We use pencil gauges as much as marking gauges or cutting gauges. That’s because a pencil line is sometimes the better choice, especially when marking out bevels or curves.
When we construct our shop-made pencil gauges, we include a “face plate” or “curve attachment” to one face of the gauge’s head. The face plate – basically two bumps – allows the gauge to mark both inside and outside curves. You can also use the gauge against a straight, flat edge. The face plate is an incredibly handy feature that was patented by Stanley in 1886 (the patent has long expired).
For years, I’ve wanted to make a Crucible pencil gauge with a face plate, but we have never found a way to manufacture it economically. During the pandemic, however, I devised a way to make an inexpensive gauge by MacGyvering a British marking gauge made by Joseph Marples.
Marples agreed to sell us 200 basic gauges at wholesale for an experiment. When the gauges arrived, we pulled out the steel pin (it’s included in the package if you want it). Then we drilled a hole in the gauge’s beam that will hold most pencils with a tight compression fit (and we’re including a pencil). And we added a stainless steel face plate (a part that we sourced from the kennel-making industry).
The result is our Crucible Redneck Pencil Gauge that works like a charm and fits your hand beautifully, thanks to the half-round shape of the head. But it is a little rednecky (I can say that because I’m from the Ozarks). If I were going to design the gauge from scratch I would use a brass thumbscrew and machine the face plate from solid brass. It would look nicer, but it wouldn’t function any better and it would cost you three or four times more.
Occasionally we have customers who are bewildered that we use Chicago screws to adjust our Crucible Type 2 Dividers and Sliding Bevel. Why don’t we use a thumbscrew or wing nut or some other device that doesn’t require a screwdriver?
The answer is simple, but not what they want to hear: Because nothing works as well as a slotted screw and a screwdriver.
During the development of these tools we tried a variety of thumbscrews and other devices to lock the tools in place. Nothing even came close to using a simple Chicago screw and a driver. With a small twist of the screw, you can lock the setting in so it is almost unmovable.
I say “almost” because I tried an experiment where I locked the screw and then threw the tool across the workshop like a baseball. About half the time the tool held its setting. The other half it moved a bit. So, I don’t recommend throwing tools across the shop.
This week I found a few more thumbscrews worth trying in the tools. I am always looking to improve things. The screw thread is a 10-32, and the threaded section needs to be about 3/8” long.
Here are three thumbscrews worth discussing (a few others were total fails).
The Knurled Head Tumbscrew (above), looked promising because it also offered a slot for a screwdriver. Unfortunately, the head has such a low profile that you cannot tighten it by hand enough to lock the blade. You have to use a screwdriver to get a good lock.
Raised Knurled-head Thumbscrew.
The Raised Knurled-head Thumbscrew was easier to grip, but it still didn’t lock the blade. Plus, there was no way to further tighten the thumbscrew with a screwdriver.
Hex-head Thumbscrew.
Finally, the Hex-head Thumbscrew looked cool. But you can’t grip it with your fingers. The only way to tighten it is with a box wrench (which worked really well).
If you resist our tools because they require a screwdriver, consider this: Many early bevels, marking gauges and mortise gauges were locked with a screwdriver. Plus, when I use these tools (and I use them every day), I get immense satisfaction locking them down all the way. It reduces any anxiety I have about the tool moving by accident.
This anxiety, I might add, was caused by other tools going out of adjustment and ruining a piece of work.
You can ask Joshua about all things M&T, Jonathan Fisher and homesteading in Maine, and about the “new” house he and his family, along with Michael Updegraff (M&Ts associate editor), and the sometimes-help of an army of friends, are re-constructing (it will be the Klein family home when it’s done). Joshua writes:
Besides starting to work on Issue Fifteen (which ships in September), Mike and I have been intensely focused on the restoration of an 1821 hand-hewn timber-frame house that we disassembled and moved to my property. We’ve spent months tackling numerous timber and joinery repairs before raising the whole thing on its new granite foundation. We’ve been chronicling the entire project each weekday at the M&T Daily Dispatch. This house embodies so much of the “art and mystery” of pre-industrial carpentry.
The “Old Jordan House,” now raised (from the Mortise & Tenon website).
I hope you will stop by this Saturday and Joshua a few questions (and I hope Mike might chime in, too!). We are opening up the Open Wire to our authors, and so you can look for more guest hosts in the coming weeks.
Do you need a new workbench – perhaps one based on traditional forms? We probably have a resource to help. Below are just a few of our workbench offerings – in video and book form. Plus, a link to video tours of workbenches Chris and others have built in the last 25 years.
Video: “Roubo Workbench: By Hand & Power” Building a workbench using giant slabs of solid timber is easier than you think. Christopher Schwarz and Will Myers, who have built hundreds of workbenches in their careers, show you how to do it with simple tools and wet wood.
“Roubo Workbench: By Hand & Power” walks you through the construction of an 8′-long slab workbench starting with wet chunks of inexpensive red oak. Will and Chris show you how to tackle each operation using only hand tools, only electric tools or a clever combination of both.
The 4:19-long video also includes copious amounts of workbench design details – including how to scale the height, width and length of the bench for your work – so you can customize your bench for your body. There’s also an extensive discussion of basic workholding – where to put your holdfast holes and how you can work easily without a tail vise.
Video: “The Naked Woodworker” “The Naked Woodworker” video seeks to answer the simple question: How do you get started in woodworking when you have nothing? No tools. No bench. No skills. And no knowledge of where to begin.
Veteran woodworker and teacher Mike Siemsen helps you take your first steps into the craft without spending a lot of money or spending years setting up shop. In fact, Mike shows you how to acquire a decent set of tools and build a workbench and sawbench for about $600 or $700 – something you can accomplish during a few weekends of work.
Mike Siemsen, drilling dog holes in his “Naked Woodworker” bench.
“The Naked Woodworker” begins at a Mid-West Tool Collectors Association’s regional meeting with Mike sifting through, evaluating, haggling and buying the tools needed to begin building furniture. Then, at Mike’s Minnesota shop, he fixes up the tools he bought. He rehabs the planes, sharpens the saws and fixes up the braces – all on camera.
On the second video in the set, Mike builds a sawbench and a fully functional workbench using home-center materials. Both the sawbench and workbench are amazingly clever. You don’t need a single machine or power tool to make them. And they work incredibly well.
The bench is based on Peter Nicholson’s early 19th-century design. It is remarkably solid and is perfect for a life of woodworking with hand or power tools.
Book: “The Anarchist’s Workbench” “The Anarchist’s Workbench” is – on the one hand – a detailed plan for a simple workbench that can be built using construction lumber and basic woodworking tools. But it’s also the story of Christopher Schwarz’s 20-year journey researching, building and refining historical workbenches until there was nothing left to improve.
“The Anarchist’s Workbench” is the third and final book in the “anarchist” series, and it attempts to cut through the immense amount of misinformation about building a proper bench. It helps answer the questions that dog every woodworker: What sort of bench should I build? What wood should I use? What dimensions should it be? And what vises should I attach to it?
The AWB after 18 months of use.
“The Anarchist’s Workbench” also seeks to open your eyes to simpler workbench designs that eschew metal fasteners and instead rely only on the time-tested mortise-and-tenon joint that’s secured with a drawbored peg. The bench plan in the book is based on a European design that spread across the continent in the 1500s. It has only 12 joints, weighs more than 300 pounds and requires less than $300 in lumber. And while the bench is immensely simple, it is a versatile design that you can adapt and change as you grow as a woodworker.
Book: “The Workbench Book” First published in 1987, “The Workbench Book” by Scott Landis remains the most complete book on the most important tool in the woodworker’s shop.
My personal copy is a little beat up from life on my shop shelf.
“The Workbench Book” is a richly illustrated guided tour of the world’s best workbenches — from a traditional Shaker bench to the mass-produced Workmate. Author and workbench builder Scott Landis visited dozens of craftsmen, observing them at work and listening to what they had to say about their benches. The result is an intriguing and illuminating account of each bench’s strengths and weaknesses, within the context of a vibrant woodworking tradition.
This new 248-page hardbound edition from Lost Art Press ensures “The Workbench Book” will be available to future generations of woodworkers. Produced and printed in the United States, this classic text is printed on FSC-certified recycled paper and features a durable sewn binding designed to last generations. The 1987 text remains the same in this edition and includes a foreword by Christopher Schwarz.
Book: “Ingenious Mechanicks” Workbenches with screw-driven vises are a fairly modern invention. For more than 2,000 years, woodworkers built complex and beautiful pieces of furniture using simpler benches that relied on pegs, wedges and the human body to grip the work. While it’s easy to dismiss these ancient benches as obsolete, they are – at most – misunderstood.
Christopher Schwarz has been building these ancient workbenches and putting them to work in his shop to build all manner of furniture. Absent any surviving ancient instruction manuals for these benches, Schwarz relied on hundreds of historical paintings of these benches for clues as to how they worked. Then he replicated the devices and techniques shown in the paintings to see how (or if) they worked.
“Ingenious Mechanicks” is about this journey into the past and takes the reader from Pompeii, which features the oldest image of a Western bench, to a Roman fort in Germany to inspect the oldest surviving workbench and finally to his shop in Kentucky, where he recreated three historical workbenches and dozens of early jigs.
The Lost Art Press shop on May 30, 2023.
And here are links to video tours of workbench forms that are in the Lost Art Press shop (and three that used to be). (Most of them were built by Chris when he was at Popular Woodworking Magazine.)
The $175 Workbench – now our shipping station when it’s not in use for a class) The Power Tool Workbench – currently in the Horse Garage – meant to be used during a class by the person not teaching…but it’s almost always covered with wood and other supplies, so we use the low bench in the shop instead). English Joiner’s Bench – in the shop, behind Chris’ “Anarchist’s Workbench” – it’s a hair taller than the AWB, so it sometimes functions as a stop at the back of his bench. It is the most level spot in our shop – so whomever is working at it during a chair class gets kicked off when it’s time to level legs. The Cherry Roubo – now at our general contractor’s house. This one – while gorgeous – is just a bit too narrow for efficient and comfortable use during many of our classes, so we gave it to one of its biggest fans. (The size was limited by the width of slabs available at the time of building – had the wood allowed, it could have been wider.) The Holtzapffel Workbench – in the front window. It’s original twin-screw vise is in the basement; for most classes, the leg vise is more useful. And when I’m teaching a tool chest class, I prefer a Moxon vise atop the bench to raise the work to a comfortable sawing level for more students. Vintage Ulmia – now with a friend. A good bench – just not great for us. The Glulam Workbench (aka Gluebo) – now in my basement, for which I’m thankful. I built my other bench, a wee Roubo, to go on the second floor of my old house, and it’s too small for a lot of the house-scale work I’m now doing! Moravian Workbench – in the front window, back to back with the Holtzapffel. This one was built by our friend Will Myers. French Oak Roubo – this behemoth is back to bench with my bench. Lightweight Commercial Bench – Chris bought this one for a Fine Woodworking article on beefing up a wobbly bench. I believe it’s now at his daughter Katherine’s house.
Welsh chairmaker Chris Williams is teaching classes in our storefront this month and has brought over one of his truly remarkable Welsh stick chairs, made from Welsh woods in the old tradition by a 100-percent Welshman.
Chris is, quite simply, the best stick chair maker alive. He’s the one we all look up to, and he’s always pushing the design of the chair forward in terms of design and backward in terms of using armbows made from curved branches – the traditional way that the best chairs were made.
In fact, I would put up his work against any fine furniture maker in terms of fit and surface finish. Chris absolutely tortures himself to get it right. And it shows in the results.
Chris, the author of “Good Work,” was shown how to make Welsh stick chairs by John Brown, and Chris worked with JB for many years, making these chairs.
The hedges in Wales where Chris sources the wood for his chairs.
The chair is made from timber I source myself from around my home village of Llanybri in Wales. Small-diameter ash logs are split by hand and are used to construct the legs, stretchers and sticks. The three-piece ash arm bow is made from naturally curved ash from the hedgerows, which is cut in winter and seasoned for a few years before use. I follow the tradition that the armbow dictates the shape of the seat, which in turn makes Welsh chairs visually and uniquely distinctive from other chair forms. The two-piece elm seat is jointed with loose tenons and the oak pegs which are used in this construction technique form a pattern on the seat which is visible when a raking light casts across it. The chair is stained with a black dye and topcoated with a linseed oil finish. The open grain of the timbers is clearly visible through the matte/satin finish.
Typically, Chris has a buyer for the chairs he brings over. But for this one we decided to offer it up in a silent auction here on our blog. All the proceeds go to Chris. (We never take a cut when we sell other people’s work.)
Purchasing the Chair
This chair is being sold via silent auction. (I’m sorry but the chair cannot be shipped outside the U.S.) If you wish to buy the chair, send an email to lapdrawing@lostartpress.com before 3 p.m. (Eastern) on Thursday, June 15. In the email please use the subject line “Welsh Chair Sale” and include your:
Your bid
First name and last name
U.S. shipping address
Daytime phone number (this is for the trucking quote only)
This chair has a reserve. The sale price will include shipping to anywhere in the lower 48 states. Or you are welcome to pick it up in our storefront here in Covington, Ky.
