After the death of Nancy Cogger of Londonderry Brasses, Horton Brasses acquired the company’s stock and is selling many existing pieces at 50 percent off.
Orion Henderson estimated there are more than 23,000 pieces of Londonderry hardware now for sale on the Horton site.
If this is all the information you need, get your credit card out and load up. Here’s the link.
I swooped in and bought about 50 pieces of campaign hardware for future commissions and a follow-up to “Campaign Furniture.” I was shocked at how much money I saved. Here’s the link to the campaign hardware section.
Londonderry is fantastic stuff, made using a lost wax casting process to copy original pieces. The good news is that the hardware looks bang-on original. The bad news is that it usually requires more finessing to install than modern hardware that is completely consistent in every single way.
Orion says that Horton will continue to carry some of the Londonderry pieces and bring them in as a special order. But you’ll never see these prices again.
If you aren’t familiar with Horton, it’s time to fix that situation. I’ve been a happy customer since 1997.
Coming up with a title for “Ingenious Mechanicks: Early Workbenches & Workholding” was a challenge. This new book started as an expansion of “Roman Workbenches,” a small letterpress edition we published last year. But the more research that Suzanne Ellison and I did, the more we realized that the “Roman” part wasn’t quite right.
I came up with 10 alternative titles, including such losers as “A Workbench Atlas” (too broad), “Workbenches: The First 1,500 Years” (yawn) and “Slabs, Legs & Wedges” (what *are* you smoking, Schwarz?).
In the end, we settled on “Ingenious Mechanicks” because it hit the right note. Both Suzanne and I were continually floored by the simple workholding solutions used on these benches. We chose to use the antiquated spelling of “Mechanicks” as a tip of the hat to Joseph Moxon, who wrote the first English book on woodworking and used the old word in the title of his book, “Mechanick Exercises.”
So for those of you who are still scratching your head about this book – is it a book on fixing old cars? – here is a brief description of the contents. First: Some of you have asked if “Ingenious Mechanicks” contains all the content from “Roman Workbenches.” The answer is yes. Some of it has been rewritten a tad to match the tone of the remainder of “Ingenious Mechanicks.” But it’s all there.
Chapter 1: Why Early Workbenches? Even if you have a modern workbench with all the latest hardware, there is a lot to be learned from early workbenches. These benches can solve workholding tasks in surprisingly simple ways. And knowing these tricks can allow you to convert almost any surface (such as a picnic table) into a workbench.
Chapter 2: Workbenches Old & Modern A brief discussion of the three major phases of workbench design: simple low benches that used stops and holdfasts; “middle” benches that introduced benches with fixed screws and dogs; and modern benches with the full array of vises, dogs and sharks with lasers. Plus, there is a discussion of the ideal dimensions for both tall and low benches and – my favorite part – a poem about workbench building.
Chapter 3: The Pleasures & Problems with Paintings The core of our research into early benches was sifting through about 10,000 paintings from all over the world and 2,000 years of history to find ones that depicted workbenches in use. We discarded many outliers that ignored gravity and the three-dimensional universe and seized on the patterns we found. This chapter contains dozens of paintings – most of which have never been published before – that show early workbenches in use. And we discuss their surprising diversity of workholding solutions.
Chapter 4: Workbenches: Where, When & Why Suzanne wrote this interesting chapter, which seeks to explain the benches in the paintings through the lens of history. She shows how the benches we found line up with the Roman road system, the borders of the Roman Empire and the changes in the church’s attitude toward St. Joseph, the father of Jesus Christ.
Chapter 5: Early Workholding Devices In many ways, this long chapter is the heart of the book. Using the paintings, I built the jigs, fixtures and workholding devices we found and put them to use. While we show dozens of techniques, we include measured drawings for the two more complex devices: A shavehorse you can add to a low workbench and a French shaving setup called the “belly” that can be added to any workbench. Plus we investigate some paintings that we just couldn’t figure out.
Chapter 6: Herculaneum Workbench Plans and construction information for the eight-legged bench shown in the Herculaneum fresco (circa 79 A.D.). This bench (and the one from Pompeii) is the earliest image we know of that depicts a workbench in use.
Chapter 7: Saalburg Workbench The oldest surviving workbench (so far) is from a Roman fort in Saalburg, Germany. I visited the fort and was permitted to examine the bench and take measurements. This chapter details how to construct the bench (circa 187 A.D.). This is probably my favorite bench of the bunch (just because of the way it looks; they all function well).
Chapter 8: ‘Auf Wiedersehen’ to Your Dollars My favorite chapter. It’s about the extreme measures we took to dig up information on the first drawing of a “modern” workbench from a 1505 codex. It was so much work and involved people all over the world. The result: We got a recipe for stew and failed to translate the recipe for a love potion. Oh, and there was a kidnapping and a stabbing.
Chapter 9: Holy Roman Workbench Using the 1505 codex, I built a copy of the first “modern” workbench we know of – it’s a tall workbench with a twin-screw face vise and a fascinating (and highly effective) tail vise.
Chapter 10: ‘Experto Crede’ The final chapter is personal (feel free to skip it). Why is it important to continue to investigate these old benches? And what you can do to continue the research if you are as bonkers as I.
Most of you know I’m not an academic writer. While I love the research tools (and the resources) of the academic, I decline to write like one. This will upset those of you who are serious about your… everything. Apologies. Instead, my goal was to harness years of research and bench trials and funnel that into something that is fun to read, beautiful to look at and useful in your shop.
I just completed a pair of side tables copied from one I measured at Hancock Shaker Village last year. The top of the original table, dating to around 1840, was attached with pocket screws. The first thing that comes to mind when the words pocket screw are thought of is the modern Kreg Jig. Pocket screws are actually quite old; they existed long before Craig Sommerfeld came up with an apparatus to bore them in 1986.
The early pocket screws pockets are chopped out with a gouge instead of bored. The majority of the old ones always look pretty much the same: a gauge mark at the bottom and a coarsely chopped pocket. In most of the vintage ones I have measured, the bottom of the pocket is 3/4″ to 1″ from the top edge of the skirt.
These are quite easy and fast to cut. About the only special tool needed is an incannel gouge. No need to be particularly neat either – the old ones aren’t. They are also nice because there is no other hardware needed besides screws. I can cut the pockets faster (about three minuets per pocket) and less time spent doing laying than using Z clips, figure-8s or buttons.
To lay out the pocket, start by laying a screw the length you will be mounting the top with on the edge of the table skirt. Let the screw overhang the skirt the amount you want it to penetrate the top you will be mounting. In my case here, I had a 5/8″-thick top, so the screw projects past the edge of the skirt 1/2″. When the screw is positioned, mark the location of the screw head. This will be the location of the bottom of the pocket.
Set a marking gauge to the pencil line and gauge a line at each location you need a screw.
Next, using a gouge, start cutting down to the gauge mark, taking light cuts until the bottom of the pocket is slightly wider and deeper than the diameter of the screw head. The gouge I am using here is about 1/2″ wide. A more narrow or wider gouge will work, too. If the sweep is too wide cut from ether side of the pocket this will make the back of the screw pocket a bit V-shaped, but it works just fine. A more narrow one just requires a few more licks.
Once the pockets are cut bore thru for the screw and then cut the countersink for the screw head.
Last, align the table base on the top and bore the pilot holes thru the pockets into the top. To allow for expansion an contraction of the top, elongate the screw holes a bit where they exit the skirts. Screw on the top.
Give them a try sometime, the work great!
— Will Myers
Below are a few photos of vintage tables using pocket screws.
You can now place a pre-publication order for “Ingenious Mechanicks: Early Workbenches & Workholding” in our store. The price is $39, which includes domestic shipping. All customers who place a pre-publication order will receive a free download of the book in pdf format at checkout.
The book is scheduled to ship in early April 2018. We don’t know which retailers will opt to carry the book (we hope all of them will). But we will update you here when we have more information.
What’s it About? Workbenches with screw-driven vises are a fairly modern invention (likely the 14th century). For many hundreds of years, woodworkers built complex and beautiful pieces of furniture using simpler benches that relied on pegs, wedges and the human body to grip the work. While it’s easy to dismiss these ancient benches as obsolete, they are – at most – misunderstood.
For the last three years, I’ve been building these ancient workbenches and putting them to work to build all manner of furniture – chairs, casework and carpentry stuff. Absent any surviving ancient instruction manuals for these benches, I looked to historical paintings of these benches for clues as to how they worked. Then I built the devices and tried the techniques shown in the paintings.
This book is about this journey into the past and takes the reader from Pompeii, which features the oldest image of a Western bench, to a Roman fort in Germany to inspect the oldest surviving workbench and finally to my shop in Kentucky, where I recreated three historical workbenches and dozens of early jigs.
These early benches have many advantages:
They are less expensive to build
They can be built in a couple days
They require less material
You can sit down to use them
They take up less space than a modern bench and can even serve as seating in your house
In some cases they perform better than modern vises or shavehorses.
Even if you have no plans to build an early workbench, “Ingenious Mechanicks” is filled with ideas you can put to work on your modern bench. You can make an incredibly versatile shaving station for your bench using four small pieces of wood. You can create a hard-gripping face vise with a notch in the benchtop and some softwood wedges. You can make the best planing stop ever with a stick of oak and some rusty nails.
Oh, one final note about what this book is not. It’s not a condemnation of modern benches. It is, instead, a way to expand the methods of holding your work. To make some operations simpler. And to allow you to do more at your bench without adding complex vises.
And it features a poem I wrote.
“Ingenious Mechanics” is 8-1/2” x 11”, 160 pages and printed in full color on beautiful coated paper. The binding is sewn to last for generations. The pages are surrounded by heavy hardbound boards that are covered in cotton cloth. And the whole book is wrapped in a heavy matte-coated dust jacket. Like all Lost Art Press books, “Ingenious Mechanicks” is produced and printed entirely in the United States.
When I wrote “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest,” I didn’t think a single person would actually build the chest shown in the book. That’s why I greatly condensed my construction instructions, and I eliminated chapters for a traveling version and a Dutch chest.
Six years later, building these tool chests comprises a significant portion of my income. This is both surprising and heartening. Yes, wall-hung tool cabinets and racks are great – no argument. But there is something about a tool chest that appeals to certain woodworkers.
I have been working out of a tool chest since 1997 and – after using racks and cabinets – am deeply satisfied with my choice.
This week I have launched into building two full-size chests for special customers. Both chests will have a full suite of hardware from blacksmith Peter Ross. Plus lots of details I’ve been itching to try, and some new ideas from the customers that I’m quite excited about.
I’ll document their construction here – not so much to generate additional business (I have 14 commissions lined up for 2018), but to make up for the lightweight instructions in the book.
First up: Choosing lumber and gluing up the panels. Look for it soon.
You can now place a pre-publication order for “
