Joshua Klein and company are working hard on the second issue of Mortise & Tenon magazine, and from all accounts it looks like it’s going to be another fine issue.
They’ll start taking pre-publication orders on Nov. 1 here, which is also where you can read about the articles that are planned for the issue.
Joshua had asked me to write an article for the issue, and had I proposed a piece on Kentucky-style furniture, a backwoods style that I’ve admired for many years and is on display at the Speed Museum in Louisville, Ky. (If you’d like a woodworker’s view of the museum, check out Mark Firley’s photo collection here and here.)
My summer went to crap, however, and so I wasn’t able to do the research and interviews that would make my article worth publishing. Luckily, Joshua was also interested in my Roman workbenches and let me write up an article on the interesting workholding on the low one that I built from Pompeii.
My understanding of the bench has increased greatly since Woodworking in America, and after working on it every day this fall. You might not think that it’s easy to work while sitting down, but you might give it another thought after you read the article. Roy Underhill helped me decode a couple of the important details for the article, and I hope to have a short book on the bench (and a 1505 workbench with a Roman undercarriage) ready for the printer by the end of the year.
Megan Fitzpatrick at Popular Woodworking Magazine has posted a video tour of the 1505 Holy Roman Workbench that was filmed at Woodworking in America last month. Roy Underhill has also shot an episode of “The Woodwright’s Shop” about both of the Roman workbenches I built this summer. I’m not sure when that will air during season 36. When I get news, I’ll post it here.
Next week, Woodworking in America will command all our attention. We’ll be selling books and tools in the Marketplace, Raney Nelson and I will be teaching classes upstairs for registrants and we will officially launch Crucible Tool. Here are some details.
Crucible Tool We’re holding a launch party on Thursday night at our Covington storefront. We are booked up, so if you don’t have a ticket, please visit us in the Marketplace on Friday and Saturday where we will have tools for you to check out. During the launch event, we will demonstrate (and sell) our holdfasts and the second tool in our line.
I’ll be honest, we have been working like crazy to build up inventory, but I’m not sure how many units of our tools we will have on hand. Getting our production levels cranked up has been a challenge.
Lost Art Press Lost Art Press and Crucible Tool will share a booth at the Marketplace for Woodworking in America. We’ll be selling our full line of books and tools – plus special T-shirts and posters. You’ll be able to try the tools out, check out all our books and even try out the two Roman workbenches I’ve built this summer.
However, we won’t have our storefront on Willard Street open during Woodworking in America. Our companies are – in essence – three guys. And we will both be working hard at Woodworking in America with no time to keep the storefront open. Sorry. I wish we had a way to make everyone happy here.
Classes at Woodworking in America I’ll be teaching three classes at Woodworking in America and moderating a roundtable discussion amongst the leading planemakers of the day. Raney Nelson, who is one of the three principals at Crucible, will also be teaching classes. Check out his classes here. Here are the official descriptions of my classes:
Nails & the Decline of Western Civilization Class Times: Friday, 8:30 a.m. – 10:30 a.m. In the early 19th century, nails represented one-half of one percent of the country’s GNP. That percentage is equivalent to everything that everyone in the country today spends on computers and personal technology in a year (a lot). This country was built with nails. But about 1860, something horrible happened: Nails became terrible, and furniture makers rightly turned their backs on this once-critical fastener. What happened? And what can we do to restore the nail to its rightful place in the shop and as a historical hero? It’s easier than you think. Come learn everything you need to know about nails.
The Roman Workbench – How does it Work? Class Times: Sunday, 8:30 a.m. – 10:30 a.m. The Romans (or perhaps the Greeks) invented the woodworking bench, and this robust and simple design lasted more than 1,500 years. Then the form disappeared. Christopher Schwarz has spent years studying benches, and he’s built two of the most famous Roman-style workbenches: one from 79 AD that was shown at Herculaneum, and another from 1505 that was both the last Roman bench and the first modern one – a fascinating example. During this session, Chris takes you on a tour of how these two benches work and shares his thoughts on why they have survived in isolated pockets of civilization, such as Estonia and rural Maine. Participants will even get the opportunity to try the benches for themselves.
Build a Chair without Chairmaking Tools Class Times: Sunday, 11:00 p.m. – 1:00 p.m. Many woodworkers are put off by chairmaking because you typically need a lot of specialty tools, green wood and skills that are outside of the typical garage workshop. For the last 12 years, Christopher Schwarz has been developing a number of techniques and joints that allow the typical entertainment-center-building woodworker to make a traditional chair without investing in a lot of new tools, having to take a week-long class or having to chop down a tree. If you own a jack plane, a brace and a spokeshave you are almost there. Come see.
Planemaker’ Roundtable Class Times: Saturday, 1:30 p.m. – 3:30 p.m. The plane is one of the fundamental tools of woodworking – even if you use machines, you likely pull out a block plane from time to time. In this roundtable discussion, Christopher Schwarz moderates a discussion of handplanes in the modern shop. With Konrad Sauer, Raney Nelson, Caleb James, Terry Saunders of Lee Valley, Thomas Lie-Nielsen of Lie-Nielsen and more.
Somehow all of this will happen, and it will be as mind-blowingly awesome as it always has been for the last eight years. So if you are in Covington next week, please stop by the booth and say hello.
This morning at 11:48, I finished tuning the tail vise for the 1505 Holy Roman workbench and then John walked through the door of the storefront. His task: Help me build a rolling book display for Woodworking in America.
So after a month of being constructed using mostly traditional handwork, the first job for the 1505 workbench was to be a sanding station so we could process a ton of Dragonply for the shelves.
I don’t give this ironic situation a second thought. Once I complete a piece, I set it out into the wild without any emotional attachment about how it should be used. If I’ve done my job, the piece will survive the ordeal (i.e. children’s toy chests) and look better for the ordeal.
For me, furniture is like the Velveteen Rabbit:
“It doesn’t happen all at once. You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.”
— The Skin Horse in “The Velveteen Rabbit” by Margery Williams
The Holy Roman end vise is installed and functioning quite well, though at one point I thought I was going to curl under the bench and shed some Holy Roman tears.
After bashing out the slot and mortises for the end vise gear and then paring them true, I fit the two maple blocks that support the screw. One block is a vise nut. The other, at the end of the bench, acts like a bushing to support the screw. Both support the moving dog from below.
These had to be planed so everything was in the same plane, allowing the wooden screw to move without binding. The threaded vise nut is merely friction fit into its mortise. It needs to be easily adjustable so you can lower all the components after several flattenings of the benchtop.
The end block is lag bolted to the bench with two 5/16” x 5” Spax lags (I recommend you always pay the upcharge for Spax). When I need to lower the position of this block I’ll drill new holes for the Spax lags or make a new bushing.
Then came the fun part (I use the word “fun” ironically): Installing the metal screw that mates the wooden screw to the movable dog. This had to be screwed into the end of the vise screw with a lot of fuss. It had to be centered, and the hole needed to be dang vertical.
So I spent about an hour fussily boring a perfect pilot hole. Then chasing a clearance hole for the unthreaded section of the screw that was going to be buried in the screw. I cut threads in the pilot hole with a regular old steel screw. Then I lubricated the vise screw with some paraffin and drove the screw in.
And snap. Literally. Not like the kids say “snap.” The screw snapped about 1” below the rim of the hole.
After weighing about 100 options, I decided to use a 5/16” x 1” lag and washer to do the job temporarily until I could devise a solution that didn’t look so Mary Shelley.
Tomorrow I’ll drill the dog holes, make some nicer nuts for the face vise and do the “make pretty” so it’s presentable for Woodworking in America. If I’m lucky I’ll get to replace the wooden tommy bar for the end vise with a crank that Peter Ross made me. But time is running out.
