Lost Art Press

Build a Workbench in 2015: Two Classes

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One of the best reasons to build a workbench at a school is to take advantage of the industrial-scale machinery and the strong backs of your fellow students. Oh, and your workbench is done in just a week.

In 2015, I am teaching two workbench classes: A knockdown Nicholson workbench July 20-24 at the New English Workshop at Warwickshire College. And a French workbench class Aug. 10-14 at the Connecticut Valley School of Woodworking.

There are still spaces available in both classes.

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The knockdown Nicholson bench is a fantastic bench I built during the summer using some principles swiped from Mike Siemsen, Caleb James and Peter Nicholson. The bench assembles in minutes and once together, you would be hard-pressed to say it could ever come apart. The thing is solid.

And the whole thing knocks down flat for transport or for when guests come over. It’s the ideal bench for an apartment, a temporary workspace or if you ever plan to move.

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The massive and classic French bench we’re building in Connecticut will be made with the super-primo ash from Horizon Wood Products that we used to build benches at the Marc Adams School of Woodworking in 2014.

Bench classes are physically taxing, but they are like an Amish barn-raising. Everyone has to pull together to get all the workbenches complete. It’s a team sport, which is something rare and wonderful in the world of furniture-making.

— Christopher Schwarz

A Simple Saw Till for a Tool Chest

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Because saws are delicate rust-magnets, storing them is a balancing act of protecting their bendable, rust-prone sawplates and still making them easy to get in and out of storage.

There are many good solutions. This is a simple one that gobbles up the least amount of precious real estate in a small chest. It’s made using one piece of tough 3/4” x 2-1/2” x 5” wood and two screws.

Kerfs in the block of wood hold the toes of your saws. The heel of the saw rests on the floor of the chest. The weight of the saw keeps it from slapping around when the chest is moved. The saws would be more secure if you added a second kerfed block near the heels. Also good additions: magnetic chewing gum, making the thing from transparent aluminum and airbrushing a buxom librarian/barbarian somewhere on the saw or chest.

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I have seen this form of simple till in many surviving chests, and the block of wood usually has some rudimentary decoration. I decided to shape this one like the blades of some 16th-century try squares I’ve been building this year.

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First I made a sample block to see how much wood I could remove and keep the saws stable. I decided to end the kerfs about 3/4” from the end of the block.

After cutting the block to shape and sawing the kerfs in it, I secured it to the chest with one No. 8 x 1-1/4” wood screw into the front wall of the chest and a second one through the floor of the chest and into the block.

That’s all there is to know except one important detail: If you are right-handed, put the block on the left side of the chest. That will make it easier for you to fish the saw out of the bottom of the chest.

— Christopher Schwarz

You Didn’t Get This

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Sweet mother of mercy I have been waiting a long time to post this entry.

Question: Do you want a polissoir that looks and works exactly like the one shown in Roubo’s 18th-century masterwork?

Answer: Why yes, I do. Click here.

Lie-Nielsen Toolworks is offering a gorgeous and simple polissoir that is the twin of the one shown in A.J. Roubo’s “l’Art du Menuisier.” It matches the original in form, size and everything. And it’s only $36. Buy it now or you will regret it when they run out.

This polissoir is made by the same artisan who makes Don Williams’s polissoir. And these are provided to Lie-Nielsen by Don Williams. In other words, everyone wins. Including you.

— Christopher Schwarz

The One in Which I am Slapped by Someone

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Please don’t let your children (or your fetal acetates) read this blog entry.

I’m finishing up the interior of a traveling tool chest this weekend and put in the tool rack that’s affixed to the back wall of this particular chest.

The rack is on the back wall because the front wall will be consumed by a large crab lock. But that’s not what this entry is about. It’s about the details of building the rack.

Normally, the tool racks I make are a single piece of 1” x 1” stock that I pierce with 1/2” holes on 1-1/8” centers. This sort of rack appeals to my desire to keep my tools all upright and evenly spaced – I have a lot of German blood don’t you know.

But this rack does limit the ability of the rack to hold a lot of tools.

Two years ago when Megan Fitzpatrick built her chest, she didn’t care much for my arrangement and so she decided to do something different. One night when I dropped off some manuscripts for editing she showed me her rack. I was impressed.

It might be the most thoughtful and capacious rack I’ve encountered.

Instead of plunging a 1/2” bit into a stick of wood, Megan took a “negative space” approach to her rack. There’s a single wooden bar that is offset from the wall of her chest with small bits of wood. And the whole thing is screwed to the wall.

I took some measurements, filed the information away and went home.

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This morning I started playing with the variables to make a rack that would hold the maximum number of tools and place them at the right height so you could easily grab them, without stressing the parts of the rack and loosening the screws that hold it together.

So I gathered all the handled tools I could and started measuring them. I wanted the tools to wedge into the rack and keep their tops at a certain height so you could reach in there and finger them without too much fuss.

Here’s what I came up with: The wooden bar is 1/4” thick x 7/8” wide. The wooden bits that offset the bar are 9/16” thick x 7/8” wide. The 9/16” space between the wall and the bar was one magic dimension. The other important dimension was putting about 7” between the wooden bits. Any more than 7” and the wooden wall flexed in a way that made me uncomfortable and put a strain on my screws.

Then I positioned the rack so it was 5-1/2” from the top rim of the chest. I screwed it to the wall.

This setup accommodated every tool I could find. They dropped into the space without any trouble and the tops of the handles ended up in a grabbable place.

— Christopher Schwarz

With Stake Feet

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“This is such a familiar form of construction that a vocabulary of terms has hardly been found to describe it, but some early inventories seem to refer to it as ‘staked,’ or ‘with stake feet.’ Added to this is the fact that it has been largely ignored by serious furniture historians, though its place in the development of furniture design is so important that it is hard to account for this neglect.”

— Victor Chinnery, “Oak Furniture: The British Tradition,” Antique Collectors Club, (1979) p. 75

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