Reader Charles W. Luetje sent me a link to this New York Times story that features Zach Braff sitting on a fantastic workbench with a beautiful deadman. I will definitely be stealing this form for a future bench.
From the wear marks on the bench, it looks like the deadman panels are stationary – not sliders.
Braff’s bench is quite similar to one I discussed in my 2007 book, “Workbenches: From Design & Theory to Construction & Use.” That bench was featured in the August 1882 edition of Carpentry and Building magazine (see page 58 of that book for details).
Jonathan Fisher built a number of workbenches during his life in Blue Hill, Maine, according to woodworker Joshua Klein, who has studied Fisher’s journal in detail.
One of Fisher’s workbenches is a lightweight model that uses a basic Nicholson construction with an unusual base that looks a little like a folding ironing board.
Here are some of the details Klein and I observed while looking over the workbench.
1. The front apron of the bench, which is facing away from the camera in the photo above, has two threaded holes in it that look like they were intended for a twin-screw vise.
2. The benchtop doesn’t have a planing stop. Instead it is bored with a series of holes for wooden pegs. Some pegs are designed to restrain the end of the board; other pegs are designed to restrain the board laterally. It looks a lot like workbenches shown in drawings of Nuremburg woodworkers.
3. The underside of the bench uses four diagonal braces and one horizontal brace to restrain the bench while traversing. The aprons are fastened to the legs with nails, which prevent it from swaying while planing with the grain.
4. The one thing that had Klein and I scratching our heads was the backside of the bench. It looks like the bench had a drop leaf attached with butt hinges. In the middle of the apron are some notches and a semi-circular dado. Our guess is that this was the mechanism for holding the drop leaf up. But we couldn’t figure out how it worked exactly.
Another bench at Blue Hill is a low workbench that looks like a Roman or Estonian model. It is pierces with a lot of holes for pegs (or jigs). There is some evidence of sawing and chiseling that was done on the bench – but not a lot.
This could have been a low workbench that Fisher used. Or perhaps it’s a sitting bench that was used occasionally for woodworking.
— Christopher Schwarz
To read more about Jonathan Fisher and his woodworking, check out these links.
British woodworker Richard Arnold recently discovered an abandoned hand-tool joiner’s shop located only a few miles from his workshop.
Arnold says it looks like the shop was abandoned just before the second world war and looks as if it had never been mechanized. The pit saws were still hanging undisturbed on the walls.
Even more extraordinary are the pine or fir workbenches left in the shop. Each is about 30” tall and looks like it was built right out of Peter Nicholson’s treatise on joinery.
Two of the benches sport planing stops and leg vises with a traditional parallel guide. Yet neither appears to have a garter, as far as I can tell from the photos. Both benches have massive legs plus bearers that pierce the front and rear aprons and support the tops.
Perhaps most remarkable is that Arnold said the benchtops were only about 5/8” thick.
Arnold said there is a third workbench, not pictured, that appears to be an even earlier piece of work and didn’t have any vises attached to it. He promised that he would go back for a closer look and would report back.
— Christopher Schwarz
P.S. Arnold is the generous soul who dug up the original “Doormaking and Window-Making” booklets that we reprinted late last year.
To amuse ourselves, Jeff Burks, Suzanne Ellison and I have been trying to find the earliest extant holdfast or the earliest image of one. We’ve gone way back, but the trail goes dead in Roman times. We have people saying the Romans had holdfasts, but we have yet to see one in a museum or image.
W.L. Goodman, the author of “The History of Woodworking Tools,” wrote “sometimes the Romans used an L-shaped iron hold-fast, and for planing, serrated dogs or bench stops” in a September 1964 article for The Woodworker magazine.
Robert Ulrich, the author of “Roman Woodworking,” describes a device that could be a holdfast or a pinch dog, but it’s likely a pinch dog. See these images from the British Museum.
I’m suspect the Romans had holdfasts, which is why I keep looking. (It’s something to do after I’ve had a couple beers and shouldn’t operate machinery.) There’s a 18th-century copy of a Roman fresco (which we think is now destroyed) that shows a holdfast. That image (above) is from “Le Antichità di Ercolano, Volume 1,” by Tommaso Piroli (engraver) 1789.
Here’s Jeff’s translation of the image’s accompanying text:
The other involves a curious painting expressing two genii, engaged in the art of the Joiner. The plank with a toothed iron for stopping the boards, a saw, a hammer, a box for storing other instruments of the art are to be seen in the workshop. On the wall a shelf with a vase from the oglio likely to grease the blade. What the above mentioned two genii Joiners were meant to indicate that inclination arose also called the genius of their respective crafts.
So if you see one when you are touring Roman ruins or European museums (which have hordes of Roman artifacts) this summer, let us know.
Last night I dragged myself home after five days of building 16 workbenches at the Marc Adams School of Woodworking. All of the benches turned out fantastic for two reasons:
1. Wonderful (yet inexpensive) material. We used Horizon Wood Product’s Roubo “bench bundles.” For just $650 per bench, we got some amazing 12/4 and 8/4 ash for the bench. It was all cut to manageable lengths, perfectly dry and clear. Out of the 16 benches, we had only two small, tight knots.
Another testament to the quality of the wood: Due to a mistake I made, I ordered 15 bench bundles for 16 students. We still were able to squeeze out a perfect 16th bench from the material supplied. Without a doubt, I will use Horizon again. The service was outstanding. Pete Terbovich, who handles the bench kits there, is great to deal with.
2. Teamwork. At some bench classes it’s difficult to get students to work together on everyone’s benches, hauling tops around, milling material that is not for their bench, assisting with layouts and goodness knows what. Not this class. These were special students.
I’m back on the road next week – I leave Tuesday for The Woodwright’s School, where I’m teaching a class in the Dutch Tool Chest and filming two more episodes on Roy Underhill’s Show “The Woodwright’s Shop.”
So if I haven’t answered your recent e-mail….
— Christopher Schwarz
P.S. Day 1 and Day 2 of the bench-building class are covered on my blog at Popular Woodworking Magazine. The music is from freemusicarchive.org and is by the Freak Fandango Orchestra.