France was the first country to adopt the metric system, so a French-style workbench drawn in metric seems appropriate.
I’ve uploaded the SketchUp drawing for the workbench we just completed at the Dictum GmbH workshop to the SketchUp 3D Warehouse. You can download it (free, of course), from the warehouse here and play around with it.
The model includes nine scenes that show the construction process, step-by-step.
— Christopher Schwarz
I’ve been teaching in Germany for the last seven days – three long classes followed by four beers each evening with the students. My liver, and the rest of my internal organs, have requested a holiday. As Lost Art Press doesn’t really have a benefits package, however….
On the last night of class, one of the students named Brian Eve drove me to Munich and I helped him move his completed workbench into his shop. It’s tiny. I’ve seen bigger dust collector bags in my time.
But he makes do. After moving his bench off of the car, I took the short video above so you can see what a really small shop really looks like.
Oh, and in case you don’t read my blog at Popular Woodworking Magazine, that’s where I’ve written about my Bavarian adventures this past week. Here are some links.
1. French Bench. German School. American Teacher. Day 1.
2. Mafell Chain Mortiser. Dang.
3. More Mafell Madness: Day 3 of the Workbench Class
4. My Assembly Tricks for Old World Workbenches
5. Knocking Together a Workbench
I’m in Munich now (it’s Monday, I believe). And this morning I had the best Bavarian breakfast ever with Peter Lanz of Dictum GmbH, and then he took me over to the new Dictum workshop and school in Munich. It’s a third-floor space where Peter is now teaching classes in handwork and machine work, along with another teacher.
Dictum is also planning on opening a store across the hall from the workshop, which will sell tools and be a local hangout for woodworkers. All in all, it sounds like a pretty cool plan.
I fly back to Cincinnati tomorrow and then immediately board a plane with my family for San Diego (sorry spleen, no vacation for you). Somehow day and night will resolve themselves. Someday.
— Christopher Schwarz
“Imperial units should only be used when measuring general levels of rebel scum.”
— Fake AP Stylebook
I leave for Germany on Thursday to teach three classes at the workshops of Dictum GmbH, one of Europe’s leading supplier of hand tools.
The hardest part of the trip might surprise you. It’s not the food or the beer (duh). It’s not the time difference, the language barrier or even dealing with the completely different cultural woodworking tradition (bowsaws, horned planes, pins-first dovetails, etc).
It’s the metric system.
I don’t dislike the metric system. Far from it. After three years of teaching at Dictum, plus many years of dealing with readers from metric countries, I appreciate its base-10 elegance. But it really jerks around my brain switching back and forth between the two systems. Especially when I get the occasional student who uses Imperial. And don’t get me started on the one who spoke Esperanto.
This year I’ve been getting a jump on the switch to the metric system by spending the last four days writing up all the materials for the class in metric and not using a conversion calculator. It’s like I can almost “speak” metric. Almost.
Now if someone could explain what the German Burger King’s “Long Chicken” sandwich is, I think I’ll have assimilated.
— Christopher Schwarz
P.S. This blog entry is also a reminder that if you e-mail me or post a comment on the blog that I might not be very responsive. I won’t be back in Kentucky until June 28. And if you are seeking to burgle us in the meantime, you’ll have to deal with the ferocity of Lucy and her four attack pussies.
The Roorkhee chair is like my Catholic spouse – everyone in town is a cousin, second cousin or great cousin.
Here’s a real interesting Roorkhee cousin: A gunsmith’s chair that is on the showroom floor of William Evans Ltd. in London. These photos were taken by Australian woodworker and blogger Glen Rundell.
Though the William Evans chair has a lot in common with the Roorkhee (wooden frame, leather seat, portability) it also has different bones. Instead of breaking apart, this chair folds up like a chair at a church picnic. It has a framed seat and back instead of a simple piece of loose leather. And I could go on about the bamboo turnings and arms.
But I won’t. Bottom line, the two forms have a lot of attributes in common.
— Christopher Schwarz
You can now purchase “The Joiner and Cabinet Maker” – complete and unabridged – for your Kindle, iPad or any other reader that accepts ePub files.
The price is $16. You can purchase the Kindle edition here. The ePub version for iPad iPhone and other ePub reader is here.
Like all our electronic products, these are supplied without any form of Digital Rights Management – DRM for short. DRM restricts you from moving the file to other devices, or requires a password, or is just generally a nuisance.
We do not care for DRM. And I am pleased to say that pirating of our products has been minimal. So thank you for being ethical citizens.
“The Joiner and Cabinet Maker” was a complex book for us to convert into an electronic edition, thanks to the hundreds of illustrations and the copious footnotes. I am happy to report that the book is complete with all the footnotes – you access them by clicking on the superscript number in the text. You will then be taken to a section of the book containing all the notes. The function works quite well.
One last note: Several customers have asked if we will be offering package prices on the book, electronic book and the forthcoming audiobook version read by Roy Underhill. After much debate, we have decided to keep all these products separate and simply offer each at the best price possible. We think $16 is a fair price for a DRM-free book of this complexity.
— Christopher Schwarz