During the Christmas season, we get asked to endorse and promote a lot of products, which is not something I am inclined to do. I publish a yearly Anarchist’s Gift Guide on my Popular Woodworking Magazine blog, but those are all little things that I own and use – not the result of a corporate PR campaign.
But here are two things that were brought to my attention – both workbench-related – by people I trust.
First is a hand-forged holdfast and bottle opener set from Horton Brasses. Horton makes a lot of the brass and iron hardware I use, and this year the company has made a set of two iron holdfasts and bottle opener for $99. I would order a set to check them out, but I use 1” holdfasts. These are designed to work in a more modern 3/4” hole.
The other item is a long-term investment. Will Myers, a workbench-building friend in North Carolina, convinced a sawmill he uses to cut up some oak kits for massive old-school workbenches. The kit includes a top 6”-thick top that is 18”-26” wide and 8’-9’ long. The legs are 4” x 6”, the stretchers are 2” x 4” and you get wood for a vise chop, too.
The price is $500 if picked up. Shipping is available.
It’s all green oak, so you’ll want to sticker it to dry. Red oak dries fast, so it might take 5 years, maybe more, depending on your storage environment.
Will is solid gold in my book, and he’s doing this to help keep this wood from becoming pallets. You can read Will’s account here. Or you can contact the sawmill at lesley27011@yahoo.com.
I have always wanted to make one of these grease boxes for the underside of a workbench. Knowing me, however, I’d probably keep paraffin in it instead of tallow. I learned to handplane using paraffin (which has no smell) as a lubricant. There is something odd about using mutton tallow – I work up a sweat and smell lamb chops.
A.J. Roubo does not say much about the grease box or how it should be constructed: “Below the table of the bench you attach with a screw a piece of wood in the form of a box, in which you put some grease, useful for rubbing the tools to make them smoother.”
I decided to make the box 1-7/8” thick, 3” wide and 5-1/2” long and out of oak. But I started with a bigger chunk of oak to make it easier to bore out the cavity that holds grease and to hold the piece as I finished chiseling the cavity.
The walls of the grease box are about 5/16” thick – give or take. That makes the cavity roughly 2-1/4” wide, 3-1/2” long and 1-1/2” deep. I bored out most of the waste and cleaned up the interior with a chisel.
Then I used a compass to draw a nice arc around the back of the box, as shown in Plate 11 of “l’Art du menuisier.” After rounding that off with rasps and sandpaper, I drew the curved relief under the box. This relief allows you to use a shorter lag screw, and it looks nice. I simply sketched it freehand and then roughed it out.
I also rounded the square corners of the box, a la Plate 11.
The box will be attached to the bench with a 5/16” x 3” lag screw and washer. I created a flat area for the washer (thank you, Forstner bit) and then bored a clearance hole for the lag screw.
Then I oiled up the exterior of the box and am now soaking the hardware in citric acid to remove the buttocks-ugly zinc plating.
This is the last little bit on this bench. I have only to apply my signature plate and await the truck that will come to pick it up.
Most drawers attached to the benchtop of a workbench get in the way of clamping, the bench dogs or the holdfasts. And so when I build a workbench for a customer, I typically omit the drawer (with their permission, of course).
But this bench that I’m finishing up needs a drawer, and so I was determined to make it look just like the drawer in A.J. Roubo’s Plate 11 and not get in the way.
Roubo didn’t have much to say about the drawer: “One should place a drawer at the end of the bench so that the workers can close up their minor tools like gouges, compasses, etc.” That brevity gave me a lot of leeway as to how the drawer should be constructed and hung.
As to construction, the drawer is built like a typical 18th-century drawer. The rear corners are joined with through-dovetails. The front corners are joined with half-blinds. The bottom slides in through the back of the drawer via a groove in the sides and drawer front.
The sides, back and bottom are all 1/2”-thick pine. The remainder of the parts are made with 7/8”-thick oak. The drawer itself is 7” high, 10” wide and 15-1/2” deep. I came to this measurement by scaling Roubo’s drawing of the drawer compared to the rest of the bench.
But how to hang the drawer? If I were worried about theft, I would design the mechanism differently. But as this bench is destined for a private shop, I decided to make the runners and slides robust and repairable.
The two drawer runners are each constructed of two pieces of oak screwed to the underside of the benchtop to create an “L” shape. Then I glued two slides to the drawer sides that slide back and forth in the runners. It’s basically a side-hung drawer. You’ll note that the slides are about 17” long, which will allow for some over-travel if the drawer is pulled out too far.
I nailed a couple of drawer stops to the benchtop and oiled everything up to match the bench.
All this is left is to mortise in the strike for the lock.
This might not be the way that Roubo would have done it, but until I get my Ouija board dialed into 1767, this will have to do.
Edward Prince, Carpenter, Aged 73 by John Walters painted in 1792.
I follow one of Britain’s National Trust blogs that specializes in chinoiserie. Through the blog I was familiar with Erddig, a very popular National Trust site, outside of Wrexham in Wales. What I didn’t know was how the painting above was related to Erdigg and the extraordinary relationship between the Yorke family, Edward Prince and his successors.
The painting of Edward Prince has been in my file for a while but until I could decipher the writing on the scroll, Edward had to wait. Last night I found the poem and much more about the carpenters of Erddig.
Erdigg was built in the 1680s and passed into the Yorke family in 1733. Phillip Yorke I (1743-1804) commissioned portraits of six estate servants and composed poems to be included in the paintings. The paintings were completed between 1791-1796 and in addition to the carpenter, included an elderly housemaid, the blacksmith, the gamekeeper, the kitchen porter and the butcher and publican in Wrexham. Except for the butcher, all the servants were middle aged or elderly and had been in service from a young age. The series of paintings and the poems started a Yorke family tradition of acknowledging and honoring the servants of Erdigg. This remarkable and unique tradition continued for almost 200 years with the paintings, and later photos, displayed in the Servants Hall.
Phillip Yorke I by Gainsborough, late 1770s; the West front view of Erddig.
John Prince, father of Charles and grandfather to Edward, was the first recorded carpenter at Erddig. Charles Prince, known as “The Black Prince” because of his dark complexion, succeeded John. Edward became his father’s apprentice. As head carpenter Charles was paid 1 shilling 6 pence per day for a 6 day week; Edward the apprentice was paid 1 shilling per day for a 6 day week. In 1779 Edward succeeded his father as Head Carpenter and we learn a bit more about him from the poem in the painting:
Phillip York called these little compositions of his “Crude-Ditties” and actually published a volume of them. It isn’t a poem meant for a collection of classics, but a message of warm regard for the Prince family as a mainstay of Erddig and an affectionate thank you to Edward for his long service. And four wives! With each new wife I can just imagine what kind of greeting Phillip gave Edward, can’t you?
In 1830 Thomas Rodgers was the carpenter at Erddig and at age 48 he was painted at his workbench. Simon Yorke II wrote the inscription at the bottom.
Thomas Rodgers, Carpenter, 1830 by William Jones of Chester.
Rodgers started working at Erddig in 1798 first as a pig-boy and later as a thatcher’s assistant and a slater. After working at Erddig for over 65 years he was made a pensioner at age 90 and died in 1875 at age 94. Twenty-two years after the painting we find Thomas in a photograph taken in 1852. He is holding his saw with his son and successor James Rodgers next to him.
Erddig servants on the front steps in 1852. Thomas Rodgers is front row, second from right holding his saw; his son James is next to him.
The Yorke family documentaion of their domestic staff gives us a rare look at a 19th-century craftsman in a painting and a photograph. It is a reminder of how much life was changing mid-century. Although the pace of change was slower on a country estate, the traditional ways of life and of making things by hand was being challenged and changed by new technologies and machines.
John Jones, a descendant of Erddig servants, was the head carpenter at age 56 in 1911 when his photo was taken. He entered service in 1872.
John Jones, Erddig Carpenter, 1911.
Thanks to the Yorke family’s respect for their staff we have a glimpse into the lives of multiple generations of carpenters at one country estate. Hands down, this beats Gosford Park (except for Clive Owen) and Downton Abbey any day.
In 1973 Erddig became a National Trust property. Not long after that a local mine collapsed threatening the stability of the main house and out buildings and a major job of shoring up was undertaken. Although I couldn’t find any photographs of the carpenter’s shop taken in the 19th century I did find a few photos taken prior to and during the 1970s renovations, and a few current photos. Except for the current photos of the workshop all images in this post are from the National Trust.
If you would like to learn more about Erddig go here.
Rona Walker from New Zealand wrote “A Brief Story of the Prince Family” for a family reunion. I wonder if there are any Prince woodworkers in New Zealand?
–Suzanne Ellison
P.S. If you would like to see the original six paintings by John Walters, including the blacksmith, go here.
Interior of the Carpenter’s Workshop before restoration, 1974.
Interior of the Carpenter’s Workshop before restoration.
Interior of the Carpenter’s Workshop before restoration.
View of interior of the Carpenters’ Workshop during restoration.
I don’t sleep as well when I have French workbench in pieces in my shop. Even a little wood movement in the joints can make assembly a bear, or at least a ticked-off warthog.
Yesterday I fit the legs in their mortises. Today I got everything major assembled. Some specs for the curious:
The base is drawbored with 5/8” hickory dowel stock. The drawbore offset was a strong 1/8”, and I drove the pins in with a sledge.
All the joints are strengthened by Titebond Liquid Hide Glue.
This bench is 9’ long – the most common size called out in “l’Art du menuisier.” It’s more than a 1’ longer than my bench but seems a lot longer.
Height is about 31”, as per the customer’s request. A nice height – almost as nice as 38”.
Benchtop depth is 21”, one of my favorite depths.
Next comes the fun part. This customer asked for the full-on Plate 11 treatment. So it’s getting two Peter Ross holdfasts, the fully joined tongue-and-groove shelf, Peter Ross planing stop and iron bits for the vise, a dovetailed drawer, swing-out grease pot and tool rack at the back.
This will be the closest full-on Plate 11 bench I’ve yet built. The next closest thing involves a time travel machine, which Stumpy Nubs is currently fabricating on an X-carve in Baltic birch.
