One of the best reasons to build a workbench at a school is to take advantage of the industrial-scale machinery and the strong backs of your fellow students. Oh, and your workbench is done in just a week.
The knockdown Nicholson bench is a fantastic bench I built during the summer using some principles swiped from Mike Siemsen, Caleb James and Peter Nicholson. The bench assembles in minutes and once together, you would be hard-pressed to say it could ever come apart. The thing is solid.
And the whole thing knocks down flat for transport or for when guests come over. It’s the ideal bench for an apartment, a temporary workspace or if you ever plan to move.
The massive and classic French bench we’re building in Connecticut will be made with the super-primo ash from Horizon Wood Products that we used to build benches at the Marc Adams School of Woodworking in 2014.
Bench classes are physically taxing, but they are like an Amish barn-raising. Everyone has to pull together to get all the workbenches complete. It’s a team sport, which is something rare and wonderful in the world of furniture-making.
Every time I teach at Roy Underhill’s “The Woodwright’s School,” he gives me a rash of crap for two things: my waterstones and my plastic, pressurized plant sprayer that I use to moisten my stones.
He now begrudgingly ignores my waterstones, perhaps after I offered data that many early sharpening stones in the Western tradition were also lubricated with water. But the plastic plant sprayer just won’t cut it in the 1930s-era environment that Roy cultivates in his school.
And so this week I bought an old(ish) brass plant mister so that I can avoid the conversation about plastic this year. The mister isn’t particularly old, but it was cheap and works just fine. You can dispense water by tipping the mister forward (like a watering can) or press the top plunger to get some mist from the nozzle.
I’m mentioning this because I am indeed teaching a class in 2015 at The Woodwright’s School. Roy released the 2015 schedule last week and my name wasn’t on it. I got a few messages along the lines of: Did Roy catch you sleeping with his dog?
The answer is no, he did not catch me.
We haven’t set a date for the class yet because Roy is trying to coordinate it with shooting a couple of episodes of “The Woodwright’s Shop.” When we do settle on a date, I’ll announce it here. At this point, I think the class is going to be on how to make the collapsible bookshelves from “Campaign Furniture.” A fun project.
— Christopher Schwarz
P.S. The headline of this blog entry is in tribute to Megan Fitzpatrick (who also is supposed to be teaching at Roy’s in 2015). A reader complained to Megan’s boss that I was a “bad influence” on her. If you know Megan, you know how funny that is.
If I have only one complaint about my life, it is that with all the teaching, writing and building that I do, I have no time left to take woodworking courses for myself.
I don’t drool over tool catalogs. My personal pornographic publications are the brochures and web sites from woodworking schools that teach skills that I want to master.
So when I had dinner with David Savage last summer, you can imagine how long it took me to say “yes” to his following proposition: I teach a class in building a tool chest at his school in Rowden, then stay on for a second week to assist and take a class in sunburst veneering.
Savage has long been one of those woodworkers I wanted to learn from. He does amazing work. And, equally important to me, he is one of the most daring woodworking writers alive today. He is, simply put, nobody’s tool. He is fearless in exploring the craft and his own human failings. Check out some of his articles here.
So this summer I head to Rowden to lead a class in building a dead-nuts traditional tool chest, one I have specially designed for this course. During the first week, Aug. 24-28, we’ll build the chest using hand tools and traditional production methods and joints – dovetails, tongue-and-groove, miters, breadboards etc.
The second week (Aug. 31-Sept. 4) we will embellish the interior lid of the chest with a sunburst veneer pattern designed for the course, plus traditional veneer and crossbanding on the lid of the top till. The goal is for all of the students to walk away with a finished chest, a boatload of newfound skills and a slightly swollen liver.
When David announced the course last week, it filled up immediately. But the wait list is very short right now and these classes always have a certain amount of churn. If you’d like to read more details about Rowden, David’s crack team of instructors and the course, check out these pages here and here. You can sign up for the course’s wait list here.
I’ll be writing more about the chest design in the coming months. It is based off a number of historical examples that have survived quite well and has some features you might consider for your tool chest.
Thanks to everyone who has sent tools and money for the 18 new hand-tool woodworkers I’ll be teaching at the Marc Adams School of Woodworking next year.
Your tax-deductible donations have already paid for five (almost six) of the students. And the donated tools are piling up on my workbench in the sunroom. I haven’t counted everything yet (and I still have three boxes to open today). But I can say that we are set on mallets and coping saws – more on that point at a future date.
If you haven’t heard about this heavily discounted course that I’m teaching in the United States and England in 2015, go here. If you are interested in donating tools or money to the effort, you can read about that here.
I have had a lot of questions about the class at the Marc Adams School of Woodworking in particular because it has not opened for registration yet. Registration for the general public begins on Dec. 1. If you wish to read the course description and get information on registering, fill out the contact form here and opt in for the school’s newsletter. They’ll send you the 2015 schedule and registration information.
I’ll never know the pain of childbearing, but I think I know the next-closest thing: bench building. That why I include a full bottle of ibuprofen on the list of tools needed for my bench-building classes.
Students think I’m kidding about the pills, but by mid-week they are hitting my personal bottle of painkillers like a candy bowl at the front desk of a Mars bar factory.
For 2015, I am offering four bench-building classes on three continents: Australia, North America and England. I don’t know how many more of bench classes I have in me, so take that as fair warning. Here are details:
The owner of the Melbourne, Australia, school scored a load of sweet yellow pine benchtops that are already glued up. We’re going to transform these into some fantastic French-style workbenches with the traditional joint: a sliding dovetail and through-tenon at each corner.
As always, you can add your own vises to build the bench of your dreams. That’s one of the huge advantages of the open architecture of the French format.
For this Australia class I’ll also bring a stomach pump in addition to my painkillers. Aussies drink like Germans.
The knockdown Nicholson workbench is a new design this year (check out details here). I’ve made many Nicholson-style workbenches, but this one is by far the best, easiest to build and knocks down in less than five minutes.
This bench is suited for anyone who doesn’t have a dedicated shop space, or who might need to move their bench on occasion. However, even if you don’t fit in those categories, this bench offers no downsides. Unlike other knockdown benches I’ve worked on, this one has no compromises. It is as solid as a French bench.
The version we’re building has no screw-feed vises, but you can bring whatever you like and we’ll add them to your bench. A leg vises would be ideal for the face vise position. I personally wouldn’t add a tail vise to this bench – I work just fine without one – but this bench can accept several tail vises as well.
While I am very much looking forward to returning to Royal Leamington Spa and Warwickshire College for this course, I am not sure how the local pubs feel about our triumphant return.
Build a French Bench at the Connecticut Valley School of Woodworking, Aug. 10-14, 2015 Using sweet, sweet ash from Horizon Wood Products, we’ll be building full-on Roubo-style workbenches in the well-equipped shop at the Connecticut Valley School of Woodworking. And we will most certainly have a pizza-eating contest that week, courtesy of Frank Pepe’s.
As mentioned above, you can add whatever vises you like to this bench.
— Christopher Schwarz
P.S. There is one more workbench class scheduled for 2015: The French Oak Roubo Project. While that class is full, get on the waiting list if you want to do it. Spots may yet open up.
