gave him fits.
“After all those years I imagined it was as dry as it was ever likely to get, and yet when I cut or drilled in to it it was apparent that there was too much moisture still in the middle,” Maguire wrote. “Thinking to the original French benches with these thick slab tops, I’ve begun to feel that these must have been very wet when built. Just based on the amount of time it takes for this thickness of timber to dry, I don’t imagine they had a good 50 years or more to leave it lying around.”
His experience lines up exactly with mine. When dealing with thick stock, getting the wood spirits out of the middle are next to impossible – and probably not necessary.
After observing how these benchtops behave, I have a theory for you to consider. I hope to ask the scientists at the Forest Product Labs about it someday. Here it is:
When you cut open these thick slabs, they dry from the outside-in and from the ends primarily. (That’s not the theory; that’s well-established). As the outsides dry, they move as they start to reach equilibrium moisture content. The middle stays pretty wet. Why? Don’t know. Perhaps something about being surrounded by so much dry wood keeps the moisture in.
But here’s the important part: I’ve found that the outside gets dry and hard – like the shell of a lobster – and is less susceptible to gross movements by further drying from the inside.
So waiting for a thick slab to reach equilibrium might never happen. And it might not be necessary.
A good example of this is the all-handtool Roubo bench I built for Popular Woodworking almost four years ago. The top had been in Ron Herman’s log yard for a long time. It was wetter than the French oak we used in Barnesville, Ga., this summer. And it was punky. But it was what I had to work with, so I built the bench with it.
The first year with the bench was rough. I flattened the top twice. It shrank around the legs, leaving the end grain proud. It didn’t, however, distort all that much. I thought of the top like a slat-bending frame you use for chairmaking. You put a wet slat in a bending frame and it stays that shape. You put a wet benchtop in a frame of legs and it is somewhat restrained from distortion by the legs.
It has been three years since I messed with the top of that cherry-top Roubo, and it is still functioning quite well. After my oak bench went wonkers on me, I decided to see how out the cherry bench was doing. Three passes with a jack plane brought it back to perfect.
So I wouldn’t be afraid of slab benchtops – even fairly fresh ones. Just remember my theory, which I’m sure is as accurate as my theory that a gnome or small dwarf in my stomach makes me sick each winter.