Lost Art Press

Category: Workbenches

Farewell Phil Koontz, Holdfast Pioneer

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Blacksmith Phil Koontz has decided to get out of the business of making holdfasts.

In my book, it’s a sad decision. Phil was one of the very few people who made holdfasts for anyone anywhere on the globe and was 100-percent reliable all of the time.

While unnamed ironmongers were making “holdfasts” that didn’t cinch down or broke under mild hammer pressure, Phil made holdfasts that bit your work like a ticked-off cobra. They were the first holdfasts I owned that really worked.

Why is he leaving the business? I’ll let Phil speak:

“I have decided to stop selling (holdfasts). I wanted you to be one of the first to know. Last winter I had a big rush on orders around Christmas, partly as a result of your very kind video evaluation of Megan Fitzpatrick’s holdfasts. Christmas seems to be the busy season for holdfasts anyway, and I have just decided that I’m not up to a lot of blacksmithing this winter.

“It’s a bit awkward that I really stocked up on steel last summer during barge season, so I don’t know quite what I’m going to do with 500 feet of 11/16″ bar stock, but I’m sure something will turn up.”

If you are one of the hundreds of people who dealt with Phil during the last decade, I know you will wish him well in his future Alaskan endeavors. And if you are one of those people who put off buying a pair of his fantastic holdfasts, sorry about your luck.

— Christopher Schwarz

The 2012 Sawbench in 60 Minutes or Less (or More)

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People gripe about my plans for sawbenches. They require too many tools, skills or shop time to complete. These are not baseless complaints: The first sawbench I built incorporated drawbored and wedged through-tenons. It’s an awesome beast that will never die, but it is a tad difficult to build if you don’t own a shop or a workbench.

So during the last five years I’ve simplified their construction, shortened the must-have tool list and made them quick to build. And I’ve done this without sacrificing their functional characteristics.

This weekend at Woodworking in America in Pasadena, Calif., I’ll be building a couple of these sawbenches and giving them away. The parlor trick is that I’ll be building them in 60 minutes or less. I hope.

During the last week I’ve built four of these sawbenches to refine their construction details. These sawbenches have legs with a compound splay, but all the layout is done with a steel square. If you can identify the numbers 5 and 21, then you can do the geometry.

The hardest part of building these sawbenches was making my tools work with the construction-grade lumber. My handsaw is tuned for dry hardwoods. How do you then cut wet softwoods without jamming your saw? (I found the trick. It’s cutting geometry, of course). Plus, I had to figure out how to do everything with one saw, one plane and no real workbench. This sawbench can be built on a kitchen countertop with the help of two 5-gallon buckets. (Thanks to Mike Siemsen for a tip on that.)

I’ll share more details of this project after I survive Woodworking in America. I still have to get all my presentations for the conference complete before I get on a plane Thursday.

— Christopher Schwarz

Special (and Final) Offer on Workbench Books

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We don’t discount at Lost Art Press, and we do not plan on ever getting into price wars with competitors.

Because of our personal policies (crazy as they are), we are discontinuing “Workbenches: From Design & Theory to Construction & Use” and “The Workbench Design Book.” You can purchase these titles for considerably less from Amazon.com and every other retailer, and so we feel silly offering them at full retail. Our customers are paying a ridiculous premium for a signed copy. That’s not a good value, and we don’t feel right asking full retail.

So we are closing out our inventory of these two books and are going to offer free shipping on them until our stock is depleted. We have 83 copies of “Workbenches” in stock, and nine copies of “The Workbench Design Book.” Update: We are now sold out of “The Workbench Design Book.”

So if you want a signed copy of one of these books by mail, this is a good time to do it.

— Christopher Schwarz

1906 French Bench is From the Future

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Let’s say that George Nakashima traveled back in time to the early part of the 20th century and landed in southern France. And he traveled there with a giant drill press.

This bench is the result of that ripple in the space-time continuum.

Take a look at the way the legs are attached to the top. Yup, those mortises and tenons are rounded at the ends, like what you would see if they were made by the Domino XXXL or a super-long Forstner bit. It is so contemporary, it’s shocking.

Second, check out the shape of the benchtop. It’s one slab of oak (according to the seller), and it has a free edge up front and incorporates sapwood. Again, it’s so contemporary looking that I first thought it was fake.

The other details of the workbench are more traditional. My favorite part is the leg vise hardware. It’s so simple, robust and perfect – I wish that piece of hardware was an option for us modern bench-builders.

If you want to buy the bench, here’s the link. It would indeed look great behind the sofa.

— Christopher Schwarz

Will Myers’ Moravian Workbench

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While I have a Benchcrafted end vise on my workbench, I still have a soft spot in my heart for homebrew wagon vises.

I started with a lame homemade wagon vise I made from a veneer press screw. Then I made a better one using a tail vise screw on my Nicholson workbench. Then I “perfected” that one by reworking it a bit – a story I still need to write up for the blog some day.

But last week I saw Will Myers’ homemade wagon vise. His is better.

He put the wagon vise on a near copy of a portable Moravian workbench in the collection at Old Salem in Winston-Salem, N.C. I wrote about this bench here. The original Moravian bench didn’t have a tail vise, so Myers concocted his own using a left-hand-thread Acme rod, some nuts, pipe and other assorted bits he welded together. It’s remarkably simple and works remarkably well.

He brought his bench by The Woodwright’s School last Thursday for the students to examine and use for the afternoon while he settled up some business with Ed Lebetkin in the tool store upstairs.

The bench itself is fantastic, built using common or reclaimed materials, yet with a furniture-maker’s eye and hand. The wood selection and joinery were superb.

I’m not going to yammer much about the bench because Will has done this for me by publishing an extensive article on its construction – including the making of the wagon vise – at WKFineTools.com. Check out the entire article here.

— Christopher Schwarz