Lost Art Press

Category: Roman Workbenches

Another Workbench Journey Begins

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Metz

About 8 a.m. Wednesday morning I’ll pack a thermos of coffee and hit the road for North Carolina in the hopes of gaining some small understanding of the craft culture of ancient Rome.

Thanks to Will Myers, there’s a large load of dry oak waiting for me in North Carolina that I’ll use to build two Roman-style workbenches. The benches are separated by about 1,400 years but share the same DNA.

The reason I do this stuff, which is admittedly a bit bonkers, is the same reason I started building nearly vanished French and English style workbenches in 2005. I’m not looking for a better workbench, just another one that might make sense for your work and mine.

For me, the appeal of 18th-century French and English workbenches is that they are simpler. They are far easier and faster to build than your typical Scandinavian or Germanic bench. I don’t have anything against those central and northern European benches. The ones that are made by woodworkers for woodworking are great.

But not everyone wants to build a bench that is that complex, with a tail vise and a shoulder vise, a fifth leg, a dovetailed skirt and square dogs. Some of us would rather do something else with our time.

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In the same vein, the Roman workbench has always interested me. It is even simpler than a French or English bench. No stretchers. Simpler joinery. Less mass (perhaps). And during my last 11 years of ongoing bench research, I’ve concluded that the Roman workbench has never fully gone extinct. Instead it has gone out to pasture, so to speak.

By building and using these two Roman benches in my shop, I hope to learn their strengths and weaknesses – all bench forms have upsides and downsides. None is perfect. My hope is that I can show how these even simpler benches can be used to hold boards so you can work on their faces, edges and ends. Because that goal has never changed for woodworkers, whether they wear togas or flannel.

— Christopher Schwarz

Roubo’s ‘Fathom’ Reborn

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I always felt odd building French workbenches using English (or worse) inches.

Anyone who has studied the history of measurement knows that there are as many systems of measurement out there as there are cultures and epochs. Surprisingly, many of them are similar because they are based on the human form. But they are all a little different.

Rather than whitewash these differences or convert them to metric, I try to incorporate them into my work in the same way you would never put a Roman ovolo on a Grecian piece.

At the vanguard of this curious approach is Brendan Gaffney, a woodworker and musical savant who has been taking a deep dive into alternative measurement systems. He recently made three rulers for sale based on Japanese, Roman and Egyptian systems. I purchased the Roman ruler and it is a work of great beauty. I plan to use it in constructing two upcoming Roman workbenches.

And now Brendan is exploring the 18th-century French measurement system.

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After some back and forth, Brendan has constructed French “fathoms” that are based on A.J. Roubo’s plate 100 from “l’Art du menuisier.” Here’s Roubo’s description of the fathom:

“Woodworkers use fathoms as the fundamental unit for taking their measures. This is nothing other than a ruler of 6 feet in length divided into feet and one of these divisions into thumbs so as to be able to know how far each part they are measuring is in length. There are those who do not use fathoms but simply use a ruler of whatever length on which they mark their measurements.”

Brendan’s version, which goes on sale on Saturday, is faithful to that description. His fathom is made from flame maple, planed true, hand-marked and finished in Brendan’s workshop. If they are anything like his other rulers, they will be spectacular.

Do you need a fathom? No. You can make your own if you think you need one. But if you’d like to support a fellow explorer who is diving deep into waters that have been uncharted for more than 200 years, you can do that here.

I’m ordering one for layout work and to help interpret the drawings from our forthcoming book “Roubo on Furniture,” which contains lots of scaled drawings.

— Christopher Schwarz

Roman Tools, Mouldings and Hardware at Saalburg

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In our research on Roman workbenches and holdfasts, Suzanne Ellison has turned up some images I’ve not seen before that are a remarkable reminder that our tools, mouldings and hardware haven’t changed all that much in 2,000 years.

Of particular interest has been the Roman fort Saalburg, which was built along the Roman frontier and later abandoned. The fort has been reconstructed and is part of a UNESCO World Heritage Site – check out the fort’s site here.

Saalburg has become a center of research into Roman material culture and houses many artifacts and volumes or research. Several of the artifacts have become the basis for the planing stop that blacksmith Peter Ross has made for my early Roman workbench.

One of the real gems that Suzanne has turned up is a two-volume set of 1897 books called “Das Römerkastell Saalburg” (The Saalburg Romans), which documents the excavation and artifacts found at the fort.

You can download the volumes for yourself. Volume 1 is an overview of Saalburg and a discussion of the architecture and artifacts. The second volume contains supplementary material, including all of the detailed drawings shown here.

I’ve been staring at these for the last couple days and fairly transfixed by the tools, mouldings and hardware in particular. If you’re into planes, definitely check out Vol. 1, which shows planes found at the bottom of a well.

And check out the nails….

— Christopher Schwarz

 

Another Twist (or Two) in the Holdfast Research

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Minerva

 

One of the important parts of my book on Roman workbenches concerns holdfasts. Likely a Roman invention, the origin of the holdfast and its early form remains a bit of a mystery.

Modern sources, such as Roger Ulrich’s “Roman Woodworking,” don’t shed much light on the tool. Instead these sources focus on what the Romans built more than the tools and processes used.

So Suzanne Ellison and I have turned to looking at Roman gravestones and monuments – hundreds and hundreds of them – to find clues about the Roman workbench and its workholding equipment.

We’d both dug up some drawings from this source – which is about 1,700 pages all told. Including one that looked like a holdfast. Probably.

But you have to be a little skeptical when you are looking at an old drawing of an even older monument that had been decaying for 1,500 years.

Then Suzanne found it. A photo (above) of the monument that clearly shows the holdfast with a curled-under proboscis – Suzanne calls it “the curlyfast.” (Shown is An altar to Minerva in the Capitoline Museum in Rome, erected by a ‘College of Fabri’ and dated 31 BC.)

Would this device work on the bench? If I were on an Internet discussion forum, on pain pills and in a particularly crotchety mood, I’d say: No way. And I’d make up some claptrap about the spring action of the curled-under front would resist the tensioning forces exerted by the shaft vis-a-vis. The point is moot. Lorum ipsum dolor.

But the truth is we don’t know. No, Gary, not even you know.

So I sent an email to blacksmith Peter Ross today….

— Christopher Schwarz

Coming Soon: Letterpress Tool Chest Plans

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As part of the fifth anniversary of “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest,” we are printing 1,000 signed copies of plans for the chest that are hand-drawn and printed via letterpress.

The project is in conjunction with Steamwhistle Letterpress in neighboring Newport, Ky. As I type this, Brian Stuparyk and his mom are pulling copies of the poster from the Vandercook 425 press and allowing the dark blue ink to dry.

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The posters will be $20 apiece (that price includes domestic shipping in a rigid cylindrical mailer) and each one will be personally signed by me. We are making these prints as affordable as possible as a “thank you” for all the people who have bought the tool chest book – allowing me to quit my job without having to live in a cardboard box. They should be available in our store for ordering next week.

The construction drawing of the chest was handmade by Randy Wilkins, a film set designer and the man behind The Designer’s Assistant blog. The print includes all relevant dimensions for building the full-size chest, plus specifications for the hardware.

Our intent was to make the print useful enough (and affordable) so you could use it in the shop. But it is also nice enough that you could tack it on the shop wall or even frame it.

The tool chest print is also our trial run for large-scale letterpress work for the book on Roman workbenches that I’m writing. The process during the last few months has been a real education for me in processing images and type so they could be reproduced on a polymer plate for the Vandercook proof press.

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Earlier this week I spent an afternoon at Steamwhistle as they set up the press for the run, which will take several days. Brian hand-mixed the ink (blue with a little black) to suggest a blueprint. One of the many nice things about letterpress is the texture of the result. You can feel every line of the drawing in the paper. It is nothing like traditional offset lithography.

These are printed on smooth 100 lb. cover stock, which is rigid and durable. The finished size of the print should be about 17” x 22”, a typical size for an engineering print.

— Christopher Schwarz