Brendan helps install original copperplate engravings from “The Anarchist’s Design” book in our bench room.
Megan Fitzpatrick and Brendan Gaffney will staff the Lost Art Press storefront this Saturday so I can have a weekend with my wife (it’s our 25th anniversary).
There have been lots of changes at the storefront, 837 Willard St. in Covington, Ky., since last month. The Electric Horse Garage will be up and running (the new roof goes on starting Tuesday). Plus, we are setting up the bench room for classes that Brendan, Megan and Will Myers will be teaching there this year.
We now have nine (!) different workbenches at the storefront for you to examine.
My French oak Roubo bench
The Holtzapffel workbench
A Nicholson bench with angled legs
Megan Fitzpatrick’s “Glue-bo” bench made with laminated beams
A nice commercial Ulmia
A cherry and cottonwood Roubo bench
The Loffelholz 1505 workbench
The Saalburg Roman bench
The Herculaneum eight-legged bench
So if you are in the market for a workbench design, our storefront might be a good place to investigate.
As per usual, we will be selling our full line of Lost Art Press books, plus T-shirts. We are, however, quite low on blemished books right now.
The storefront is open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on the second Saturday of each month. Directions and a map are here. Our next open day will be Feb. 10 (I’ll be there!).
We think of loose tenons as a modern joint, but it is far from it. Early Greek and Roman boats were made with loose tenons that were pegged to keep the hulls together.
I’ve always been fascinated by the fact that Richard Maguire also used this same technology to glue up his benchtops (read all about that here). I’ll be honest, I’ve always relied on glue alone (when I didn’t have a monumental one-piece slab top).
But my view changed a couple years ago when we got a bad batch of epoxy and several benchtops delaminated. If I ever have to glue up a slab benchtop again, I’m adding loose tenons.
Interestingly, Maguire doesn’t drawbore the loose tenons in his tops. He states: “a draw bored peg here would have been much weaker than this straight through approach.” I do believe I will be experimenting with this joint – both drawbored and not – to see for myself.=
Maguire wasn’t the first to come up with the idea of loose tenons in a benchtop (though I heard it from him first). Recently I got to inspect an early 20th-century French workbench from La Forge Royale that used the technology.
This commercial workbench was surprisingly rough in manufacture. Joints were deliberately overcut throughout to make the bench easy to assemble. The “breadboard” ends were merely nailed or screwed on. No tongue. I could go on and on. It’s still a great workbench (and still standing after 100 years), so I’m not knocking it. But I was surprised.
Despite the rough construction, the builders took the extra time to add loose tenons in the benchtop’s joint. That fact says a lot to me as to how important a detail they thought it was.
Book of Hours, MS M.739 fol. 10r, Germany, possibly Bamberg. 1204-1219. Morgan Library & Museum, New York
While sifting through bushels of old images for the research for “Ingenious Mechanicks,” Chris and I would often come across some odd something or other that made us scratch our heads. To give you a look behind the scenes, I’ll show you examples of how we verified a workholding device was real and not a figment of the artist’s imagination. The first two examples are not in the book and are some investigations I did on the side.
Grasping Limbs In the image above Noah is directing the building of the Ark. A board is held on two stands. I termed them “grasping limbs,” and Chris said it was a weird way to depict sawbenches. Plenty of images from the same time period showed four-legged sawbenches. Was this an anomaly? Could I find more images like this and, more importantly, find a description or photograph with the “limbs” in use?
Bronze bas-relief panel, 12th century, Basilica of San Zeno, Verona, Italy.
In fair Verona an even earlier example of the “grasping limbs” showed up in another scene of Noah’s Ark. But, more proof was needed.
Copyright Guédelon. Photo by F. Folcher.
In northern Burgundy the building of a 13th-century castle using traditional methods is underway. Here we see an actual example of the “grasping limbs.” They do exist.
Metallkrampe “Die Hausbücher der Nürnberger Zwölfbrüderstiftungen” are a rich source for learning about the work of 15th and 16th-century craftspeople. In several paintings there are carpenters using various means to secure wood to sawbenches or other supports.
Hans Mathes, 1500-1585, “Die Hausbücher der Nürnberger” Amb.317b.2º folio 45v (Mendel II). German National Museum.
Brüder Hans prefers to use staked sawbenches for his work and is using sturdy metal kramps, or clamps for workholding. This makes sense for heavy work at a construction site. Were metal clamps such as this still in use several hundred years later and were they used by different crafts? Let’s go to Slovakia.
Trencianske Muzeum v Trencine, Slovakia. Photo by J. Hanusin.
Here we have a spoon carver drilling holes in the bowl of a very large spoon. He is using metal clamps to hold the spoon in place. The photo is dated 1954. With a little more research I’m sure many more examples can be found.
The Way of the Peg Using a combination of early 20th-century photographs, some help from the “Die Hausbücher der Nürnberger” and the Old Testament (plus try-outs in Chris’ workshop), the power of the peg as a workholding devise was revealed. Pegs are covered at length in the book, below is a small portion of the discussion.
“Woodworking in Estonia” provides valuable information on how carpenters worked on the low Roman-style workbench. Pegs at the end of the bench were a common method to use as a planing stop.
Karl Schreyner, 1425, “Die Hausbücher der Nürnberger” Amb.317.2º fol 21r (Mendel I). German National Museum.
The “Schreyner pegs” were a key to using pegs as end and side stops on the workbench.
Bible Historiale, MS M394 fol 57r, Paris, France, ca. 1415. Morgan Library and Museum.
Moses guiding carpenters in the construction of an altar. The carpenter traverses a board with the pegs on two sawbenches serving as side stops. Using your sawbenches as auxiliary work surfaces to your low workbench is also featured in “Ingenious Mechanicks.”
A shot from Chris’ shop with end and side pegs securing a board on the low workbench.
A return trips to Estonia for edge-jointing a board. Adjust the height of the pegs to better hold the board. A peg at the end and pegs on either side hold the board in place.
Historie Biblie Figurate, Manuscripts of the Library of Raphael de Marcatellis, Sint Baafskathedraal, Gent, Belgium.
And we are back to Noah. If there is a gap between the board and the side pegs, a wedge will take care of the problem.
When Chris was looking for the right space to create his workshop he mentioned one of his goals was to have a woodworking laboratory. He wanted a place to exchange and explore ideas on work methods and design. “Ingenious Mechanicks” is one product of that goal. It is also an invitation to other woodworkers to join the conversation.
In the next behind the scenes look I go looking for Saint Joseph; he isn’t always easy to find.
I have a theory, which I’ll delve into in my next book, called “Roman Workbenches,” that the transition from the old-style Roman workbench to the more formally joined French or modern bench occurred in the 16th century.
So I was thrilled when the above engraving showed up today from researcher Suzanne Ellison. The engraving was made by Johannes of Lucas van Doetechum after a work by Hans Vredeman de Vries in 1572. The work is part of a series of four prints that depict carpenters’ tools in an artistic way – bunches of chisels are depicted as flowers and so forth.
There is, as always, a lot to see and process. Because we are on a workbench kick this week, the bench is of particular interest. It is firmly in the Roubo camp of modern benches with its stretchers and rectilinear construction. Also worth noting are the crochet, holdfast and peg holes in the legs.
In real life, this engraving is about 7-1/4” tall , but I wish it were 7’ tall.
About 8 a.m. Wednesday morning I’ll pack a thermos of coffee and hit the road for North Carolina in the hopes of gaining some small understanding of the craft culture of ancient Rome.
Thanks to Will Myers, there’s a large load of dry oak waiting for me in North Carolina that I’ll use to build two Roman-style workbenches. The benches are separated by about 1,400 years but share the same DNA.
The reason I do this stuff, which is admittedly a bit bonkers, is the same reason I started building nearly vanished French and English style workbenches in 2005. I’m not looking for a better workbench, just another one that might make sense for your work and mine.
For me, the appeal of 18th-century French and English workbenches is that they are simpler. They are far easier and faster to build than your typical Scandinavian or Germanic bench. I don’t have anything against those central and northern European benches. The ones that are made by woodworkers for woodworking are great.
But not everyone wants to build a bench that is that complex, with a tail vise and a shoulder vise, a fifth leg, a dovetailed skirt and square dogs. Some of us would rather do something else with our time.
In the same vein, the Roman workbench has always interested me. It is even simpler than a French or English bench. No stretchers. Simpler joinery. Less mass (perhaps). And during my last 11 years of ongoing bench research, I’ve concluded that the Roman workbench has never fully gone extinct. Instead it has gone out to pasture, so to speak.
By building and using these two Roman benches in my shop, I hope to learn their strengths and weaknesses – all bench forms have upsides and downsides. None is perfect. My hope is that I can show how these even simpler benches can be used to hold boards so you can work on their faces, edges and ends. Because that goal has never changed for woodworkers, whether they wear togas or flannel.