I hear of good people sending Chris tools to help young makers. Most of us have too many tools; I am still buying tools at 66 and giving lots away to students and friends. It’s a great gift, something you have used and worked with. There is a load of romance in used tools. The history of who had it before you were given it, or got it on eBay. Their sweat is burnished into the handle. If you are like me, you hope that a little of their skill will help you do a bit better job.
I put out a general “if you have any tools that you think could go into this chest to help a young maker get going let me know.” Well I don’t know if British makers are just mean or didn’t hear me but the response has largely been from across the pond. Typical is this:
David,
I hope these help get someone inspired to work more with their hands and wood. It’s odd that a nail set or chalk line can provoke something inside. And this something can last a lifetime. Well, these tools are genuine… nothing fancy. Please consider something for the runner-up … to all of us who didn’t make first place.
Bob
Bob asked for his gift to be anonymous, well I respect that, but cannot allow it to go unmarked. (sorry, Bob) The tools Bob sent me, and it cost him $70 to mail it to me, are old, good and useful, and all will go in the chest. I will also take Bob’s point on “failing” to win. Something for the poor devil who will do the final week but not win the chest. They have the courage to try and fail and deserve recognition. So who amongst you, following Bob’s example, have a good shoulder plane that you can give up? Let me know here and I will get back to you.
The question of whether early workbenches were built from green wood or seasoned wood has a simple answer: yes.
But what was the common practice? For that question, I turned to A.J. Roubo’s “l’Art du menuisier” for the simple reason that Roubo’s work is still the legal standard in Europe for determining what is proper woodworking practice.
All the following translated passages will be found in “To Make as Perfectly as Possible: Roubo on Furniture” in 2016. The translations are by Donald C. Williams, Michele Pietryka-Pagán and Philippe Lafargue.
The logical place to start is the text for Plate 11. But Roubo doesn’t offer advice on the wetness or dryness of the wood. Following are the only discussions of workbench wood selection in Plate 11:
This bench is of elm or beech wood but more commonly the latter, which is very solid and of a tighter/denser grain than the other….
One should observe also to put the heart-wood side of the bench on top because it is harder than the other, and if the wood experiences dimensional changes, it is more likely to change from this side rather than shrinking from the other side.
It should be noted that throughout “l’Art du menuisier” Roubo discusses certain parts that must be well-seasoned (i.e. dry). But he doesn’t mention it in Plate 11.
If, however, we look to Plate 4 we get some clues. Plate 4 is about the maintenance of a wood yard outside your shop – how to stack green wood so it will dry without warping or rotting.
The reason you need a wood yard?
What I am saying here is only general. I know perfectly well that all woodworkers cannot have great wood yards nor large provisions of wood. But still, for reasons of economy, they should always do their best to be well prepared with samples, and to watch over their preservation as best as they can, so as not to be obliged to have to buy some from the merchants. The wood that they sell is almost never dry, and the woodworker will pay dearly for what the wood merchants have.
In the text for Plate 4, Roubo doesn’t discuss workbench wood directly. But workbenches are discussed:
Beech is found cut into planks of 15-18 lines, and even 2 thumbs thickness by 7, 9 and 12 feet in length.They also sell slabs of this wood for making woodworking benches, tables for the kitchen, and butcher tables, tables that have a length from 7-12, and even 15 feet, by 18-30 thumbs in width, and 5-6 thumbs thickness.
And Roubo also discusses dryness in general:
The more wood is hard, the more time it takes to dry. That is why one should not reasonably use wood that has not been cut at least 8 years in order to be able to do good work. It is not necessary, however, that it be too dry, especially for pieces of joinery, where the wood has no more sap and where the humidity is totally expunged: this cannot be appropriate [once the sap no longer is flowing from the lumber and the moisture has departed there is no need to season the lumber any further].
Interestingly, French timber merchants still follow this rule, according to Bo Childs, who brought over all the French oak for the French Oak Roubo Project. Our slabs were at least 10 years old.
What I take away from the text to these two plates is that seasoned wood was the norm in the shop. Roubo offered no exceptions for workbenches (something he does offer later in the book on garden woodwork).
This lines up with my experience building these benches: chances are the wood is going to be semi-dry. Not fresh cut. Not dry as a popcorn fart. Eight years is not enough time for these slabs to fully acclimate, but you can build benches with them. They’ll move around on you quite a bit the first year or so. But it’s easy to manage if you own a handplane.
Late Friday John and I arrived home after six days of backbreaking but inspiring work at the French Oak Roubo Project put on by Benchcrafted and Bo Childs of Barnesville, Ga.
It was my last scheduled trip until an indeterminate ever. If you want to see photos from this fantastic week, check out this Instagram feed.
What’s on the docket for me next? First I need to finish this workbench for a customer. (Oh, and to the commenter who suggested I’m getting rich off selling my work, I suspect you don’t do this for a living. You are more than welcome to pay my water bill this month, which would be a huge help.)
After the bench gets finished, I will dive into Lost Art Press’s three most-active books.
Finish editing “Woodworker: the Charles Hayward Years.” Only 350 more pages to go! The book is all designed. I’m the problem.
Complete the edit of “Woodworking in Estonia.” The book is entirely designed and just needs a final comb-over. I’m the problem.
Finish laying out “The Anarchist’s Design Book.” I’ve laid out 10 of the 21 chapters. I just have to finish the beast. Again: The problem is me.
Thanks go out to Suzanne the Saucy Indexer for picking up my slack on this blog and doing a fine job. As I can eschew shaving and basic hygiene for the next year or so, I think I’ll be able to rapidly get these books done and out the door.
The most frustrating part of using dye to color wood is getting it to penetrate the surface of the wood so you don’t “cut through” the color accidentally as you work or sand the finish and expose undyed wood.
This is not a modern problem. In the 18th century, A.J. Roubo wrote at length about the penetration problem and even employed a pointy-head to help him solve the problem:
Before dealing with the dyeing of wood, I consulted with Mr. Macquer, to try, if possible, to make them deeper and more beautiful than those that cabinetmakers normally use. He wished to make for himself many experiments, which did not fulfill my expectations, and which totally confirmed the idea that it is not impossible to make better dyes, but would be at least very difficult, and would demand considerable time to make them….
After the exposé of experiences that Mr. Macquer has made, it is to be believed that it is hardly possible to use chemicals for a good tint, at least we have not found the secret to make them penetrate into the wood, by means of some given preparations of the wood or of the tinctures. Or even, by making all these tinctures cold, and leaving the woods there until they are penetrated, supposing this were possible.
In the 21st century some of us have the same problem. I have been asked many times how to dye veneer or thicker woods through their entire thickness. In fact, one of the first blog entries I ever wrote was about how some guys had solved the problem by injecting dye into the tree as it grew. Check out that entry here.
I know that Marc Adams at the Marc Adams School of Woodworking has solved the problem and can dye anything any color, through and through. If you’ve ever been a student there, then you’ve seen the veneers they sell there – amazing stuff.
I don’t know how Marc does it. I’ve seen his students working at it, but I’ve never had the time to stop and inquire.
Today I dug into an old book that I finally got my hands on: “Cabinet-Maker’s Guide to the Entire Construction of Cabinet-Work” (The Technical Press Ltd., London, 1937) by Richard Bitmead. Bitmead was a professional London cabinetmaker with 25 years experience when he wrote this book. He covered the topic in this short but intriguing entry:
In the process of dyeing woods throughout their mass, the Parisian veneer merchants have led the monopoly of Europe for a number of years. Veneers or boards dyed through their entire mass of exactly the same colour throughout could not be produced except in Paris. There are a number of English woods which will take the dye and look as brilliant as any woods from France.
In selecting wood for dyeing, for every colour except black, white wood should be used, such as sycamore, beech, lime, &c. If a coloured wood be used, it neutralizes the tint, and the color will be bad. For black, use pear, cherry, beech, or soft mahogany; any of these woods will take the colours well. The first process the wood should undergo is to boil it in a solution of caustic soda (lye) and water, in the proportions of half a pound of caustic soda to five pints of water; the wood should be boiled in the solution for half an hour, and then allowed to remain in to soak for twenty-four hours. It should then be taken out and wiped well with clean deal shavings, to remove the alkali, when it will be found to have become as soft as leather and equally plastic. Then place it between boards, and put weights on the top to flatten, and let remain until dry. This treatment with caustic soda effects a clearing of the pores of the wood from all the gummy or resinous matter, and the open pores, when dry, will absorb the dye-stuffs like a sponge.
Sounds like I need to get some lye and break out the hot plate.
Each time “The Book of Plates” is mentioned I pull out my copy, flip through the pages and find something new to study. Last year I had a lot of fun creating artwork using details from BoP. There was a “rabbiting” plane, a thieving crow and a dinner plate to name a few Roubo-inspired creations.
Roubo very kindly included several plates on staircase design and construction. He gave us straights, spirals and curves with each detail connecting to the next, helping us visualize the whole.
Like many travelers I want to climb and photograph staircases. Some are marvels of construction and seem to defy gravity. Others are my nemesis with risers too low or high, too dark, no handrail. Whether floating or falling down, a grand staircase is great for a dramatic entrance. A spiral staircase in a small apartment is like having your own floor-to-ceiling sculpture.
We need well-designed staircases (and their cousins, the ladders) to move us up and down in our worlds. A solid set of steps is satisfying whereas an unsteady stairway can be terrifying. The light at the top of the stairs is reassuring; the darkness at the bottom is to be avoided. Designed by Roubo, or others, we all tumble down stairs from time to time with alcohol, cats, verigo, or more cats the usual culprits. My father once observed that my mother and I seemed to be more prone to falling up stairs to which we replied, “It was a trip, just a trip! There was no falling!”
Roubo’s staircases are in Plates 162 through 170. Plate 164 is a particular favorite of mine. By following the connecting lines the builder can see and understand, from top to bottom, the construction of these stairs. As with all of Roubo’s plates considerable thought and artistic ability went into its planning and execution. We need stairs and Roubo gave us some beauties.
I’ve always thought the painting “Staircase, Doylestown” and a couple of lines from a Thackeray poem made a perfect pair. Now, I think Roubo’s “Staircase, Plate 164” partners equally well with these lines from “The Cane Bottom’d Chair”:
“Away from the world and its toils and cares,
I’ve a snug little kingdom up four pair of stairs”.
“Staircase, Doylestown” (1925) by Charles Sheeler, Jr.
