This portrait of Ezra from an 8th-century Bible may be one of the first illustrations of what we would recognise as a bookcase.
I suppose it was inevitable that bookcases would eventually be the subject of my attention as a woodworker. I’ve always been a voracious reader and my book buying habit was only reinforced by studying history at undergraduate and graduate level, habits which were amplified by my wife’s profession (she is a lecturer in history at the University of Northampton) and appetite for reading. When Dr Moss and I moved in together, one of our first acts was to buy seven Billy bookcases to house our combined literature and history library. At that time, I was setting up my first workshop having studied lutherie at the Totnes School of Guitarmaking, and furniture building seemed like a different world to building guitars. So, a trip to IKEA and carrying seven flatpack bookcases up the torturous steps to our house it was. Six of those Billies survived two house moves and eight years of constant overloading, but their days are numbered and I now make more furniture than I do guitars. It is time to replace the Billies and to liberate the several boxes of books that have languished for years on my study floor.
Why should any of this matter? Well, because for as long as I can remember, I’ve viewed bookcases as a storage solution for the question of “where do I put all these books?” But I’ve not stopped to think about the bookcases themselves all that much. That’s how most folk think about bookcases; even the librarians in charge of historic collections tend to look at the contents of the shelves instead of the casework. Book storage is largely ignored until you don’t have enough of it.
But when you look beyond the books, and start to tease of the “why” and the “how” of book storage, things get interesting. Chris first talked to me about his idea for “The Book Book” in the autumn of 2017, and I was hooked. Not only was this a chance to replace those Billies, but also to piece together why bookcases developed into the form we now recognise. That is a path we’ve been on in earnest for a year now, and it is a fascinating opportunity to jump down many rabbit holes and to ask questions that might seem obvious, but for which no easy answers are available.
Construction of the library at Christ Church, Oxford, spanned a period of 63 years.
One of the few books on this subject is “The Book on the Bookcase” by Henry Petroski – a fine book, but which focuses more on the “how” than the “why.” And the “why” is where the real action is. Book technology is a recognised field of historic research, but one that is concerned more with the making and use of books rather than how book storage developed, but it can tell inadvertently tell us plenty about the factors that shaped bookcase development. Bookcases have developed to house books, so understanding why books are the sizes and shapes they are, the customs of book usage, and value and importance placed on books, all tell us something about why bookcases developed how they did.
“Oh, that’s easy” you might think. The development of the Gutenberg press encouraged standardised paper sizes which then determined shelf spacing. Well, possibly, but why those sizes and height-to-width ratios? Book storage pre-dates the printing press by hundreds of years – as soon as the first book was created, storage space was needed. And so, “The Book Book” becomes a wonderful opportunity to challenge preconceptions about book usage and production. It is a winding path from a monk fraudulently putting his name to a book in the 8th century, through court rolls, the medieval practices of producing books by scribes (both professional and amateur), the development of the printing press and early modern book production, the unchaining of libraries in the 16th century, 17th century diarist Samuel Pepys, campaign furniture, Thomas Jefferson, William Morris, to Danish minimalism and beyond. And breathe. Do you want to know what the earliest documented instance of adjustable shelving in bookcases occurred? So do we.
Lincoln College, Oxford houses striking 18th-century bookcases.
When woodworkers ask me what sort of book “The Book Book” will be, the closest example I can think of is “Ingenious Mechanicks.” Like that book, we will present a rigorously researched history (in this case of the development of the bookcase) alongside practical woodwork. As well as combing through texts on book technology, and scouring art history for examples of bookcases (the earliest example I can find dates from the 8th century), I’ve been researching the furniture record. In particular, historic bookcases still in use at Oxford University, some of which are over 500 years old, and the Pepys Library at Cambridge University. Historic bookcases give us key information on three key questions – what book storage was needed at the time of construction, how the bookcases were constructed, and then how they have been altered while in use due to changing needs.
Chopping dados for a boarded bookcase.
We will also be building notable historic bookcases, and covering techniques and practical considerations for designing and building bookcases. All you need to know to build your own book storage; the information I wished I’d had when I stood at that IKEA checkout with my mountain of Billy bookcases eight years ago.
I’ll be blogging about the research process and the breadcrumbs we have discovered, both here and on overthewireless.com – I hope you will join us on this path.
Cabinets finished with Real Milk Paint Company colors Boardwalk (the base color), Dijon (amber), Granny Smith (green) and French Grey (blue). Door and drawer pulls from Schoolhouse.
When most of us think about installing cabinets, we picture ourselves shimming them at the floor so they’ll be level across their width and plumb across their faces. Another consideration comes into play in cases where more than one cabinet will be joined together without some other thing (such as a stove) to break up the front plane: we want to make sure the faces are in a straight line, not higgledy-piggledy following bumps or concavities in the wall behind them.
With base cabinets, there are two ways to level casework at the floor. The most common involves shimming up a separate platform on which the cases themselves will stand. The platform runs the full length of the cabinet series, providing a flat surface, and is typically recessed relative to the cabinets’ faces to hide any irregularity in the fit of the applied toe-kick, which goes on after the cabinets are set. You find the highest point of the floor in a given run of cabinets, set the platform down and shim it level and plumb. Then you set the cabinets on the platform, fasten them together to form a unit, shim as necessary at the wall and screw in place.
On most of my jobs, we scribe the cabinets to the floor, a technique that “Kitchen Think” covers in detail. With this method, we locate the lowest point of the floor in a given run of cabinets; instead of shimming the cabinets up, we cut their bottom edges down until they sit level and plumb.
Whether you’re building up or cutting down, in all cases involving more than a single cabinet it helps to screw the units together before you attach them to the wall. That way you can treat multiple cases as one entity, shimming at the wall so that the faces will be flat and plumb.
Never take for granted that serial cabinets will automatically end up in a straight line. Always check them with the longest-available straightedge.
On our most recent kitchen job, Mark and I had to switch our thinking by 90°. Usually, when he’s gutting a room to the joists and studs, Mark takes the time to get the walls and floors flat and level. Sometimes this means cutting long, tapered wedges to build those structural timbers up; sometimes it means having at them with a power-plane, to remove a twist or a bump. On this job he straightened most of the surfaces, but he didn’t bother with the exterior wall. You know where this is going.
Naturally, that wall turned out to be a problem. The lower section of the wall was pretty flat, so the base cabinets went in easily. It wasn’t until we were installing the upper cabinets – three large, heavy units – that we realized we were in for some fun.
Busted. The bump became visible when we chalked a level line to indicate the bottom of the upper cabinets so we could screw a temporary support batten to the wall.
Here’s how we installed the upper cabinets plumb on an out-of-plumb wall and flat across their faces despite that bump.
With the bump as a starting point, Mark used 4′, 6′ and 8′ levels to shim the wall plumb at strategic stud points across the cabinets’ width. We ended up with shims pinned to the wall in five locations — a textbook example of why it’s worth plumbing the studs (if you have that option) before you start cabinet installation.
View from above. We clamped the right-hand pair of cabinets together at their faces, then inserted screws, making them into a unit, before we lifted them onto our support batten and screwed them to the wall. Because I’d made the face frames overhang slightly at the cabinets’ sides, we had to insert a shim between them at the back to keep them from conforming to the wall (which would have prevented them from lying flat across their front faces).
I made a 1/8″ x 3/4″ scribe strip to hide the gap caused by the shims at the left end of the run.
Q: Can you explain the purpose of the numbers cast into the top of an old miter box? Obviously these have some relationship to the angle produced if you align the saw to one of these detents, but for the life of me I can’t figure out how the numbers are supposed to be read and used.
A: Those correspond to the angle required to cut a frame with that number of sides. So with the detent at 24 is the setting for a icosikaitetragon, at 12 for a dodecagon, at 8 for an octagon, at 6 for a hexagon, at 5 for a pentagon and at 4 for a tetragon. (And yes, I had to look up the proper name for a 24-agon.)
Thanks to South African woodworker Ray Deftereos, creator of “The Hand Tool Book Review,” for his kind words about Christopher Schwarz’s “The Anarchist’s Workbench:”
“I think it is safe to say that this is the definitive workbench book. And as a free resource for the electronic version, this is completely out of this world as a deal! Join me on today’s episode as I discuss why this is probably the only workbench book you will ever need.” To listen, click here.
The planing stop in the new workbench was made by Tom Latane.
Ray also made good use of the Creative Commons license for this book, by narrating the first chapter – it’s fun to hear Christopher’s words in someone else’s voice! You can listen to that by clicking here.
And if you’d like to download your own free copy, see the second-to-last paragraph in the book’s description at the Lost Art Press online store.
A copy of ‘Life of the Infant,’ 1617. Hieronymus Wierix’s drawing of a bench was copied far and wide in Europe. It might have helped transmit this workbench form across borders.
The following is excerpted from Christopher Schwarz’s “The Anarchist’s Workbench” (which you can download for free on the store site; see the penultimate paragraph there for a link) – it’s Appendix A. I’m posting it because Chris gets dozens of questions about workbenches…even though he has no public email. And I get hundreds of workbench questions…because Chris has no public email. — Fitz
During the last 20 years, I’ve been asked a lot of questions about workbenches. Most of these questions I’ve answered 100 times already. That’s OK. When people first get focused on building a workbench, they usually haven’t read years of blog entries or the five or six books that are available on the topic.
And so they send an email asking what’s the best wood to use. Oh, and could I also compare and contrast all the different forms of benches? You know, like, just real quick?
We get these questions almost every week.
Below is a list of the questions I am asked constantly – plus my answers. A lot of this information is covered elsewhere in this book. But this format – question and answer – seems to help some people work through their own doubts.
This chapter also gives me something to cut and paste when replying to emails and letters. Here we go.
Questions about Workbench Materials 1. What wood should I use? There are only a few woods I wouldn’t use for a workbench: white pine (too lightweight), expensive exotics (too expensive), rotted wood (too rotted). I recommend you use the heaviest, cheapest and most readily available species in your area. In the South and Midwest, that’s yellow pine (the cheapest), followed by poplar and soft maple. Don’t worry about the stiffness and other engineering factors. If you overbuild your workbench, it will be plenty stiff and strong.
2. Should the benchtop be a slab? A lamination? Plywood? LVL? Which material works best and survives the long term? All of these have trade-offs, and all of them work well – both in the short and long term. The choice is less about engineering (all are heavy and stiff enough) and more about aesthetics, economics and the tools you have available. You can make a plywood bench using a table saw and screw gun. A slab bench requires far more (including a forklift). But which looks better? That’s your call.
3. What’s the best glue for building a workbench? All the common glues are strong enough – hot hide, liquid hide, PVA, epoxy. Choose one that suits your wallet and the way you work. PVA is cheap and easy to get, and it sets up fast (this can be good or bad). Hot hide glue sets up very fast (again, good or bad). Liquid hide glue might be difficult to purchase in your area and sets up slowly. Epoxy is very expensive, but it fills gaps and can have a slow or fast curing time depending on its formulation. For most woodworkers, PVA (plain old yellow glue) is an excellent choice.
4. Can I use green wood? How green? Yes. But it’s risky. Drier is better. You have no idea how much the components will move as they dry. Benchtops, even thick ones, can twist more than 1″ at the corners. If you do receive a fresh slab and need a bench today, build the bench quickly and use stretchers between the legs. The undercarriage and the joinery can help hold the top in place as it dries, reducing its tendency to warp. Also, it’s a good idea to orient the top so the heart side of the board faces up.
5. Is it OK to include the pith in my bench components? I don’t recommend it. No matter what your local sawyer might say, a board with the pith included (sometimes called a “boxed heart”) will split. The split might be minor, or catastrophic. It depends on the tree. Why risk it?
6. Is air-dried wood better for a bench? Or is kiln-dried OK? Either is fine. And I can’t say that either is better for a bench. Just use the heaviest, cheapest wood that is readily available. For me, the more important question is if the wood is at equilibrium with its environment. If not, let it sit a while. Then build the bench.
7. If I can’t find Southern yellow pine in my area, can I use….? Yes.
8. What’s the best finish for a benchtop? Probably no finish is the best. You don’t want your benchtop to be slick. You want the work to be easily restrained. If you want to make it look nice, some boiled linseed oil will do that (and give you a little protection from water spills). Or an oil/varnish blend. That will give you even more protection, but it might slicken up the benchtop a bit. Avoid waxes and thick film finishes, unless your workbench is a fashion accessory.
Questions about the Form or Structure of a Workbench 9. What style of bench should I build if I use only hand tools? I think the easiest bench to build with hand tools is an English joiner’s bench, sometimes called a Nicholson. If you buy dimensional lumber, there is almost no wood to plane to thickness. It’s just cutting boards to length and fastening them together with simple joints, screws or nails. Mike Siemsen’s video “The Naked Woodworker” is a good place to explore this.
10. Won’t wood movement in the benchtop wreck a Roubo or Nicholson workbench? I have never seen it happen. The top shrinks and expands, and the base contorts a little. It doesn’t affect the working qualities of the bench, and the benches don’t pull themselves to pieces.
11. Is it OK to use mixed species of woods when building a workbench? Sure. There is no issue with strength, longevity or (realistically) differential wood movement. A hardwood top and a white pine base might be an economical way to build a bench. The only real concern is aesthetics. Sometimes a benchtop with strips of walnut and purpleheart through the middle make me throw up in my mouth.
12. What’s the best workbench for… …a beginner? Probably an English joiner’s bench (aka, a paneled bench). It has the fewest joints and is the fastest form to build in my experience. However, any beginner can build a French bench or a fancy German bench. It just takes a little more time. Don’t let your lack of skills snuff out your dreams.
13. …an apartment dweller? I would build a small yellow pine bench like the one in this book with nice vises. It would have mass because of the pine and all the features of a full-size bench. Then, when you get a bigger place, you can build a bigger bench and use the same nice hardware. The small bench could go to a friend or become a kitchen island in a Manhattan loft.
14. …a garage or barn without HVAC? I would use softwoods, such as yellow pine, fir or hemlock. These woods move less in service than hardwoods. So, if there are wild swings in humidity, you’ll see less wood movement.
15. …a person with very little money? A bench made with yellow pine or any heavy construction timber. Pound for pound, construction woods are the cheapest and easiest to get.
16. What do you think of a torsion-box benchtop? Or the New-Fangled Workbench? Shaker workbench? How about this other workbench that you’ve never seen or heard of? At times, I feel like I’m being baited with this kind of question. You can answer the question for yourself if you think about it for a minute. Your bench needs mass. How easy is it to work on the faces, edges and ends of boards with the bench? Can you modify the bench as your woodworking changes by adding different vises or holdfasts? Does the joinery seem impossibly robust or one step above a slumlord’s birdhouse?
17. Should the benchtop be assembled with loose tenons? This is an ancient way to assemble slabs (made popular by Greek and Roman boat builders). It certainly adds long-term strength. Drawboring these loose tenons can help pull boards together without clamps. If you lack clamps or faith in your glue or edge-jointing skills, this is a good technique to fix those shortcomings.
18. Can I glue 8/4 material face-to-face to make a thick benchtop? Yes. You also can laminate a large quantity of toothpicks to make a benchtop. The trade-off is you need the equipment to do a seamless job. Or you need to be OK with a few gaps. There is a lot of surface area that needs to be glued when you laminate boards face-to-face.
19. Why shouldn’t I buy a Lie-Nielsen, Plate 11 or Benchcrafted workbench or a high-end Sjöbergs or Ulmia? I like building my own workbenches in the same way I like building all the furniture in my house and making pizza from scratch. That doesn’t make my furniture or pizza better than store-bought. It’s just what I like to do. In fact, I cannot do things any other way because my head is that stupid. If you would rather buy a workbench and spend more time building jungle gyms for owls, do it. As always, caveat emptor with tools and woodworking equipment. I’ve used Benchcrafted, Plate 11 and Lie-Nielsen benches and find them to be great. Sjöbergs are not my favorite. And I haven’t tried a recent-vintage Ulmia.
20. Could you evaluate all the workbenches you’ve encountered in your career and explain to me the best one for my work? Sure thing. Wait right here.
21. What’s your favorite workbench ever? Probably the one in this book.
22. Which workbenches do you regret building? None, really. Even the ones that were less successful taught me important lessons. The bench I miss the least is the door on sawhorses.
23. Should I tooth my benchtop like veneer? Sure. I’ve tried it. The rough resulting surface seems to help keep your work in place, but that might only be my perception and not an engineering truth. The best reason to do it is that every time someone tooths a benchtop, the internet poops its inter-pants.
24. Is there any case where you would advocate for a tool tray? Yes, when the tool tray is a box with a lid and three sliding tills. And positioned off to the side of your bench where all your tools are at hand.
25. What’s the best way to make my workbench mobile? Push it. Commercial “mobility kits” don’t impress me. I’ve seen engineered solutions that are more complex than a Jarvik-7 artificial heart. Simple is best. Most benches can be slid across a floor easily. If you want to protect the floor, put a moving blanket under the feet. Honestly, I own workbenches that are almost 400 pounds, and I can move them myself with my scrawny bird-like arms.
26. What’s the best height for a workbench? I think it’s somewhere between the historical heights of 28″ and 36″. Plus, remember that you can endure working in a range of about 3″ around your ideal. So, if you can’t decide, make the bench a little taller than the internet tells you. Then saw the legs down bit by bit until you find that your work becomes easier. Second piece of advice: Sit down at your bench to do detail work with carving tools, chisels or a router.
27. What’s the best way to make my workbench height-adjustable? I know this sounds snarky, but it’s not. Sit down at a shop stool if you need to be closer to your work. Stand on the same stool (or a raised platform) if you need to get way above it for some reason. Adjust your height – not the workbench’s.
28. What do you think of these commercial benches that adjust in height? I am impressed by the engineering, but I don’t see a need for them in my workshop.
30. Should my workbench be in the center of the room or against the wall? Either works, as long as you can move the bench for oddball operations. I shift my bench all the time here and there to do different things. I prefer to have my bench in the middle of the room so I can go around to its backside to take photos. But most people don’t need to do that. One caveat: If your bench is lightweight, having it against the wall (or secured to the wall) can make it more stable.
31. If I put my bench near a window, which direction should that window face? The classic shop uses only the beautiful northern light. The real shop will take any window facing any direction.
32. Can I drawbore a bench together without glue to make it knockdown? You can do this once. After you disassemble a drawbored joint, it never goes back together as tightly as it did the first time.
33. How lightweight is too light? If the bench moves across the floor during normal planing operations, you have a problem. Bolt the bench to the floor (or wall), add weights or build a heavier bench. After experimenting with commercial benches that were on the featherweight side, I’ve found the typical 60 lb. bench is too light. At about 150 lbs., things begin to work. Above 250 lbs., I don’t notice the workbench.
Questions About Workholding 34. Won’t the toothed planing stop cut me? It’s unlikely. I’ve never cut myself after 15 years of daily use. Can it happen? Sure. Have I heard of people getting cut? Only once. Is it mentioned in early texts, which detail many of the possible gruesome injuries in the shop? Not that I recall.
35. I don’t want to cut a mortise for the planing stop in my beautiful benchtop. Are there other options? Sure. You can fasten a moving block to the end of your benchtop. But I think that’s lame compared to just chopping a hole in your bench and doing the job right. I totally understand that some people have a mental block about some things: grinding an iron, filing the mouth of a handplane open, doing the Ruler Trick for the first time. The barrier is all in your head. Close your eyes and jump off the tire swing. You’ll be glad you did.
36. Do I have to have a face vise? Can’t I use just a crochet? Or is that a dumb idea? Screw-driven vises didn’t show up until the 14th century. So yes, you can do excellent work without a screw-driven vise. Yet, the screw-driven vise is enormously convenient. (There’s a reason that Record never made a iron crochet – painted blue – for workbenches.) And vises are readily available and inexpensive. (But for the record, I enjoy using a crochet.)
37. What is the best arrangement/placement of holdfast holes? Three rows. The back row is 3″ from the rear edge of the benchtop. The middle row is 10″ from the rear edge. The third row is 17″ from the rear edge. The holes are 16″ away from each other. And the holes are staggered on each row by 8″. You might have to adjust these dimensions if you have a very narrow benchtop, but this is the general idea.
38. … of dog holes? Dog holes should be close to the front edge of your benchtop – usually 2″-3″ or so. This allows you to use handplanes that have fences that drop below the benchtop (such as a plow plane). I like to keep my dog holes close together – about 3″ on center.
39. What’s better: a wooden vise screw or a steel one? Neither. Both can close quickly and ferociously on your work. Both can last several lifetimes if cared for. Both can be trashed by abuse.
40. What’s the best material for lining the jaws of a vise? I like suede and a cork-and-rubber gasket material (Benchcrafted sells this as Crubber). Avoid cork alone as it’s too fragile. Some people like neoprene, but I haven’t tried it.
41. What glue should I use to affix the liner for the jaw? I prefer epoxy. Full stop.
42. Should I install a patternmaker’s vise? In the tail vise position? The face vise position? If you are a patternmaker, yes. And it can go in either position on the bench, according to the historical record. If you are a regular-head furniture maker, this vise has downsides. It’s expensive and a trick to install. Most furniture makers don’t need one. But dammit, I own one.
43. Why won’t my holdfasts cinch down? Your benchtop might be too thin, so the holdfast cannot wedge itself in place. Or the hole is too big for the shaft, so the holdfast can’t wedge in place. Or the hole is not plumb. Or the shaft is too smooth. The least likely reason is the holdfast is poorly made and doesn’t have enough spring.
44. How flat does my workbench have to be? The bench has to be flat enough so your work doesn’t spring in low spots to the point where you cannot flatten boards with your handplanes. If you work with handplanes, you will know when the benchtop is too wonky because your planes won’t do their job. If you don’t work with handplanes, flatness is rarely critical.
45. How often should I flatten my workbench? I flatten a benchtop when I make it. Then I flatten it again when it has become disgusting from glue and abuse. Or when it stops working (as per the previous question). Some people flatten their benchtops yearly. Some do it after every big project. I ain’t got time for that. And I haven’t found it necessary.
46. What’s a vise garter? Do I need one? Garters are a part of a screw-driven vise that links the screw mechanism to the vise’s jaw. With a garter in place, the jaw moves in and out when you move the screw in and out. Without a garter, the jaw moves forward with the screw, but must be pulled back manually when you retract the screw. Do you need one? They’re convenient but not necessary.
47. Will I regret not installing a tail vise? The best path forward is to build a bench that allows you to add a tail vise immediately or in the future. That way you and your work can answer the question (instead of a dumb Kentucky woodworker).
48. Which is better: square dogs or round ones? Neither. Square dogs don’t rotate; round ones do. Your work might need round dogs if it’s odd-shaped. Round dogs are easier to install. Both forms are traditional and go back centuries.
49. …steel dogs or wooden ones? Steel dogs hold better but they will mess up your handplane as soon as you hit one. Wooden dogs don’t hold as well, but they don’t hurt your handplanes. The choice is yours.
50. What sort of woodwork requires a tail vise? If you plane up a lot of boards that are similarly sized, a tail vise can be nice. They can also be nice for disassembling a frame that is tightly dry-fit. They are convenient for traversing wide boards with a jack plane or working diagonally with a jointer plane. We have several benches with tail vises or wagon vises. I use a tail vise once every few months.
51. Do I need a board jack (either integral or freestanding)? These are helpful when you have very long boards (longer than 8′) or a face vise that has a poor grip and cannot handle an 8′-long board by itself. They are also handy for edge-jointing long tabletops and mortising doors. If you do big work, they are a godsend. If you don’t, they are occasionally useful but are mostly a storage facility for holdfasts.
52. Finally, what wood should I use for my bench? Oh, do sod off.
