Lost Art Press

Category: To Make as Perfectly as Possible, Roubo Translation

Roubo the Transformer

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Immersion is a transforming experience. Whether you drown or learn to swim, you are transformed.  Such has been the process of bringing “L’Art du Menuisier” to the English-speaking world. At times I feel overwhelmed, like when it takes six or eight hours to edit and revise a single page of transliteration. It is not Michele’s fault; she is doing simply brilliant work. It’s just that moving arcane descriptions from one language into another 250 years after the fact is a challenge. (By the way, Michele is about two-thirds finished with the initial transliteration for “To Make As Perfectly As Possible – Volume II”!  Not that I get to enjoy it much, yet….)

Occasionally I reflect on my evolution as a craftsman over the past four years of swimming with the French sharks. For almost 40 years I have made my living salvaging damaged furniture. At first I was called a restorer and refinisher. Lately the description has been “furniture conservator.” (When you are working on furniture more valuable than your lifetime’s earning potential, they no longer refer to you as “the handyman.”) Whichever label was accurate, I have worked on hundreds, probably thousands, of pieces of furniture but have made precious little furniture from start to finish. A dozen pieces, none important, and that’s about it. Jake Roubo is changing all that.

These days I am actually building things in those three hours a month when I am not working at my job, editing and creating content for “To Make As Perfectly As Possible,” maintaining the house and yard, enjoying the company of loved ones, prepping for the end of Western Civilization, etc. Not just my gigantazoid barn studio (40’ x 36’ x 4-1/2 stories) in the mountains, although that is a pretty substantial project, but furniture and wooden decorative objects. A pie safe of salvaged old-growth 11/4 cypress from a circa 1840 water tank. A pair of serpentine mahogany veneer knife boxes (to hold my carving chisels, of course). Several replicas of Samuel Gragg’s chairs. Turning bowls from stumps I harvested myself.

I am building these things more by hand tools than I used to. In part because I find it therapeutic, and in part because it is often the most efficient way to get the particular tasks done. I find my machines in the way more now than in the past. Useful in their moment (hand planing several thousand linear feet of Southern yellow pine flooring just might be the clinical definition of insanity, hence my little Ryobi 10-incher), but more often dust magnets or workbenches.

Speaking of which, did I mention that I have contracted Stage 4 Schwarzaholism? (schwarzaholism – the unnatural and irresistible urge to build workbenches, especially of an ancient form).  Exposure to Chris has been a good/bad thing as you can all attest. His ability to inspire is beyond dispute, but the things to which we are inspired consumes all available resources and then some. Transformation can be a mixed bag.

I currently have several workbenches underway. There are about 20 big ol’ vises to build and the adventure of making them is exhilarating. To get there I am re-exploring Roubo’s recitation of thread cutting –  2-1/2” x 4 TPI threads don’t come from the local hardware store.

The first bench is a 4”-thick curly maple top German Roubo bench along the lines of Jameel Abraham’s from the video (download it as a wmv file here).  If you haven’t seen the video, folks, you gotta sit down, buckle in and be prepared to get blown away. Next is a Schwarzian Roubo Traditional in 6”-thick Southern yellow pine. And a Baltic birch torsion box folding portable bench. And Bob Lang’s 21st Century bench. And a Japanese planing beam. And I should do something with that 42” x 16” x 16’ slab of air dried white oak I bought last winter. And I’ve got another Emmert vise to put on something.  And, and and…  Hey, I’ve got a classroom to equip!

The Roubo Transformation has driven me in other directions as well. His exposition on Boullework marquetry has rekindled a fire that really had not abated much.  As an aside, you just have to chuckle when Roubo remarks something to the effect of, “I really don’t know much about X, Y, or Z” and then proceeds to write authoritatively for several dozen pages. I really should fire up the smelting furnace and make my own hardware.

On reflection I note the odd similarity between Hannah Arendt’s assertion about the banality of evil and Roubo’s simple assumption that magnificent craftsmanship is what we are all about.  Both proclamations are demystifying yet all the more powerful because of that. Skill should be routine. Or at least what we aspire to. For craftsmen the true transformation is the operating system I call Roubo 2.0.

May it be my desire to make routine the pursuit of excellence and exploration, indeed, the point of walking into the workshop.

Period.

That’s what Roubo the Transformer did to me.

— Don Williams

What Made Andre Jacob Roubo Tick? Part 4

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I am somewhat amused ex post by the parallels between our first conversations about creating “To Make As Perfectly As Possible” and Roubo’s struggles to create a set of volumes that people would actually purchase. His success is pretty self evident in that we still find his work compelling after two-and-a-half centuries. It certainly sets a high bar for us in bringing him to new generations.

— Don Williams

One of the biggest obstacles that I have had to overcome is the cry of the public against big books, which they won’t buy because they are too expensive, or they buy but don’t read because they are too voluminous. But how could I do otherwise? Should I fool the Public in pandering to their taste but against their interests by giving them an abridged and consequently less expensive edition, but where they will learn nothing, or at the most only words or names of the arts? (*)

(*) What I say here is the incontestable truth: nothing has done more wrong to the sciences and the Arts, than the condensed abridged editions that have been given to workers already, or even the new works done in this manner. I therefore believe it wise to give to my work all the expanse appropriate, at least as far as my strength has permitted me, in order to be useful in the present and for the future by not obliging the Public to make a double expense, as happens every day, with the increases and revisions that one makes to most of the works where there are multiple editions thus augmented, which becomes very costly and still remains quite imperfect.

What’s more, it is not possible, for as little as this work has been read, provided that one be of good faith and without prejudice – it is not possible, I say, to not confirm that the details of the different types of woodworking is immense. However concise it be in detail, it must still be considerable. It is not the work that is in question here, like history or fantasy, where one is content to expose facts to the eyes of the reader or to amuse him, but where one leaves him the liberty to make application of what he has read, in not preventing him from his own judgment, which would become boring to the reasonable reader.

Here, on the contrary, and in the description of all the arts in general, where it is a question of teaching, one must not only tell everything, but tell how it is done, and why it is done. Showing the different ways of operating every day, and in making visible the advantages and the disadvantages, and the situations where one method is preferable to another, requires describing the minutiae of works of art, whether whole or in part.

What Made Andre Jacob Roubo Tick? Part 3

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Andre Roubo’s passion for learning, and sharing that knowledge, undoubtedly grew from the limited opportunities presented to him when a yoot.

— Don Williams

I didn’t enjoy this education for long, totally imperfect that it was, because at the age of 11, (it was in 1750) my father, who was and who is still of the Guild of Furniture Makers, made me begin to work with him in order to transmit his knowledge and his position to me, the only good that he had to give me, and that he had likewise received from his father, also of the Guild of Furniture Makers.

From this time up until 1768 [at the age of 29], when I began to make my only object the Description of the Art of Woodworking, I was more occupied with the practical knowledge of my position, than those which, however appropriate to expanding the soul and mind, were strangers to my principal purpose. I have had the happiness to make progress in my profession during the 18 years that I practiced manual work, and still more to know the late Mr. Blondel, with whom I worked for five years, during which time he gave me all assistance possible, in giving to me freely all the help and counsel which could be useful to me both in public as in private, to help me acquire the knowledge necessary on architecture in general and relative to my position.

Instead these readings, although absolutely unconnected to my goal (of learning my craft and subsequently writing this book) but obtained at a time where my reason began to develop (to which the study of geometry has served me greatly), put me in the position to render my thoughts without a florid and elegant style, but at least with precision and a sort of clarity. They have also allowed me to know and to feel the order which is necessary in a didactic work such as mine, where all the content should tie together and often in sequence. Repetitions are sometimes inevitable and perhaps even necessary to better know the truth and importance that one is advancing, and the consequences that one should or one can derive.

– Andre Roubo

What Made Andre Jacob Roubo Tick? Part 2

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Roubo reveals a clear passion for leaving the generations after him in good stead regarding their access to the knowledge he has compiled. Clearly he reflects with pleasure the task he has just completed in the below passages from his work.

— Don Williams

… it is to be hoped that perfection results from the care and zeal with which I created these volumes. I am persuaded that if it were perfect, the Public, and especially my young companions, would have nothing to desire in this regard. I can well assure you that I have not spared pain nor expense in creating this work(*), so that nothing could compete with its perfection either in the order and arrangement of materials which are presented here, or regarding the research and experiences that I have been obliged to recount.

(*) The most considerable expense which I have been obliged to incur, and that which has been the most onerous to me, is the loss of my time (at least with regards to my establishment) which has necessarily impacted my well-being, a loss perhaps irreparable, and of which nothing can reimburse me other than the pleasure of having been useful to my co-citizens. To be happier still, if my work and my troubles can be really useful, and if the sacrifice which I made (of which I don’t regret, however) can count for something, and counter-balance is some way the inadvertent mistakes of which my work is surely not exempt!

I have also not taught anything by combining example and precept without making remarks of the advantages and disadvantages, and the different occasions where certain forms of works, or certain ways of operating, should be preferred over others, and of which I have shown the advantage on other occasions. This has sometimes placed me in the position of making critiques, perhaps a bit lively, but when speaking badly of a piece I have always respected the worker, at least that was my intention.

As to the arrangement and division of this work (set of books), I have paid attention to do it so that the woodworkers could access the part necessary to them while remaining independent of others, although all the portions fit together and make a complete body of work they should however acquire for the reasons which I gave above. Finally, after seven years of continuous and assiduous work spent in composing and making the designs of the many plates of my work I enjoyed the sweet satisfaction of seeing it completed….

What Made Andre Jacob Roubo Tick? Part 1

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I have endured many blessings in life, including that somehow I managed to avoid getting the curiosity beaten out of me at an early age while navigating government indoctrination camps. I am the son of an iconoclast, and thus managed to look at the world with a somewhat skewed vision including the perception of formal education with no small dose of skepticism. I was a mediocre student through much of my secondary schooling, essentially tuning out formal academics and doing only what I needed to move on while focusing on those things which interested me. There was so much fascinating stuff beyond the drivel being pushed in the classroom. Why were we reading a somnolistic civics textbook when there were The Federalist Papers (and even better, The Anti-Federalist Papers) to read? And history? A fascinating subject that takes great effort to be made unpalatable, but institutional “learning” gulags are up to that task.

As I get older I only get more out of step with the popular culture all around me. I love learning, and I delight in passing along what I have learned. No telling how many times my wife has been spared – with great self control on my part – from being regaled with an exhaustive recounting of astounding things gleaned from the U.S. Patent Office data base. This idiosyncrasy makes me distinctly at odds with our bread and circuses culture where I encounter far too many people wanting to know everything but cannot be bothered with learning anything.

Which brings me to Andre Jacob Roubo. In working our way through the volumes, we began to get a glimpse of him as a person. At the recent “Evening With Roubo” dinner that Chris Schwarz unselfishly (or was is selfishly?) organized at Woodworking in America in Cincinnati I delighted in St. Roy’s retelling of Roubo’s biography, but even a spirited story well-delivered can never be complete. Thanks to Roubo himself, there is much more.

Roubo’s lessons and reflections, laundered through Michelle’s literal translation, my massaging of the words to cause them to make sense to a contemporary artisan, and Philippe’s final polishing, make me reflect on my own ignorance, clumsiness, and sloth.

At the close of the final volume, Roubo gives us a remarkable peek into his soul, and I like what we can see. Beginning next week with selected excerpts I will let him tell you — in his own words –- what makes him tick.

— Don Williams