Our new book, "The Workbench Design Book" is at the printer and will ship at the end of September. It's a 256-page behemoth – and more than half of it is all-new material that I've been writing since February.

Starting today, you can pre-order your copy at 20 percent off – $27.99 plus free domestic shipping – until the book arrives at our warehouse. Then it will go to its full retail price of $34.99 plus free domestic shipping. (By the way, this book won't be available at Amazon for several months. However, Lee Valley Tools will have it this fall.)

Of course, some of you are wondering why I would write a second book on workbenches. So I've included the introduction to the new book below, which explains the book and its content. Also, for those of you who asked, this book is being produced, printed and bound in the United States.

If you are ready to order, you can jump to our store here. Otherwise, read on:

Why Ancient Workbenches are Still Better

Here was my first proposed title for this book: “Wait – Didn’t You Already Write the Only Workbench Book I Needed?”

Since I wrote “Workbenches: From Design & Theory to Construction & Use” in 2007, a lot has changed. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of woodworkers have built workbenches based on the simple but ancient designs I tried to pan (as in for gold) from the historical record.

Also, the sort of workholding available to you has greatly expanded. (Note: I take no credit for this development. I think this reversal of fortune has a lot to do with the still-small but still-important growth in the interest in handwork.)

And, no surprise, I have built several more workbenches.

What hasn’t changed is that woodworkers still need to work on the faces, edges and ends of boards and assemblies. And that is as true in 2010 as it was in 1910 or 1679. And here’s a second thing that hasn’t changed: The ancient French and English workbench designs I explored in my first book are still just a blip in the world of workbench construction.

The vast majority of workbenches that are built or bought today are what you might call “European,” “Scandinavian” or “Mongrel.” What I mean by Mongrel are benches that are built with a weird combination of design cues and features that seem more random than purposeful. Example: A bench with a single quick-release vise centered on one end of the benchtop. I like car analogies, so this one is like owning a Corvette with a Vega engine. (The Vega, for those of you unschooled in American automotive history, was one of the most woefully underpowered cars ever.)

So it might seem to you that this book is another attempt to convince woodworkers to build the simple, ancient and adaptable forms that were more common during the 18th century than today. But that’s not entirely true.

Curious at first: Sometimes you have to know the context of a bench design before you can evaluate it. This one from Ivin Sickels “Exercises in Wood-Working” (1889) looks odd. Two face vises. No tail vise. If you read the text it’s obvious this bench is for a school. That makes more sense. But I still don’t have to like this bench.

This book is the result of feedback from hundreds of readers who have dropped me notes, asked me questions and sent me photos during the last three years. As a result of your feedback, I have tried to refine my ideas about bench design, expand my arsenal of workholding possibilities and work on benches weird, wonderful and even painted pink.

But the real impetus for this book came from a grumpy old man who wanted his money back.

He had purchased “Workbenches: From Design & Theory to Construction & Use” and was disappointed that the book had plans for only two workbenches. He had expected at least a dozen.

At first I tried to defend my book, and I explained that the core idea of the book was that you could take the principles in it and create something that was suitable for your work, customized with the workholding you would need as you grew as a woodworker.

He was ready for that answer.

He said that there was no way that he could know what sort of workbench he’d need in five or 10 years. Instead, he wanted to see plans for a bunch of workbenches from experienced woodworkers who had thought hard about the bench they should build. Then he would examine the sort of work they did and find the woodworker who was doing work that he found inspirational.

Then he would build their bench.

That’s not an entirely bad idea. So I took his idea and twisted it to my own devices. In this book you’ll find plans for nine workbenches that we have published over the years in our magazine from my pen or from woodworkers I respect or from whom I’ve learned a great deal.

But the reason we are publishing these plans is not for you to pick one out like it’s a car and build one just like it. In fact, it’s just the opposite. We are publishing these plans in the sincere hope that you will take the opportunity to tear them apart, understand how they work then discard them for something slightly different that suits your work.

In fact, I spent more than three months building a workbench that I hope not a single woodworker copies – the 18th-century Roubo-style workbench shown on the cover. Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s a fantastic bench, one of the nicest-looking ones I have ever built. But I didn’t build it for you to copy.

So why the heck did I build it?

I’m not trying to be difficult here. I promise. The reason I built that bench like I did is because of feedback from readers. Lots of people seized upon the idea in the first book of using construction-grade lumber that you then laminate into the thicknesses that you need for your bench’s parts. It’s a principle that we explore even deeper in this book, such as the workbench Megan Fitzpatrick and I built using laminated veneer lumber (LVL).

The Ultimate Bench? David Denning holds this bench up as the one to have in his book “The Art of Cabinet-Making.” This bench has a lot going for it, but a few things could be greatly improved.

However, as several readers pointed out, I was sending out mixed signals. I was showing you how to build a workbench that was ideal for handwork but that was best built with a powered jointer, planer and table saw. So the real lesson in the 18th-century Roubo bench in this book is to show you how to cut workbench-scale joints entirely by hand. And you can take those skills and use them to build any bench.

And that is the real purpose of the plans in this book. Each bench has some important construction details that you can take and make your own. Here are some examples:

• The Holtzapffel Cabinetmaker’s Workbench shows you how to incorporate a wooden twin-screw vise and an end vise that is a quick-release vise (a non-traditional but quite excellent adaptation of this common piece of hardware).

• The LVL Workbench explores the merits (and limitations) of this common construction material and shows you how to build a traditional bench base that is bolted together and can be built in (no lie here) one afternoon.

• Robert W. Lang’s 21st-century Workbench has the only tool tray that I (begrudgingly) approve of, plus it shows you alternatives to having a sliding deadman and offers a lesson in building a knockdown base that uses wedges.

• Glen D. Huey’s Shaker Workbench shows you how to master post-and-rail base construction, plus it offers scads of storage.

• The 24-hour Workbench is the fastest bench I’ve ever built (I’ve built five of these), and it shows you how to use plywood for a benchtop and bench bolts in the base.

• The Power-tool Workbench shows you how to get away with one vise, a small footprint and still be able to do most handwork operations. This was my workbench at home for many years.

• The $280 (or so) Workbench is a lesson in frugality – how to build the most bench with the least amount of scratch.

• Jim Stuard’s German/Patternmaker’s Workbench is the first hand-tool friendly workbench I ever used. It has a classic trestle base, storage, a patternmaker’s vise and very few compromises.

But in assembling that list of benches, I concluded that these nine benches weren’t enough to give you the full range of possibilities you’ll face as you sit down with a blank sheet of paper or an empty computer screen.

So I decided to add a couple other features to this book. First, after eight of the nine workbench plans there are two-page commentaries of the bench based on the user’s experiences with that design. They answer the important questions of: What would they keep? What would they change?

Second, I compiled a list of bench designs that cover most of the major Western designs – from European to Late Mongrel. With these designs I offer a sort of “before-and-after” approach. I show the bench design as it commonly appears with commentary about what works and what doesn’t with the classic design. Then I show you how to modify the design so it might do a few more tricks for you.

In other words, this book is like a vaccination. With these plans I’m trying to free you from the tyranny of plans. If you look at enough workbenches and understand what makes them tick, then you’ll start designing good ones for yourself. That’s what happened to me. And that is what has happened to other workbench freaks I’ve communicated with during the last decade.

Know your sources: This bench from Joseph Moxon’s “Mechanick Exercises” vexed me for many years. What I didn’t realize is how the engraving of the bench had been changed after it had been swiped from the French. That key bit of information led to a new understanding of the workholding.

New Workholding & Ways To Knock Down Your Bench
Other parts of this book are attempts to update you on some new developments or fill in areas that I had to skim over in the last book. I have included a sizable section on the world of workholding – much has changed. Manufacturers have redoubled their efforts to bring us vises and devices to make life easier. (And sadly, other manufacturers have sent their operations overseas, which has resulted in their products becoming cheap in the worst sense of the word.)

Plus, I have made a few small discoveries about historical workholding that had eluded me for years. In other words, I’m coming clean about my earlier ignorance.

And finally, I include a chapter on building knockdown workbenches that I didn’t have room for in the first book  The two workbench designs from my first book are monolithic (the way I like them), but as many of you have told me, people move.

So Do You Need This Book?
That’s a fair question. I think that most woodworkers will be happy with the designs in the first book. It’s like buying a stock Honda Civic and modifying the heck out of the thing. Change the VTEC timing, mess with the cold-air intake, redo the exhaust and suspension. In the end you will have a car that is a top performer, but it still has the Honda Civic nameplate on it.

This book is for people who want to build a car from scratch. Weld together a chassis and pick out all the parts, from the coil to the water pump. It’s more effort to understand the car, which is – ultimately – a group of systems. But the result is that whatever you build in the end – fantastic or craptacular – is entirely your brainchild.

Your bench might end up looking like a Roubo or a Nicholson or a Klausz to a casual observer. But because you understand how all its systems work together you will have created a John-style bench or a Janet-inspired design.

If you’re ready for this, then the first step in your education is to revisit the rules of workbench design and see if we can stretch them, distort them or make them write bad checks.

— Christopher Schwarz

I've been getting questions almost daily about the 18th-century French-style workbench I built for the cover of the August 2010 issue of Popular Woodworking Magazine. The questions go something like this:

1. Has the benchtop exploded into pieces yet, you dufus?

2. Has the epoxy shattered?

3. How are your chiropractic bills with that leg vise?

During the last four months I've been using the bench quite a bit and have built four projects on it. I feel like it's pretty much broken in, though I still have some uncertainty ahead with my benchtop (more on this in a minute).

Here are some of the changes I've made to the bench in the last four months and some things I've observed about its behavior.

The first alteration I made was to add a tool rack along the back edge of the benchtop. This is a traditional French feature that shows up on many plates in André Roubo's 18th-century books on woodworking. The rack is 28-1/2" long and 3" wide. It's made from 1/2"-thick material in two layers. One layer consists of spacers. The other layer is the long piece that contains the tools.

I've found that a 1/2"-wide slot is a great width for many bench tools. Your results may vary. The rack is nailed onto the bench using some cool iron nails I found at VanDyke's Restorers.

I like the tool rack quite a bit. The only time it gets in the way is when I'm dovetailing. I had to pull the tools out of the rack to transfer my tails onto my pin board, which was secured in my leg vise. If I cut pins first, this wouldn't be a problem, by the way.

I also added a hinged lid that covers the space above the shelf. This creates a little toolbox that has been handy for stowing stuff. It's a nice addition, but it's not a game-changer.

I also added some stop chamfers with a lamb's tongue detail on the long stretchers. I think it lightens the look of the base a bit, and I like stop chamfers.

About the Top
I rather like the way the slab top looks. Of course, most people have wondered if the through-tenons and through-dovetails are tearing the bench apart. So far, no.

But the top is moving.

When the top came into our shop it had been sitting outside for several years and it was at about 15 percent moisture content. After being inside since February, it's now down to about 13 percent. Black cherry usually ends up at 10 percent moisture content in our shop, so it still needs to dry out a bit.

As the top lost moisture, it shrank a bit and squeezed out some of the epoxy I had forced into the cracks. This epoxy is flexible so it didn't shatter or crack. It simply bulged out like a vein on your arm. So I took a card scraper and trimmed off the proud epoxy. It took about 15 minutes.

In June I checked the top for flatness and found that one section in the middle had moved a bit. That was a good excuse for me to whip out the jointer plane and true it up. This also removed the finish from the top. While the old finish looked good, I had added too much varnish into my finish mixture so the top was a little slicker than I wanted.

So after flattening the top I put on two coats of straight boiled linseed oil, and now the top is grippier.

About the Vises
I couldn't be happier with the leg vise. The Lake Erie wooden screw is fast and robust. And I'm glad I placed the vise's parallel guide above the leg. I can reach down and move the pin without stooping much at all. In fact, I can usually just drop my arm and reach the pin while I'm adjusting the tommy bar of the vise.

The end vise is also a success. It's an old Sheldon quick-release vise. Unlike modern quick-release vises, it doesn't move much – maybe an 1/8" when you engage the lever. I was concerned that this wouldn't be enough pressure. It turns out to be ideal. In fact, I like it because you don't tend to over-tighten it and bow your stock.

Other Changes Ahead
I can't wait to get this bench against a wall. While it hasn't tipped a bit, I just feel more comfortable working against a wall. Also, I need to make some more hickory bench dogs. The two that I have made have been a complete success.

If you're going to be at Woodworking in America this October you'll be able to see this bench in person and give it a thumbs-up or -down. But for me, I think this bench is a success. I like the way it works and the way it looks. Do I wish it were bigger? Sure. I always prefer a bigger bench. But for a short bench, this is a fine one.

— Christopher Schwarz

Workbench Resources – Free and Otherwise

• Want to mainline some workbench information? You can read every blog post I've written about workbenches in the last five-plus years by clicking here. Hope you have some bandwidth handy.

• We filmed a DVD of the construction of this bench. It includes many details we didn't have room for in the magazine article, including a slideshow of all of the construction photos. You can order the DVD "Build an 18th-century Workbench" from the WoodworkersBookshop.com.

• I have a second workbench book coming out this fall titled "The Workbench Design Book." My first book is on sale in our store: "Workbenches: From Design & Theory to Construction & Use."

Nor is it about the workbench. It's about my sawbenches. During every project I wonder how I ever got by without them. Like Tonya Harding, I think there's something special about the kneecap height.

— Christopher Schwarz

We've been testing the Veritas Quick-release Sliding Tail Vise for several months now and have been keeping as mum as possible. Now I can break my mum-ness and discuss this interesting piece of new bench hardware.

The idea is simple: Put a traditional European tail vise and a machinist's quick-release vise into a tropical hotel with an ocean view. Open the mini bar. Order room service.

Their love child is this vise.

Like a machinist's quick-release vise, it is easy to install – even to retrofit. We added this vise to the LVL Workbench in about a couple hours of work. We cut out the recess for the vise using a jigsaw and trued it up with a chisel plane. Then we bolted the hardware to the underside of the top and made the walnut chop.

Like a tail vise, it offers 100-percent support to wide panels when you are working on them and gets your row of dog holes right up in the front of the benchtop where you want them.

Like a machinist's quick-release vise, you turn a lever and the the jaw slides open and closed with a satisfying swoosh.

Like a tail vise, you can lock the threads so that the jaw opens and closes with a screw-feed action. That means you can use this vise for assembly, disassembly and holding your work

Like a quick-release vise, it has guide bars to keep it from racking and it doesn't sag.

But like a tail vise, there are no bars that get in the way of the vise's functions.

To show you how this works, Megan Fitzpatrick and I prepared the short tour above. (And no, Megan doesn't wear those sandals when she is working in the shop, so just shut your pie hole about that.)

Also, before you ask: The Acme-thread screw is indeed small, but the sucker is robust. You can really crank the thing down (not that you should ever need to). I think this vise is going to be a real game-changer when it comes to deciding which end vise to install on your bench.

The vise is available and in stock from Lee Valley Tools for $269 U.S.
 
— Christopher Schwarz

Other Tail Vise Links to Consider

• We'll be testing out the tail vise hardware from Lie-Nielsen soon. I am told that it is "bombproof."

• The Benchcrafted tail vise is an engineering marvel. And now the company has released an updated version that is easier to install.

• Be sure to visit workbenchdesign.net for all your workbench information cravings.

• And if you want a heavy dose of my off-centered view on workbenches, my book is a good place to start: "Workbenches: From Design & Theory to Construction & Use."

Today we finalized the design for a nice poster that features the famous plate 11 from Andre Roubo's woodworking masterwork. The poster (redheads not included) will be ready for sale (on very nice paper) at Woodworking in America. It also will be available for sale in our store.

Plate 11, for those of you just joining us, shows one of Roubo's designs for workbenches, plus a scene from a French joinery shop. Some of the tools in the plate are not to scale, but the detail is tremendous and the lessons are there for you to decipher.

We're still working out pricing (should be about $20), and some other details. But here's a shot of the prototype with Linda (hiding behind the poster) and Megan (not hiding).

— Christopher Schwarz

Last month we showed you a preview of Len Hovarter's interesting twin-screw vise (check out that entry here and see a video). Today Hovarter's web site went live and is offering a $25 discount for pre-orders before Sept. 15.

The web site for Hovarter Custom Vise is: hovartercustomvise.com.

We've received our vise hardware from Hovarter, which is sitting patiently behind me in my office. Megan Fitzpatrick and I are going to try to start building some benches for Woodworking in America this week. Maybe Thursday – if the editing part of our jobs doesn't get in the way. I'm planning to put the Hovarter vise on one of the benches as a twin-screw face vise. The other bench will get the awesome Glide vise from Benchcrafted.

Oh, you didn't hear? It's Yuppy Bench Hardware Week. It was in all the newspapers.

The Hovarter twin-screw kit is $350 to $360 depending on the configuration you want. His web site also has assembly instructions for the vises, which will give you an idea of what's involved.

I've been unpacking the hardware and examining it during my nanoseconds of free time. Everything looks overbuilt and shiny.

— Christopher Schwarz

More Workbench Resources to Investigate When Your Boss Ain't Looking

• Check out the European Sjoberg site. There are lots of interesting workbench forms there that we don't have here. http://www.mollefors.se/en/start/

• While at Roy Underhill's I worked on these Hoffman & Hammer workbenches. The tops were nice. The bases looked a little spindly to my Frenchyfied eyes. But at that price, it might be worth building a base for. We didn't have any sagging tail vises, but there's always tomorrow.

• And for those of you dwelling beneath a boulder, I have a new DVD out "Build an 18th-century Workbench." It includes tons of extra materials to help you build the burly French beast in our shop right now.

I like reading about workbench patents as much as I like movies about gladiators (which is a lot).

So here's how to prove your bench geekiness, and it won't cost a penny (except for the bandwidth). Jeff Burks has compiled almost 2,000 pages of United States patent papers and drawings related to workbenches and workholding between 1845 and 1960. The patents are arranged chonologically in a .pdf file, which has some basic bookmarks and is somewhat searchable using Acrobat's "find" feature.

This is an amazing treasure trove of just about every amazing, ingenious and idiotic workbench patent you could imagine. There must be 30 different patents relating to the parallel guide of a leg vise alone. And the number of patents for pop-up bench dogs is frankly a bit bewildering.

And here's the best part. You can download the entire 112mb file for free. All Burks asks is that if you find any patents that relate to workholding or workbenches for woodworking (not metalworking) that you drop him a line. His e-mail is embedded in the .pdf file.

I've spent a few weeks reading this document and it has sparked a lot of ideas for things I could try in the shop myself. Check it out. You'll be impressed.

www.carpentryarchive.org/files/workbench_uspto.pdf

— Christopher Schwarz

Still More Workbench Resources

• The Directory of American Tool and Machinery Patents. This is another treasure trove of patent information on all sorts of tools. datamp.org

• Google has a dang-good patent site that is highly searchable. google.com/patents

• I have a new DVD on building an 18th-century workbench. It's old school. We shot it during several months of work. Watch my beard and hair grow and shrink. Amazing. Check it out in our store.

There are few things I dislike more than seeing myself in video. I'm one of those guys who has a face for radio. And when I talk, I move my hands in a way that looks like I am giving myself an erotic chest massage.

But readers have asked – insisted even – that we provide video instruction for things that are difficult to show with words and still photos. So I've swallowed my discomfort – hard.

For more than three months, Glen D. Huey and Drew DePenning filmed me as I was building the workbench shown on the cover of the August 2010 issue of Popular Woodworking Magazine. Nothing was faked or set up for the cameras. It was just me working, Glen filming, me sweating and Glen chuckling.

In all, we recorded more than 40 hours of video, which Drew has been distilling into a compact narrative that explains in the most succinct terms possible how to build this bench using hand tools. We were able to greatly condense the story of building the bench by almost eliminating the "talking head" part of woodworking videos (a crime of which I am guilty on occasion).

Instead, most of the video is of me working with narration layered over the video. In film, narration is a "cheap plot device," according to one of my favorite film professors. But I think it works here.

In addition to the video, the DVD has some extras that you will find useful.

• There is the complete story from the August 2010 issue with the cutting list and construction drawings, plus two additional views of the leg joinery.

• An extensive slideshow that contains more than 80 images – many of them unpublished. This shows you nitty-gritty details in high resolution so you can study them.

• SketchUp files of the bench, plus two variants I worked on and a SketchUp file that shows you how I took Roubo's image of the leg and transformed it into a real working joint.

I am very not displeased with this DVD – my highest praise for my own video work.

As of today, the DVD is now in stock in our warehouse and is shipping. The DVD is $24.99.

If you are considering buying it, would you do me a favor and use this link? They track this stuff, and thanks to you guys, I won $100 in beer money, which I plan to share with the entire staff.

And speaking of beer, I think my chest massage thing could perhaps become a drinking game for you and your woodworking buddies. You have to drink anytime I'm treating my chest like an old-fashioned radio. Or anytime I say the word "unit."

As always, thanks for your support. It's why I still get to work here and am not the "detail sander" editor.

At high school reunions there's always the guy you don't recognize because he's gained 200 pounds and is nursing a spectacular goiter. This workbench is like that.

Eagle-eyed reader Andrew Midkiff sent in these photos of a workbench he spotted in a water-powered grist mill at the West Point of the Eno City Park in Durham, N.C.

The top is a huge slab. But what confused me at first was that the legs are attached to the top using giant, round through-tenons. Midkiff found no sign of an end vise, but says there are square dog holes just cut into the face of the slab. The dogs are completed by a board nailed to the front.

The underside is completely rough. Midkiff wrote: "It looks like it was chopped out by a rabid beaver on meth." (Note that this is unlikely; methamphetamine was not developed until 1893 and beaver culture didn't embrace the drug until after the species was named as endangered by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora.)

When I first saw these photos, my gut said the slab was old but the legs were newer just because the legs were lighter in color. Also, the round tenons seemed weird at first. After a few minutes, however, I realized that though this looked like a French bench without stretchers, it actually has a lot of Roman bench bones.

Roman workbenches (which were common even into the 15th century) consisted of a big slab top with the legs tenoned into it using round tenons. Usually there were no stretchers below. (In this way, workbenches and Windsor chairs enjoy a common ancestor.)

In any case, the square leg and round tenon really threw me at first.

Bottom line: I want this slab. And I want to flatten it. To steal it, however, I'll probably have to sneak past the drug-addled beavers.

— Christopher Schwarz

A Bench Geek's Delight: More Links

• First, let's get the commercial stuff out of the way. We just got advance copies of my new DVD "Build an 18th-century Workbench" where I build the Roubo on the cover of the August 2010 issue. If you've ever wanted to know how to cut big joints by hand, this is the ticket. It ships real soon. If you buy it through this link, they give me beer money. No lie.

• Want to see the coolest leg vise ever? It's creepy. It's in a factory where they made ... wait for it ... legs. This 1916 photo shows an awesome leg vise (the bottom middle of the photo) that has a huge handwheel and a St. Peter's Cross. Want. Just want.

The cutting list for the ‘The Return of Roubo’ workbench in the August 2010 issue of Popular Woodworking Magazine has a small error in the cutting list. And I'd like to quickly clarify a couple things about the construction drawing.

First the error. I accidentally transposed the tenon lengths for the stretchers. The finished dimensions listed in the cutting list are correct – I just swapped the tenon lengths. So the tenons for the long stretchers should be listed as 4-1/4" (instead of 2-3/4"). And the tenons for the short stretchers should be 2-3/4" (instead of 4-1/4"). I apologize for that mistake.

And now a couple clarifications. I have the parallel guide listed as 1/2" thick. That will work just fine – I've made many parallel guides out of 1/2"-thick maple. But in reality, my parallel guide is closer to 5/8" thick (it was all dimensioned by hand so nothing is exactly anything). The bottom line with any parallel guide is that it fit snugly in the slot in the leg and yet move smoothly.

Also, a couple readers have pointed out that the drawing and cutting list indicate the legs are 4" x 5-1/2", yet in the photos they look almost square. Truth is, they probably are a little closer to square – I'm actually not sure. When I drew the workbench for publication I tried to use dimensions that I knew would work and that I knew would be easier for you to find or glue up.

With handwork you have to deal what you can find and balance it against what will work and what will look good. If you build this bench by hand, you're going to find out what I mean. Once you gather your stock for your bench, my drawings and cutting list will become irrelevant anyway.

— Christopher Schwarz

Other Workbench Resources Buried in my Browser

• Want to turn a face vise into a shoulder vise? Check this out.

• French benches are still alive, well and for sale in France. Check out the Francois web site at etablis-francois.com.

• The DVD for building this workbench "Build an 18th-century Workbench" should be in stock soon. You can order your copy from our store.

Sorry for all the bench posts. (Hey, that should be the name of this blog.) I have a lot of extra jetsam (or is it flotsam?) sitting around as I crank out my next book. Here's an awesome piece of detritus.

A couple years ago a reader sent me a cardboard box containing two unused pieces of bench hardware – and the instructions! – from the Mechanical Manufacturing Co. One piece of hardware, a bench clamp, is stamped as patent pending (but I can't find a patent for it). The other gizmo, one of 10 billion bench hooks patented between 1854 and 1920, received a patent in 1910. (If you don't have any friends either you can read the patent here.)

The bench hook is a cool piece of spring-loaded hardware that you can install into the top of any work surface merely by cutting a shallow mortise and driving in two screws. The bench hook has three different kinds of bearing surfaces (serrated, two points or flat). And you can set the hook for a variety of heights.

The other piece of hardware is a cool quick-release tail vise you can install anywhere with a mallet. When installed on the benchtop, it's a little less than 3/8" high. Pull the lever back and the forked dog extends 1-1/4". Push the button at the rear and the dog snaps back into its case.

And, most important: It makes an awesome clicking noise than annoys your co-workers when you engage it 60 times in a row while they are trying to edit a story by Toshio Odate.

Though the patent and directions don't mention this, my guess is that this hardware was intended for house carpenters who needed to set up a quick workbench on a home site (which was still common practice in 1910). I also could see how some amateurs might find it useful.

We shot a short video that demonstrates how these devices are applied on a temporary benchtop.

— Christopher Schwarz

Other Bench Resources (Yes, Some Are New!)

• Do you get a funny feeling inside when you look at cool old patents of woodworking stuff? Here is your porn site. It's called the Directory of American Tool and Machinery Patents (DATAMP for short), and you can explore its bowels by visiting datamp.org.

• Ever heard of Rob Tarule? He built the Roubo workbench in Scott Landis's "The Workbench Book." Visit Tarule's site at heartofthewood.com. His 17th-century stuff is just awesome.

• And my pathetic commercial plea: I have a new DVD on building the workbench featured on the cover of the August 2010 issue of Popular Woodworking Magazine. The DVD shows how to build a monster 18th-century workbench using hand tools.

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Michigan engineer Len Hovarter has developed a new vise mechanism that looks more like a magic trick than bench hardware.

The vise hardware is patent pending and should be available in September, Hovarter says. This hardware is just so cool, that I wanted to share it with you now -- in case you are planning on building a bench this fall. I've ordered a set of the hardware from Hovarter, so I'll be testing the stuff myself. Until the hardware becomes commercially available, we'll just have to enjoy these photos and a short movie.

So what's so amazing about it? Well it's a quick-release vise and from the outside it looks like a traditional twin-screw with two hubs. When you open the vise, things start to look curious. The two shafts between the jaw and the bench are smooth – no threads.

Turn either handle clockwise a little (they are linked by a steel plate under the benchtop) and the vise cinches down hard. You also can skew the jaws a little for working on tapered work.

It's a mechanism that doesn't look like it should work. And in fact, Hovarter didn't think it would work when he first devised it.

The tale of this vise begins in 2005 when Hovarter decided to improve his hand-tool skills and was getting frustrated with his workbench – a solid core door mounted on 2x4s. He started researching benches and liked Mike Dunbar’s workbench with a big twin-screw vise. But he thought it would be cool if it was a quick-release vise.

"I went through hundreds of sheets of paper sketching ideas until I thought of using a flat 'transfer bar' to transfer motion between the two clamp housings," Hovarter wrote in an e-mail. "The first prototype was a complicated monstrosity which required a third shaft to effect clamping. I thought if I could combine the clamping and handle rotation into two shafts I might have a workable vise. I didn’t think the vise in its current form would work. And in fact the early prototypes didn’t work.

"I just kept trying different things to eliminate the problems. Eventually I ran out of problems and was left with a vise. I wish I could say the idea just 'popped' into my head, but it really was a lot of trial and error. I still have not improved my hand tool skills, but now I have a decent bench and the vise I dreamed of five years ago."

And he has some other dreams. Hovarter is now working on a prototype quick-release leg vise using his hardware; it won't require a parallel guide. He also has plans for face vises, end vises, carving vises, shoulder vises, leg vises and an enclosed tail vise. He's also working on a web site to take orders and getting the assembly instructions ready for customers.

While some details could change between now and when the vise is released, here are Hovarter's current plans.

The twin-screw hardware will be made in the United States. Most of the machined parts will be made on Hovarter's CNC mill; other parts such as the vise's rack, pinion and ductile iron casting will be supplied by companies that specialize in making those parts. The vise will be supplied as a kit of loose parts that will be assembled into the housing.

"The assembly is pretty easy to do, and I think it is fun even after I have done it hundreds of times," Hovarter writes. "The assembly of the parts into the housing does not require tools other than hands."

In addition to the hardware, the vise will come with instructions for making the clamp hubs, handles and knobs. He'll also sell those wooden parts separately.

The price for the hardware kit for the twin screw vise isn't firm yet, Hovarter writes, but it will be "in the $350 range."

And for those of you who are wondering, Hovarter has the chops to pull this off. He's a mechanical engineer who graduated from Purdue University and learned machining in middle school shop class and carried that all the way through college with machine design. He grew up in Fort Wayne, Ind., where his dad had a sheet metal shop for his heating and air conditioning business, and also dabbled in woodworking.

Hovarter was recently working for an auto parts supplier that went into bankruptcy; now he is employed by a major car manufacturer as a heating and air conditioning systems engineer.

"I would love to retire and have vise making be my full time job, and woodworking my full time hobby," he writes.

For more information on the vise, contact Hovarter at len@lencotools.com

— Christopher Schwarz

Other Vise Resources You Should Investigate

• Check out the other twin-screw vises from Veritas and Lie-Nielsen Toolworks. These versions are linked by a chain instead of a transfer bar.

• Want to read about workholding until you are blue in the face? Buy the blue book "Workbenches: From Design & Theory to Construction & Use." A companion book to this will be available this fall.

• You are not a bench geek unless you visit workbenchdesign.net.

• Finally, if you haven't heard, I have a new DVD on building the workbench featured on the cover of the August 2010 issue of Popular Woodworking Magazine. The DVD shows how to build a monster 18th-century workbench using hand tools.

We need more workbenches for Woodworking in America. The event, Oct. 1-3 here in the Cincinnati area, is by far bigger than the last three events we've held.

And me, I'm going a little stir crazy. I've spent the last three weeks writing the remaining chapters to a follow-up book to "Workbenches: From Design & Theory to Construction & Use." (While my first workbench book is like the Old Testament, this new book – tentatively titled "The Workbench Design Book" – will be the New Testament. But more on that topic later.)

In any case, I am not getting enough time in the shop. So yesterday evening I was excited when a neighbor summoned me to his shop and pulled open a cardboard box.

Inside was a 1-5/8" x 36" x 6' long mahogany top. He had come into about 40 of these tops through his job with the railroad. He had sold most of them through Craigslist (and donated the money to his church, by the way). But he had a few left and thought I might like one.

The top was made from finger-jointed mahogany and covered in purple stain. But boy was it heavy. And flat. And hey – don't we need more workbenches for Woodworking in America?

For many years I've wanted to make a workbench top using a piece of butcher block. We have a weird warehouse store here in Cincinnati named Home Emporium that sells giant 8' Buddha heads and maple butcher-block countertop. You can get an 8'-long run of the stuff for about $80. Laminate two of those suckers face-to-face and you'd have a thick and heavy and somewhat ugly benchtop. Ikea also sells tops like this.

So this morning I ripped this mahogany behemoth down the middle, planed off the finish and decided to glue this sucker up into an 18"-wide benchtop that is more than 3" thick. The whole process took about an hour, a half bottle of glue, some screws and some clamps.

When I do laminations like this, I like to drive screws through the underside of the benchtop to clamp the pieces together. I used three rows of screws with the screws placed 12" apart. You can remove the screws when the glue is dry.

So I clamped the two pieces face to face and drilled clearance and pilot holes through the two pieces for #8 x 2-1/2" screws. It's best to drill all these holes before you put the glue on because things will start sliding around once glue gets involved. Then I unclamped the pieces and opened them like a book on some sawhorses.

Then I used a small paint roller to spread a film of glue on both open faces, folded them together and drove in the screws. And then, because I'm a bit retentive, I clamped all around the edge of the lamination, just because I could.

Total shop time: less than one hour.

The other big advantage to building this quickie bench is that I'm going to get to install some bench hardware on it that hasn't been released to the public.

Like I really need an excuse.

— Christopher Schwarz

Other Bench-building Links and Products

• See this bench (and more) at Woodworking in America. The conference is almost sold out. We have already expanded our floor space to accommodate more attendees and vendors. But we are just about out of space.

• "Build an 18th-century Workbench." To those of you who pre-ordered this DVD, thank you. I think there's a good chance I'll win some beer money as a result. The DVD is still on sale in our store.

• Free plan: "The 24-hour Workbench." This is a bench I've built several times that uses Baltic Birch plywood for the top. Very easy and fast to build.

• Workbenchdesign.net. For all things workbench-related.

I've always resisted adding wheels or a mobile base to my workbenches. They can be complex, in the way of your feet and take some fiddling to engage and disengage.

So we've always put our benches up on furniture dollys when we needed to move them.

However, readers have pestered me for years now for ideas on how to make their benches mobile. Most of these people work in a garage workshop where they need to have everything on wheels so it can be pushed aside for the spouse's car.

They never take me up on my first solution, divorce.

So I offer this idea. I've never seen it before, but I'm sure someone, somewhere has done it already. It's based on a "Shortcut" we published years ago as a way to raise and lower your workbench. But instead of swinging a big block of wood under the feet to raise the bench, I decided to put four 3" casters there.

I attached two 3" casters each to two 1-1/2" x 5" x 24" lengths of 2 x 6 that I trimmed up. Then I attached two unswaged utility hinges to each 2 x 6. One hinge for each leg. I had to saw out a 3/8" x 3/8" rabbet on the corner of each leg to receive the barrel of the hinge. Then I screwed the hinges to the legs.

I did this to Megan's bench in about an hour today (that will teach her to leave the office to get a pedicure). Hope she likes it.

The video below shows just how fast this system works. In less than 30 seconds I put the bench up on its wheels and then down again onto the floor.

— Christopher Schwarz

Still More Workbench-related Links and Resources

• "Build an 18th-century Workbench" a new DVD with Christopher Schwarz. Buy this now at the pre-order price and I might win beer money. Seriously.

• See a reader's solution to a mobile workbench that I posted here. Very cool. A little complicated for my taste.

• My DVD "The Workbench" (Lie-Nielsen Toolworks) shows you how to modify your workbench to improve its workholding abilities.

This morning, Glen Huey, Megan Fitzpatrick and I went into rural Ohio to fetch some wood for a new workbench for Megan's study (it's long story; ask her).

Megan had scored some sweet Eastern white pine logs that were left over from building a log cabin; they were kiln dried, fairly clear and about 10 years old. All for $100. The only problem was that some were 17' long – too long even for Glen's capacious lorry (as Megan would put it).

We couldn't saw all the way through these beams with a circular saw (they were more than 7" x 7"), so we made Megan finish the cuts with a bowsaw.

Honestly, can you believe Megan isn't married yet? Send your dating requests (and references) to my e-mail.

After we stacked these logs in the shop back in Cincinnati I took a reading on their moisture content. All of them were less than 10 percent MC.

— Christopher Schwarz

Other Workbench and Megan-related Resources

• Megan on the cover of the November 2009 issue with her LVL workbench. Suitable for framing....

• "Build an 18th-century Workbench" a new DVD with Christopher Schwarz.

• Read all my posts on workbenches. Warning: this will take a while.

My latest DVD, "Build an 18th-century Workbench" is now available for pre-order in our store at a 15-percent discount until June 30 – $21.24 plus shipping.

As I was building the workbench that will be featured on the cover of the August 2010 issue of Popular Woodworking Magazine, Glen Huey and Drew DePenning spent hours in the shop filming the construction process during the three months I was working on the bench. (Note: I'm not slow. I just have a day job.)

Since I finished the bench, Drew has been condensing the footage into a short but information-packed video that shows the entire construction process from working the raw slabs of wood to mixing and applying the finish that I like to use on workbenches.

After considerable effort, we condensed the video down to about 38 minutes of running time. That might not seem like a lot of video for your dollar. Here's the deal: I hate "talking head" style videos – they are usually an inefficient method of transmitting information. So we took most of the steps involved in the construction process and I narrated over them to tell you what is going on. That way you can focus a lot more on the task I'm showing instead of focusing on my strange tendency to look like I'm giving myself an erotic chest massage as I'm talking.

In addition to the video, we've included extra digital material on the DVD that I think you'll find helpful. There's a slidehow of 86 high-resolution still photos of the construction process for you to study (it's almost like a silent film-version of the DVD). There is the complete article from the August 2010 issue, including an additional page of drawings of the leg joint, the cutting list and standard construction drawings.

And there are several SketchUp files, including a detailed one of the bench, plus alternative versions that feature a curvy lower stretcher.

All in all, I'm quite pleased with the way the DVD came out.

The DVD should be in-house by June 30, and that is when this 15-percent discount will end and the price will be $24.95.

One last thing (a personal favor to me): If you are going to purchase it, if you could use the following link to get to our store, you'll be doing the digital equivalent of buying me a beer. Our company is running an internal contest right now, and I might win some beer money as a result.

— Christopher Schwarz

Other Workbench Resources You Should Use

• "Workbenches: From Design & Theory to Construction & Use" – The book that launched my exploration into ancient workbenches and workholding.

• "The Workbench Book" by Scott Landis.

• Workbenchdesign.net – I should add this to my blogroll.

• "Workbenches" DVD – An excellent companion DVD that shows you how to modify your existing bench or design a new one from scratch.

• "The Best of Shops & Workbenches" CD – This CD contains lots of alternative plans for workbenches — and gives you sound advice on how to set up your workshop as well.

• "The Arts & Mysteries of Hand Tools" CD – For those who want to tune up their hand-tool skills before tacking this project, “Adam Cherubini’s Arts & Mysteries of Hand Tools” is a great place to start.

People often divide our country into North and South using a variety of metrics. There's the Mason-Dixon line, of course. The Barbecue Line (the word means "grilled meat" in the North and "porky heaven" in the South). And so on.

I use the "Yellow Pine Line." This fantastic material is difficult to find in many Northern climes, except as pressure-treated nastiness. And in the South, the stuff is so common that it grows on trees.

I think it's an ideal workbench material. It's cheap. It's stable. It's stiff. It's easy to flatten. It's available in wide widths. So it should come as no surprise that I get e-mails like this one from Paul:

I live in Aurora, Ill., a western Chicago suburb. It does not appear to be a location friendly to the Southern Yellow Pine that you've prized in earlier articles.  Home Depot/Lowe's/Menards all stock, at best, SPF...so I don't really know what I'm getting.

So now, the question – how might I best obtain woods with the density/strength that you recommend – in a land like mine that seems very un-woodworking friendly?

One note – one of your articles on Southern Yellow Pine suggested that, if it can't be found, that we take the pickup truck down to Cincinnati. Unfortunately, that won't be a good option for my Ford Taurus these days (though it would be fun to do).

I've thought of just dealing with the SPF that Home Depot offers, but I am afraid that I'd be disappointed with it in a year. I'd like my bench to last five, 10, or more years.

Well the easy answer would be to use "SPF" which is a grab-bag category for "spruce, pine or fir." It's certainly strong enough, though usually it's a little soft. And some places don't dry it as well as necessary. But the good news here is that you are actually close to the "Yellow Line." You don't have to come to Cincinnati to get Southern Yellow Pine. In fact, I know of some people in Chicago who have found it in the city at lumberyards (if you are out there, please chime in with the name of the yard!).

Even if you cannot find it in the city, you should be able to sneak over the border to Indiana and find some. It's amazing how the wood choices can change radically by changing your geography slightly

And finally, let me repeat something that I've said about 100 times about workbench materials: Almost any wood will do. Pick something that is readily available, inexpensive, dry and stiff. You'll be fine.

— Christopher Schwarz

Other Workbench Resources I Recommend

• Tim Celeski's excellent workbench site: workbenchdesign.net.

• I actually still like my book "Workbenches: From Design & Theory to Construction & Use."

• We have a nice and inexpensive CD of many of the workbench and shop plans we've published "The Best of Shops & Workbenches."

• Watch Roy Underhill's episodes (free!) where he builds a French bench.

This week we received a visit from James Travis, who built what could be the most ornate sawbench.

Travis, who is in his early 20s, was traveling through Cincinnati on his way from Boston to San Antonio, Texas, and dropped by the shop. Travis recently completed the "Three-month Furniture Making Intensive" program at the North Bennet Street School in Boston and was headed back to Texas to set up shop as a furniture designer and craftsman.

After showing Travis our shop, he asked me to step outside to his Budget rent-a-truck to see his sawbench.

He built the bench entirely by hand using simple tools and home center red oak. The sawbench is, in every way, completely over the top. There are wedged through tenons at every corner. The pegs that attach the leg go entirely through the top and are capped with carved oak.

"I will never carve red oak again," Travis said of the project.

And like every woodworker, Travis immediately began pointing out the errors he made in building the sawbench, including the patches he had to make when the base didn't quite fit the notches he'd cut in the top.

He said he's thought about rebuilding the sawbench now that he has even more hand skills. But instead, he decided to keep using the shop appliance to remind him of all the lessons he's learned in the craft so far.

And Travis has quite an adventure ahead of him. His desire is to be a furniture designer and specialize in re-imagining 18th-century styles. His sawbench is one example of how his brain works. The carvings and shapes are not taken from any single piece of furniture or period but are instead they way he remembers some pieces of early American furniture he saw when he was young.

Once he gets home to Texas, his plans are to set up shop, buy a table saw and get to work with the help of his sawbench and a second day job.

"Target or anything, really," he said.

— Christopher Schwarz

Other Hand-tool Resources You Might Like

• Download a free plan for the simpler sawbench I built for Woodworking Magazine.

• "Handplane Essentials" is a compilation of my best writing about planes.

• "The Arts & Mysteries of Hand Tools" CD contains all of Adam Cherubini's columns on 18th-century woodworking and furniture.
 
• "Forgotten Hand Tools" DVD from Lie-Nielsen Toolworks.

This is the last post on Joseph Moxon's double-screw vise. Promise.

Wednesday morning while I was in the shower, my brain clicked. (Hey! twice in one month!) On Tuesday, Glen Huey and I were discussing how to make a double-screw vise without a wood-threading kit. He suggested bolts. I suggested pipe clamps. We left it at that.

Then, at 5:15 a.m., the lukewarm water of our shower brought on this idea: F-style clamps. Everyone has them. So I scurried off to work and immediately began fussing with some poplar at my bench. I had a rear jaw and chop already prepared for threading. The holes were drilled, and the blank for the handles was waiting on the lathe.

Instead I took the poplar parts to the table saw and milled a 1/4"-wide groove in the ends of the rear jaw and the chop. Each groove intersected a hole and was just wide enough to accept the bar of an F-style clamp.

I slid two short F-style-clamps into the grooves and filled in the grooves with some poplar scraps (purple poplar – my personal favorite).

Does this vise work? Heck yes. And later that day Glen and Robert Lang and I came up with some other ways we could do this without permanently installing the F-style clamps. (However, I prefer it this way.)

The best thing was that making this twin-screw vise took – at most – 30 minutes.

Perhaps I should shower more often.

— Christopher Schwarz

Other Workbench Resources You Might Enjoy

• "Workbenches: From Design & Theory to Construction & Use." Now in its third printing.

•  "The Best of Shops & Workbenches" CD from Popular Woodworking.

• "The Workbench: How to Design or Modify a Bench for Efficient Use DVD" from Lie-Nielsen Toolworks

If a sliding deadman and a crochet got married and had a baby (well, actually if they had a litter), it might look like the workbench of Jan C. Goris of St. Louis, Mo.

Goris's pine workbench is based on the French Roubo-style platform, but it has some modern workholding touches that are worth examining.

First off, take a look at the T-track that runs along both edges of the benchtop. These T-tracks are designed to hold four movable crochets. Why would you want movable crochets? Goris explains:

"They have a remarkably solid grip and they are very fast to use," he wrote. "Let the crochet ride up on the workpiece just a smidge and then crank it down. It clamps the piece down and doesn’t damage the edge. The French door secured to the back of the bench is a full 80" x 32" and is held extremely tight."

Goris says he's also been thinking that the T-tracks could have some other handy uses: a movable base for a drafting light or magnifier, or maybe a tool rack that could go straight from the wall to the bench.

Also cool: the way he attached the twin deadmen – one on the front; one on the back. Take a look under the bench and you can see how Goris adapted off-the-rack jig-building hardware to create a quick way to add and remove the deadmen. Pretty fancy.

And finally, the double end-vises. One is a wagon vise from Benchcrafted. The other is a quick-release. Goris has access to both sides of his workbench in his shop and said he finds the vise arrangement ideal for the apple butter paddles he builds for churches.

After reading my book on workbenches, Goris was a little wary that I might make fun of him for all the workholding he added to the workbench. As someone with a workbench problem, I'm the last person who should be poking fun at other builders.

Nice work Goris. I think your bench will spawn some conversation among your fellow bench nuts.

— Christopher Schwarz

Other Workbench Resources You Might Enjoy

• "Workbenches: From Design & Theory to Construction & Use." Now in its third printing.

•  "The Best of Shops & Workbenches" CD from Popular Woodworking.

• "The Workbench: How to Design or Modify a Bench for Efficient Use DVD" from Lie-Nielsen Toolworks

Joseph Moxon I could kiss your dessicated worm-eaten corpse.

My newest version of the double-screw vise illustrated in Moxon's "Mechanick Exercises" (1678) is a complete success. The vise is simple – five pieces of wood. And the only special equipment you need to build it is a wooden threadbox and tap (a $45 investment). And it takes only about an hour to construct.

When clamped to a bench or a table or any horizontal surface, the vise raises your work up to a nice no-stoop height (45" if you please) so you can saw, chisel or lay things out without bending over. And when you are done with the vise, it stores away against the wall.

When I completed this version of the vise, Senior Editor Glen D. Huey said simply, "Make me one, and I'll buy it." That might be the highest praise I've ever received for my work.

We're going to feature complete plans for the vise in a future issue, but it shouldn't be too hard for a slightly clever ring-tailed lemur to suss it all out. Here are some details.

The front jaw is 1-3/4" x 6-1/8" x 30" and pierced by 1-1/2" holes that have 24-1/8" between their edges. The rear jaw is 1-3/4" x 6" x 36" and is pierced by two 1-1/2" holes that are tapped. There is a rear support at back of the vise that is 1-3/4" x 2" x 30", which stabilizes the rear jaw. And the two screws are 2" x 2" x 12-1/2", with 7" of the handle turned down to a shade under 1-1/2" and then threaded.

This morning I asked Megan and Bob to try it out with their own tools and give me some feedback. Bob said, "I might not give this back."

If you hate stooping when dovetailing, or you want a twin-screw vise but don't want to rebuild your workbench, this is the answer.

The following is a short video showing how easy the vise is to use.

— Christopher Schwarz

Workbench Resources I Use All the Time

• "The Workbench Book" (Taunton) by Scott Landis

• "Mechanick Exercises" by Joseph Moxon. Now available in reprinted form.

• "Workbenches: From Design & Theory to Construction and Use" by me. I know this sounds like a shameless plug, but I actually do use my own book all the time. I'm getting old.

Threading and tapping wood is fairly easy work, once you get your thread box set up.

When I started here at the magazine in 1996, we had a bunch of threading kits sitting on a shelf. Like the handplanes next to them, they looked great in the background for photographs, but they didn't see much work.

I fooled around with our sets a bit and found that the cutters were dull and knocked out of alignment (a quick trip to the concrete floor can do that). So I fussed with the tools until they worked to my satisfaction.

Now that you can get woodthreading kits for sizes up to 1-1/2" (check Woodcraft and Highland Hardware) for less than $45, you might consider trying a set to make some handscrews, a dedicated twin-screw vise or perhaps a device to threaten unruly neighborhood children with (imagine something with a hole for putting an appendage into, and let your brain do the rest).

To show you how easy it is, I took a new wood threading kit out of the bag this morning and set it up while Megan Fitzpatrick shot this video. Like with any hand tool, the trick is putting the cutter in the right place.

After we shot the video, I finished making a second double-screw vise (shown below). Total elapsed construction time: one hour.

— Christopher Schwarz

Other Workshop-specific Resources You Might Enjoy

• Michael Dunbar shows how to make wooden handscrews using a thread box and tap in the February 2007 issue of Popular Woodworking.

• Download free plans for a traditional sawbench from Woodworking Magazine.

• "Projects for Your Shop" (Taunton) by Matthew Teague.

As the finish was drying yesterday on my double-screw vise, I took a few minutes to turn a new handle for my bench screw, which pierces my crochet (which sounds dirty, but isn't really).

The handle began life as an octagon that I planed down to 1-1/2" square in section. Then I turned the post down to 1" in diameter and threaded it.

The pad is not Moxon-approved equipment. My original screw would tend to mar the work if I tightened it down too far, so I decided to add a leather-faced pad that works like an F-style clamp. The pad spins until it comes in contact with something. Then it stops as the screw is tightened on the work.

I made a short video that explains this better than my words.

This screw is also a little shorter in length than the previous one. Before you ask, I did no harm to my soft parts on the previous one. But I didn't need the extra length (sounds dirty – isn't) so I shortened it.

— Christopher Schwarz

Other Workbench Sources I Recommend

• Follow Bob Rozaieski bench-building adventure at the Logan Cabinet Shoppe

• "Workbenches: From Design & Theory to Construction & Use" by Christopher Schwarz

• CD "The Best of Shops & Workbenches" from Popular Woodworking Magazine

When I was a young nerdling, I loved the video game "Ultima" – not because of the raping and the pillaging, but because you spent most of your time exploring a huge map of the world. Every place on the map that you had never been was pitch black, lightening up only when you stepped foot into the unknown.

I think that's one of the reasons I like woodworking. My best days in the shop are when I'm trying to master something for the first time, or I'm exploring something I saw in an old woodworking book that didn't make sense and left me in the dark.

This week I think I finally understand the so-called "double-screw" vise shown in Joseph Moxon's "Mechanick Exercises" – the first English book on woodworking. Now that I've built it and put it to the test (I was up until 1 a.m. last night messing with it), I'd like to give you a look.

Why should you care? This vise solves a lot of problems that we joiners have. It allows you to hold stock of almost any size (mine holds up to 24-1/8"-wide material) with an incredible grip. More so, it raises your work above your benchtop surface. The vise as shown is 6" high, so the top edge of the vise is 39" from the floor. The board I've clamped in the vise is 44" off the floor and is as stable as something clamped between two boulders. What does that mean?

No more stooping to saw dovetails, tenons or other joinery.

Wait, there's more. Instead of following Moxon's drawing, which shows the vise attached to the front of the bench, I did what Moxon said to do in the text: put it on top of the bench and clamp it down.

That means I can:

1. Put the vise wherever I want on the bench. On an end, on the back edge, wherever.

2. Remove it when I don't need it and hang it on the wall – most woodworkers don't need a twin-screw vise every day.

3. Leave it unclamped on the benchtop, using it like a giant handscrew clamp (Peter Follansbee hipped me to this function).

Before I give you the details of the vise, let me bore you with a bit of history and add a major caveat. The vise, as shown here, is not how I would recommend building it. This prototype was built to prove a hypothesis. Later in the week I'll show you how to build one using four pieces of wood (instead of 10) in a couple hours.

Boring History Stuff
Moxon's bench from plate four of "Mechanick Exercises" never made sense to me. The "double-screw" vise looked like it got in the way of every major operation. Plus, my copy of Moxon was poorly printed, and it was almost impossible for me to see the single bench screw in the crochet.

So I misinterpreted Moxon.

Then I finally got my hands on an electronic copy of André Félibien's "Principes de l'architecture, de la sculpture, de la peinture, &c." (1676-1690), which is where we're almost certain that Moxon got his drawings. Félibien's illustration of a bench shows it in a shop. (Click here to see it on Follansbee's blog.)

Félibien's bench is similar to Moxon's, but without the double screw. But wait. What's that in the shadow? It's the double-screw leaning against or hanging on the wall. Then I started putting the pieces together. (Literally. And I really mean "literally.")

So I Built One
I had some wooden screws sitting around (doesn't everyone?), so I started building it on Saturday. The rear jaw is 2-3/8" x 6" x 34-1/2" and is tapped for the two wooden screws. The front jaw is 1-3/4" x 6-1/8" x 32" and has clearance holes for the screws – there is no garter.

The whole thing is clamped to the bench either with holdfasts or (as shown) f-style clamps.

After working with the vise yesterday and today, I can tell you that the thing is as solid as rock. It is like it grew out of the benchtop.

But, like I said earlier, this is a prototype. Stay tuned. Later in the week I'll show you an easier way to build this.

— Christopher Schwarz

Other Workbench and Workholding Resources

• "Workbenches: From Design & Theory to Construction & Use" by Christopher Schwarz

• "Mechanick Exercises" by Joseph Moxon

• "Build the 21st Century Workbench" DVD with Robert W. Lang

• "The Workbench" DVD with Christopher Schwarz

Chair classes are like soap operas. There are long periods where everything is reasonable and rational. And those are punctuated by brief forays into the bizarre, unreal or macabre.

As we close in on assembling our sack back chairs this week, several things are becoming obvious. First: With every minute that passes you are out further on a tightrope over the falls. One small slip, and you could bring the whole thing crashing down.

And second: The architects of the class at The Windsor Institute have carefully orchestrated every aspect of the class. We were being manipulated (I think), and we are thrilled about it.

Let's talk about the second obvious thing: Being a Windsor puppet.

We spent the first day roughing out the spindles for our chairs with a drawknife and spokeshave. It was brutal work. In many cases, the rough blanks we worked looked like firewood and driftwood had a baby, and the infant was pure evil.

These blanks were wettish red oak, but they still managed to tear out, splinter, fracture and rupture no matter what you did to them. After a whole day of working the spindles, we were all ready to check out.

The next day, we roughed out the seats. Wednesday was spent on the arms.

Today we circled back around to the finishing the spindles to a fairly complex vase shape. And at first there was dread in the air. But the surprising thing was how easy the task was. Students were flying through the spindles. We were done in a couple hours, tops.

What happened? It's obvious now. All the brutal and seeming unnecessary shaping work on Monday gave us the germ of the skill we needed to shape the spindles to final shape on Thursday. A few days of germination allowed the skill to seep from our head to our hands. Was this intentional? I don't know. Is it genius? Absolutely.

As to the high-wire act, we had a few scares today. My father split his arm when he was drilling one of the holes for his spindles. The able assistants, Fred and Don, rushed over with the very encouraging comment: "Wow. I've never seen that before!"

Of course, it was an easy fix. Cyanoacrylate can fix many problems.

Other students had chairs with holes that were poorly positioned. Warped arms. Spindles that were as straight as a pig's lower intestine (confession: that was me).

But almost everything went together today. We're one small step away from completing our chair. But I know that I am also one small hammer blow away from turning the sucker into firewood.

— Christopher Schwarz

Other Mind-altering Woodworking Resources I Recommend

• "Measure Twice, Cut Once" by Jim Tolpin

• "Oak: The Frame of Civilization" by William Bryant Logan

• "A Reverence for Wood" by Eric Sloane

I'm starting to think that a bench crochet pierced by a screw is likely the great-grandpappy of the venerable shoulder vise – the favorite face vise of dovetailing demon Frank Klausz.

The earliest image I know of this set-up appears as a crudely sketched addition to the bench shown in Joseph Moxon's "Mechanick Exercises." Modern-day old-school woodworker Peter Follansbee uses this vise on his bench, and this afternoon I added it to my Roubo.

I made the vise's screw using a 1" oak dowel that I found behind my bench last week. A manual thread box (minus its cobwebs) made short work of this task. Then I drilled a 7/8" hole through the ash crochet about 1-1/2" from its tip. To finish up the work on the crochet, I tapped the 7/8" hole.

The bench screw's handle is 1-3/8" x 1-3/8" x 5" ash. I drilled a 1"-diameter hole about 3-1/2" deep into the end grain of the handle. Then I planed the handle to an octagonal shape and rounded the ends a bit.

To assemble the handle, I glued the dowel into the handle, then pinned the handle to the dowel using two 1/4"-diameter dowels. The dowels are at 90° to each other. You cannot overbuild a vise. Really.

The threads on the bench screw are pretty fine – six teeth per inch. As a result, the screw isn't sprightly in the in-and-out department. However, it doesn't have far to move. Its grip is impressive. So impressive that I think I'm going to install a cushioning pad on its tip to prevent it from denting my work. It practically bored a hole in a pine board.

Then I took my leg vise off.

Let the experiment begin.

Next week I'll build the other bench accessory -- the one that has my mamilla looking like drill bits.

— Christopher Schwarz

Sometimes I am so dense that it's a wonder that my parents ever allowed me to stop attending a Saturday school program for slow kids (true story).

Sometimes when I encounter a new or unusual form of workbench it takes me a while to fully and totally grasp it. Such is the case with Joseph Moxon's bench shown in plate 4 of "Mechanick Exercises," the first English-language book on woodworking.

Until last night I thought it was basically like the French bench shown in André Félibien book on woodworking (where Moxon got most of his drawings), with a couple English enhancements.

But last night the scales fell from my eyes and I see the genius behind it. And believe me, it is pure genius and solves a lot of workholding problems that all of us struggle with when building casework.

This morning I got up early and started work.

First up: I'm installing a threaded wooden screw in my crochet. This is something I've been meaning to do for a long time ever since I read Peter Follansbee's experiences with this device. We have a tap and a screw box (remarkably, the cutter is sharp). That should be done this weekend.

Moxon's screw through the crochet. Hard to see, I know.

Then I'm going to temporarily remove the leg vise from my pine bench and customize it Moxon-style.

Then next week, somehow between trips and meetings and completing the August issue, I'm going to build Moxon's "double screw."

And once I do that, explaining the bench to you will be easy. Stay tuned.

— Christopher Schwarz

P.S. If you have an e-mail in to me and I haven't responded, I apologize. I'm traveling until the end of May. Then I hope to get caught up on answering questions.

Here's the nearly completed shot of the handmade Roubo workbench that will be on the cover of the August 2010 issue of Popular Woodworking Magazine. The only thing missing is me showing off a bit more sun-deprived flesh and a non-Botox pout -- look for that post tomorrow.

Plans for this bench will be featured in that issue of the magazine, plus in a soon-to-be released DVD on building this bench (Senior Editor Glen D. Huey has videotaped the entire process). And it will be featured in greatly expanded form (with some "enhancements" to the design) in the forthcoming book "The Workbench Design Book" -- also due out this year from us. It's the sequel to our successful book "Workbenches: From Design & Theory to Construction & Use" (now in its third printing).

And if that's not enough for you, please attend our Woodworking in America conference Oct. 1-3 in Cincinnati and you can see, examine and even work on this bench during our three-day glutton-fest of woodworking. (And if you really want to go all-Roubo, we have another Roubo event planned for the weekend.)

All in all, I think it's time to declare 2010 as the year of the "Roubo Renaissance," as others have recognized the genius of his work and designs and have spread the word (or at least the silhouetted image).

To everyone out there I say: Bravo. And that you have only scratched the surface when it comes to recognizing the amazing output of this French cabinetmaker and writer. But to get an early peek of that, you'll have to come to the Queen City this fall.

— Christopher Schwarz

Other Workbench Resources I Recommend

• "The Workbench Book" (Taunton) by Scott Landis

• "The Best of Shops & Workbenches" (Popular Woodworking) on CD

• Workbenchdesign.net

• Woodworking Magazine Issue 4, which features the plans for my first Roubo-style workbench

I finished up work on the base configuration of this old-style Roubo workbench last night for a photo shoot today. But before I tore apart the shop and moved all of our workbenches around for the photographer, there was one last task to perform.

Ever since I visited Roy Underhill's school in Pittsboro, N.C., last year, I've been charmed by an old-world idea of his: That you should nail a coin to the underside of every workbench. The coins were offerings to the "wee folk" of the forest who might – if displeased – bring you bad fortune.

Ask anyone, I'm not one to mess with European tree fairies. So this morning I fetched a special coin from a large copper bowl in my sunroom. The bowl contains the last remnants of my coin collection as a kid. My grandfather traveled a lot and always brought me coins from the countries he visited.

I knew exactly the coin to get: A 5-franc coin minted in 1971. It features a shapely woman in flowing robes (surely I'm going to hell for having impure teen-age thoughts about Lady Liberty). For me this coin makes perfect sense.

My grandfather introduced me to woodworking. The bench is French in design and, like the franc itself, is considered obsolete. But that doesn't mean it doesn't look good.

— Christopher Schwarz

P.S. The benchtop is shiny because the oil/varnish finish on it is still wet. So don't worry – I didn't jump the requin and apply a high-gloss finish.

In the debate of round bench dogs vs. square bench dogs, I have tried to remain neutral.

But after years of working on both, I have decided to cast my lot in with the round dog camp. Here are a few reasons why:

1. Round dogs are easier to retrofit to a workbench than square ones. If you have a brace and bit, you can Swiss cheese up your bench at anytime. Adding a square dog hole after your bench is assembled is a pain. A proper square dog hole is a stepped and angled mortise.

2. Round dog holes play nicer with holdfasts. I've seen people use their holdfasts in square dog holes, but it's not always successful and it's not always pretty. Holdfasts work best in round holes, and I like using my holdfasts in the row of dog holes that runs along the front edge of my bench.

3. Round dog holes have more accessories. The manufacturers who make workbench accessories – especially Veritas/Lee Valley – make a crazy array of workholding accessories that work in a 3/4"-diameter round hole. And if you buy holdfasts that work with a 3/4" hole, your life (in the shop, at least) will be simpler.

4. You can quickly make your own round dogs. All metal dogs (round or square, brass or steel) are overkill in my book. And they have a tendency to nip at your tools. No matter what shape of dog you use, I recommend you try some shop-made wooden dogs with leather gripping faces.

My round wooden dogs are made from 3/4"-diameter hickory dowels (you can order these from several places. I get mine from Midwest Dowel). Saw off the length you need – I recommend it be 1" longer than your bench is thick. Make a dog for each hole if you like. That is some luxury.

Then saw a flat gripping surface on the top of the dog. My gripping surface is about 1-1/2" long and 5/8"-wide. Then glue some suede (or whatever) to the gripping surface using some yellow glue, hide glue or whatever else you have.

The final touch is to add a spring-loaded bullet catch to the shaft of the dog. The bullet catch allows the dog to be positioned at any height and keeps it from falling out of its hole.

If you break one, you are using too much clamping pressure with your tail vise. But if that happens, the fix is simple – make a new dog.

I will admit that square dogs have some advantages when clamping tall boards on edge and some assemblies – that's because their clamping surface can be raised high above the workbench and it is proud of its square shaft. I have a quick modification in mind for my round dogs that will grant them this superpower. I'll share that idea once I test it out a little more.

— Christopher Schwarz

For this Roubo workbench to work, I've got 16 joints that have to come together all at once. There is not an option to glue things up in stages and still guarantee success.

As a result, I tried to give myself some wiggle room. I fit the edge cheeks of the tenons a little looser than normal so they could shift around. I made my tenons' face cheeks a shade thinner than when I build a typical door, for example. And I cut the through-tenons so that I will have to wedge them.

That said, getting this bench together for a dry-fit required Mongo, the 2-pound English mallet. I tried my other wimpier mallets first. I would have been banging all day with the little guys.

But Mongo made it happen.

Each leg had to be pounded about 20 times to get it to seat. Then I clamped the lower stretchers to the legs to see how all the shoulders looked. The shoulders on the front stretcher look good. The side stretchers each have a gap I need to tend to. The rear stretcher is just going to have to learn to be different. (Like the kid in my high school who had a weird affection for live poultry.)

Next up: Fix the shoulders (if the workbench will come apart), start drawboring the joints and select a glue with a two-day open time.

But I'm about to hit a wall. This weekend I've got to build a birdhouse. Yup, you read that right.

— Christopher Schwarz

If you've been trying to reach me during the last few weeks, I apologize. The answers to your questions are:

1. Almost any species of wood will do fine for your workbench.

2. There is no quality difference between Veritas and Lie-Nielsen handplanes.

3. Eagle, and sometimes plov.

When I stop answering my phone and e-mail, it's amazing how much more woodworking gets done. Today I finished all the mortises and tenons for the base, fit the short stretchers and trued up the shoulders. As luck would have it, two of the four joints went together right from the the saw. The other two required a tad more plov.

— Christopher Schwarz

You know that you've been building a Roubo workbench when you chop a 1-1/4" wide, 4"-long and 3"-deep blind mortise and it's comically easy.

Today I'm getting back into the swing of things on this Roubo workbench. My goal is to have the stretchers dry-fit into the legs by the end of the week. There are several things that could get in my way.

1. I have to do my taxes tomorrow. Yikes.

2. My day job. I'm exactly 37 e-mails (dang, now 38) behind, and I still need to write a feature story for the August 2010 issue.

3. It's so nice outside that I might just strip buck naked and air out all my crevasses. It has been a long and malodorous winter.

Stay tuned to this blog or, in the case of No. 3, your local police band radio.

— Christopher Schwarz

The hardest part of ripping (besides the exertion) is making a square cut through the thickness of the work. It's fairly easy to follow your line when ripping, but it's also easy to make that cut at an angle, especially in thick stock.

One common trick to remedy this problem is to mark your cutline on both faces of your board. Then you flip the board over every so often and correct any wandering. Then flip the board over again and again.

Carpenter Carl Bilderback of LaPorte, Ind., has developed a sawbench that is designed to train you to rip vertically. It works on the same principle as a wooden miter box. The top of the sawbench is pierced by a narrow kerf. Below the top of the sawbench are two big softwood chunks. The chunks are fastened close together -- just far enough apart to let the saw pass.

The result is pretty cool. I tried it out on Thursday, as did my friend John Hoffman. It was a cakewalk to rip square.

We made a short video to show the riphorse in action.

Of course, you really need two sawhorses, and when you put the second sawhorse into the equation you can rip longer boards, and you can use the ripping slot for crosscutting, too.

Speaking of ripping, I showed Bilderback my French method of ripping. He wasn't buying it. He called it slower and equated it to a personal activity that cannot be mentioned on a family blog (well, maybe the Manson Family blog).

In any case, I still like my French ripping method and think (and Carl agrees) that the method does result in nice square cuts.

We'll likely offer plans in a future issue of the magazine for this riphorse (which will include gussets on the ends. Bilderback left them off so we could see the guiding blocks better).

But most woodworkers should be able to build one or modify their current sawbench from these photos.

— Christopher Schwarz

After a couple of weeks of working with the legs for this new workbench, I am certain the material is not pine.

Yes, I know. Shocker. The good people at Home Depot were mistaken.

What is it? Heck if I know. My best guess is that it's Douglas fir or hemlock, based on my experiences working with the stuff out in California one year. However, while the stuff is stringy and sassy like Doug fir, my boss (who lived in California) thinks it might be aspen.

Why? Because some of the curly figure in these legs looks aspen-ish.

What I do know is that this stuff is no fun to plane. I trued up the legs with a sharp 50° jointer plane. That tool might as well have been a lawnmower because the wood ripped up like I was planing Silly String no matter which direction I stroked.

In cases like this I always do stupid things. No, I didn't sand the legs. I decided to use a plane with a really low pitch and see what happened. So I fetched my Wayne Anderson ebony miter plane, a tool that I have a long history with. It's a bevel-up plane with the bed somewhere sweetly south of 20°. I reground the iron at 25° and put a small micro-bevel on the edge.

As I have written before, this tool is like a long-time girlfriend. No matter how long I've been away from this plane, when I wrap my fingers around the brass body we pick things up like my fingers have never left the sidewalls.

You can, in fact, read the whorls of my fingerprints on this tool, which are pasted all over Wayne's name on the port sidewall.

The miter plane trued up all four legs in short order. It planed out the tearing around four nasty knots. It restored order to some reversing grain. It sliced out a wack-nasty patch of tearing that all the high-angle tools couldn't touch.

All this gives proof to a maxim that I've always thought was true: When conventional wisdom fails (high angles reduce tearing), slam the gearbox into reverse and see what happens. Sure, the transmission might appear in your rear-view mirror. Or you might just end up with glimmering surfaces that are smooth as glass and as deep as a Caribbean lagoon.

— Christopher Schwarz

One of the goals of this latest bench is to build a piece with enough visual interest that you could put it in a dining room (think sideboard) or a living room (think table behind a couch).

I've added lots of details that I think will make this work in a living space (as well as a workshop), but there is one flourish I'm not so sure about. That's where you come in.

I've drawn the lower stretcher of the bench three ways, all of them taken from A.J. Roubo's books on furniture. The first way is to just leave the stretcher straight and squared up – just like Roubo shows it on plate 11 of his books. I call this "Roubo de viril" (manly).

The second variant features a rail detail taken from one of Roubo's table designs. It's quite a bit more elaborate. We'll call this one "Roubo la compliqué." This stretcher looks fun to make but a little too frilly for my tastes (perhaps from the Late Whorehouse Furniture Era).

So I swiped a simpler S-curve shape from one of Roubo's cabriolet leg chairs. Four line segments later, I came up with this. For the lack of a better word, I'll call it "Roubo l'hermaphrodite." It's a little Jamie Lee Curtis without swinging into the Liberace zone.

What do you think: Too much? Take the poll below and let us know.

— Christopher Schwarz

The Marketplace for this year's Woodworking in America conference is the deadliest ever. By deadly, I mean you better start saving your pennies and moving some money out of that Cayman Islands account. We already have more than 40 exhibitors confirmed for the show – with some more in the wings.

These are top-shelf manufacturers that make or sell woodworking equipment or provide instruction. There will be no purveyors of magic towels or wacky ladders. Just woodworking.

I'll be writing about some of these vendors in detail in the weeks to come. There are people here that you never get to see at woodworking shows.

Let me repeat something I've said before about the Marketplace: This is your chance to comparison shop. Let's say you are in the market for a backsaw. You can try the saws at Lie-Nielsen, Lee Valley, Gramercy, Bad Axe, Eccentric and Woodcraft (which sells Rob Cosman's saw). Figure out which one you like the best. That's pretty cool.

The other great thing about the Marketplace is that many of the exhibitors offer hands-on instruction in their booths. You could easily spend a day in the Marketplace and not see everything and spend a month's salary and not have all the tools you want.

So here's the list as of April 5 in alphabetical order:

Acanthus Workshop
Adjust-A-Bench
American Sycamore Retreat
Bad Axe Tool Works
Barnard Woodworking School
Benchcrafted
Blue Spruce Toolworks
Blum Tools
Brese Planes
Bridge City Tool Works
Craftsman Gallery
Czech Edge
Daed Toolworks
D.L. Barrett & Sons
Di Legno Woodshop Supply
Eccentric Tools
FW Media
General Manufacturing
Gorilla Glue
Gramercy Tools
Herget's Quality Engraving
Hock Tools
Horizon Wood
Keller Dovetails
Kreg Tool Co.
Lee Valley Tools, Ltd.
Lie-Nielsen Toolworks
Manny's Woodworker's Place
Marc Adams School
Marcou Planes
Matlin Group
Medallion Tools
Micro Fence
M.S. Bickford Planes
Ridge Carbide
RJR Studios
Sauer & Steiner Toolworks
Superior Tool Works/Tony Murland
University of Rio Grande
Woodcraft
Woodline
Woodpeckers
Zig Industries (Bow Clamp)

Woodworking in America will be Oct. 1-3 at the Northern Kentucky Convention Center. Registration opens in May. Look for more details here and at WoodworkingInAmerica.com.

— Christopher Schwarz

I'm thankful when I can see disaster coming. Being able to spot a potential problem is the gift of experience, but it is also like a tranquilizer dart used to take down a rabid African elephant.

Today I was cleaning up the sliding dovetail socket for the fourth and final leg of this French-style workbench. And the deeper I plunged with my router plane and chisel, the more concerned I became. What looked like a little punkiness on the underside of the benchtop was turning into a tumor worthy of "One Life to Live."

I began to worry that when I drove the leg home that it would split off a big section of the benchtop right along the punk line. Game over, man. Game over. So I fussed over the joint. I did some type-A procrastination and swept up my bench area. Put some tools away. Checked my e-mail. Played with my hammer that is in the shape of a nut-fondling squirrel.

But I couldn't put the process off any longer. I put two bar clamps across the benchtop's weak spot and began gingerly driving the leg into the benchtop. After 10 taps I heard a popping noise from the benchtop. My heart sank. I walked to the back of the shop and rearranged the clamps on our rack. I answered a couple of text messages.

All my fellow employees had left except Robert W. Lang. Bob's seen me do some dumb stuff, so I decided it was time to drive the leg in the last 2" or so. Bob came over to watch. We all love a train wreck.

The leg seated home. I took the clamps off. Everything looked and felt surprisingly sound.

Then I noticed that there was an ugly gap where the leg's shoulders met the underside of the top. I needed to disassemble the joint and tune up the shoulder.

Three attempts later I was ready for a beer.

But the leg went in. The shoulder was tight. Everything felt tight and right. I looked over the top and tried to figure out what went right. After I drove the other three legs home and flipped the whole thing on its feet I realized what had saved my hinder.

I think it was the epoxy.

I took some video of me driving the leg home, but it's too boring to post even here. It was like watching a video of skateboarders where no one slips and racks himself on a handrail.

That's my favorite kind of boring.

— Christopher Schwarz

To modern eyes, old-school workbenches look like they are going to self-destruct.

The legs are tenoned into the benchtop (which moves with the seasons). And stretchers (that don't move) are tenoned into the legs. Something has to give, right? Otherwise your benchtop will be cleaved asunder, creating a "split-top Roubo" a la naturel.

I've dealt with this issue in several ways.

1. I have ignored the problem. I just glued and drawbored everything up tight on the French-style bench I built in 2005. The result: The legs pivot a bit on the lower stretchers as the top expands and contracts. There are a couple small gaps on the shoulders on the end stretchers. No other problems to report.

2. I altered the mortises in the benchtop. On a couple workbenches I've made the mortises in the benchtop that receive the rear legs a little wider. And I didn't glue the rear legs into the benchtop – I just pegged them in place. The result: The top moves. The base doesn't. No real problems here either.

3. I've bolted the top to the base. This is the modern solution. I used tight holes at the front of the bench and reamed-out holes at the rear. This forces the wood movement to the rear of the bench. When the top moves, it shifts where you don't see it. The only issue here is I wonder about the long-term lifespan of the hardware.

And now I'm pondering solution No. 4 for the workbench I'm working on now. Here goes: On the end stretchers I'm going to glue them into the front legs, but I'm going to leave the tenons into the rear legs loose.

I was inspired to do this by Roubo's plates. Last night I was looking over all the A.J. Roubo volumes (yes another high time at the Schwarz household) and noticed that Roubo shows the front stretcher clearly pegged into the legs, but it doesn't look like the end stretchers are pegged into the legs.

This got me thinking.

The other thing I'm considering is stealing a trick from the Hall Brothers, who built almost all of the Greene and Greene furniture. They made double mortises in some legs. So the tenon and the shoulder are buried in the leg. If I do this little trick, I'll never have an open shoulder.

Yeah, it's fussier than is probably necessary. But I've wanted an excuse to try these ideas out.

— Christopher Schwarz

After a little tweaking of the mortise, the first leg went in. You can see a gap at the shoulder (it's about 1/16" now). That's actually what's left of the rough underside of the top. I'll take down the middle hump on the underside and it should close right back up.

Assuming, that is, I can get the leg out of the mortise.

— Christopher Schwarz

I started cutting the mortises and the dovetail sockets in the benchtop today and I can tell you a few things:

1. The dovetail socket takes about half the time and effort to make compared to the 5" x 5" x 1-1/2" mortise. And it's a cinch to get it crisp and perfect.

2. I'm glad I own a 2 lb. 9 oz. mallet.

3. I'm glad the benchtop isn't hard maple.

To cut the mortise, I bored out most of the waste with an 1" auger and a 10"-sweep brace (where did my 12" brace go? And my 14"? Hmm). Then I bashed out the waste with a 1/2" mortising chisel and the mallet, which I will henceforth from this day refer to as "Mongo."

To fair the walls of the mortise, I used a big float. This is such a testosterone-laden task that – ouch – I can feel my forehead becoming more sloped as I type.

The dovetail socket, by comparison, was for wussy hominids. I sawed out the slopes of the socket. Then I cut a few kerfs down the middle of the waste and popped it out with a mortise chisel. Then I faired the wall of the socket with a router plane and cleaned up the corners with a paring chisel.

Then I walked to Kroger to get some Ben-Gay (just kidding; I actually bought some Rare VOS). Both are effective against sore joints.

— Christopher Schwarz

Things I hate: Gouging my own eyes out with a spoon, and being pulled away from a project for more than a couple days.

It's been a week since I've been able to devote any time to the legs of my workbench. This morning I sneaked into the shop and hid there for three hours. My plan was to start mortising the top to receive the legs. The legs, meanwhile, had other ideas.

These legs are still a little wet. They're not squirting like FreshenUp gum, but they are a little moister than I like. After I cut these honking-long joints and departed for Indiana (and then New York), the joints dried out a bit in my absence and a couple of them twisted a little.

So I fetched my big Buck Bros. chisel this morning and pared away. They're in good shape – for now. But you can bet that tomorrow morning I'm going to bust my hump to get the legs driven into the top.

— Christopher Schwarz

In the pre-industrial age, it was fairly common to have your workshop inside your home. In fact, in many early American houses, rooms served several purposes and could be converted to another function by rearranging the furniture.

These days, most of us have dedicated shops. We surveyed our readers in 2005 on this question and found that 96 percent had a dedicated workshop space. Of those of us with shops:

• 42 percent have a garage shop
• 32 percent have a separate outbuilding (that's not a garage)
• 28 percent have a basement shop
• 5 percent have one in an "other location"
• 2 percent use a spare room in the house.

Note that the numbers add up to more than 100 percent because there is some overlap here (a basement garage shop, for example).

Recently, however, I've been getting a fair number of e-mail from readers who are woodworking without a dedicated shop space. Their solutions to the problem are novel and would seem familiar to an 18th-century woodworker. Let's take a look.

The Kitchen Shop
Jameel Alsalam lives in a one-room basement apartment with his girlfriend in Washington, D.C., and figured out how to make a functional workbench that also doubled as a dining table.

The dining bench is made from three 4" x 10" x 8' slabs of poplar he got free from his uncle. And while the top was fairly straightforward, the base was tricky. It had to support his workpieces and still be able to allow chairs to scoot in all around.

His solution was to use two stretchers down the middle of the top instead of stretchers along the long edges of the benchtop. The stretchers are joined with mortise-and-tenon joints and bench bolts.

"The end result is a dining table burly enough for Vikings to eat at, and it's rock solid for planing," Alsalam writes. "I think keeping the top flush with the side is gonna be tricky, but the main goal is accomplished: I can do woodworking, and my girlfriend hasn't left me."

The other key to Alsalam's success with this set-up is that he uses only hand tools at home. When he needs power equipment, he heads to the local adult education center.

"One time I made the mistake of trying a power sander, and suddenly I was wiping the sawdust off everything in my house," he writes. With hand tools, all I have to sweep up the shavings (I'm lucky to have a tile floor)."

A Blog for the Shopless
Kenneth Woodruff lives in a condo in the San Francisco area that has no space for storage or a shop. So for a year, Woodruff researched the craft to figure out a way to make things work in his condo.

And as he's gotten cranked up, he's found there are a lot of people out there just like him. So he started a blog that documents his efforts called Rough Wood. Visit the blog at http://roughwood.kennethwoodruff.com.

"Many people around the web are clamoring for ways around some basic issues: a reasonable bench, boring accurate holes without a drill press, hand planing on a tiny surface, not using a router in a tiny apartment," he writes. "Being shopless instills a need to innovate and overcome challenges that are often not present when you have a garage full of tools – and a father who introduced you to woodworking at a young age."

Some of the projects are definitely worth investigating, including a knockdown workbench that lives underneath his bed. Now he's working on a tool cabinet that will look as good as a piece of furniture.

We're planning another survey of our readers real soon, but until that comes around, take this quick poll about your shop.

— Christopher Schwarz

The BigWoodVise.com web site says that ordering is temporarily closed. I chatted via e-mail with Joe Comunale at Big Wood Vise to get the story.

Here's the good news: It's only a temporary thing.

Comunale, who works in the automotive industry, said his day job kicked into high gear after some layoffs. As a result, he's been traveling a lot on short notice and hasn't been home to make the ash vise screws, which won a Best New Tool award from us in 2009 and was featured on the LVL Workbench shown above.

He said things should return to normal in a few months. In the meantime, he decided to close ordering so he could fill his existing orders before taking on new business. If you have a vise screw on order, he's working on it.

— Christopher Schwarz

Several readers have asked about the sawhorses that my new benchtop is temporarily sitting on. We've had two pairs of these in the shop for about 14 years and featured them in a one-page article in the March 1997 issue of Popular Woodworking.

I scanned the page and you can download a pdf of the article here.

sawhorses.pdf (1.14 MB)

The sawhorses are quite handy. In their short form, they are 21" high, and are excellent for laying out cuts on rough lumber. We also assemble cabinets on them. They are a little high (for me) for handsawing. I want to lop 2" off the legs. That would be about right.

When you put the risers on them, they are 30"-high – just right for gluing up panels. We'll also put a door on top of them and use that as an assembly table or – in a pinch – as a dining table for a staff event.

There are a million plans out there for sawhorses. Here is #1,000,001.

— Christopher Schwarz

All week I've been itching to saw these joints that connect the legs to the benchtop. I've never cut a 5"-deep dovetail joint in a 6x6, so I wasn't sure what to expect.

It was easy going until my enormous saw suddenly stopped cutting. Had the flesh-detecting technology in my tenon saw kicked in? (Ye Olde Saw Astyntan?) But I'm getting ahead of myself here.

Let's back up to Tuesday when I was laying out these joints. I spent a long time staring at the original plate from Roubo's "L'Art du Menuisier," and it wasn't making sense to me. Robert Lang and I tried sketching the joint (electronically and on paper) to reconcile the odd perspective of the joint (I believe it's supposed to be in parallel projection instead of in perspective, but even that doesn't really explain it).

Oh, and there was the fact that the original text's dimensions don't really jibe with the drawings.

So I set forth to create a joint that resembled the drawings of workbenches shown throughout the four volumes of Roubo – and that obeyed some of the basic rules of wood-to-wood joinery set down by Joesph Moxon. And it would split my top like a muffin.

The first question was proportioning the thickness of the sliding dovetail and the tenon. These legs are finishing out a little bigger than 5" x 5". So I went for a 1-1/2"-thick dovetail, a 1-1/2" thick tenon and 1-1/2" space between the two. The remainder (a bit more than 1/2") was the shoulder at the back.

About that angle on the dovetail. It looks a lot steeper than is typical in a drawer or carcase. Roy Underhill suggested in "The Woodwright's Shop" to use a dovetail that has a slope of 2-1/2" to 1" when he built his bench with a rising dovetail.

That sloped looked too shallow. After fussing around, we settled on a slope that was 1-3/4" to 1". That is one steep slope (about 30°), but it looks right. So be it.

I laid out the joints last night before I left work and started in on the sawing this morning with a honking enormous 11-point tenon saw that's 16" long.

I needed a bigger saw. I couldn't reach the baseline because the brass back hit the top of the leg. That was a new sensation.

So I got out my full-size ripsaw. And that's when the fun began. Even with the big saw, it took some time to rip those cheeks. I could have written a couple blog entries while sawing one joint. But it's going well.

Soon I'll get to make the female part of the joint and give my mortise chisel and brace a workout.

— Christopher Schwarz

From outside the confines of our shop, the fact that I'm building another workbench might be interpreted as a cry for psychological help. After all, I already have my fair share of workbenches.

But there are some good reasons that I'd like to share with you. And believe me when I say that the problem here isn't me, it's you.

1. "Schwarz, your bench is too large." One of the biggest complaints I get from readers is that there is no way they could fit an 8'-long Roubo-style workbench into their 6'-wide shop. Or they have to have the bench in a public space and can't have some ugly construction-lumber thing where the guests can see it. This bench is an attempt to build a smaller, apartment-sized bench that will still do full-size work and looks nice enough for a public space.

2. "Dude, I don't have power tools." Another criticism: The benches I've built have used a combination of power and hand tools. What about the people who work entirely by hand? This bench is an attempt to document the hand process (I used a machine to deal with one nasty part of the top that I should have asked the sawyer to deal with).

3. "I need a place to put my tools." This bench will have that. Stay tuned.

4. "What about other bench designs out there, such as John White's "'Newfangled Workbench?'" This bench won't address that question, but a book I'm working on now will. Yes, you read that right, a new workbench book.

This book will be a companion to the book "Workbenches: From Design & Theory to Construction & Use." The tentative title of the new book is "The Workbench Design Book." It will contain complete plans for a bunch of workbenches we've published in the past with some updated information and new chapters.

We'll have chapters that take about 20 common workbench designs (from the "Newfangled Workbench" to Frank Klausz's workbench) and explain the pros and cons of each design (as I see it). I'm also going to re-draw these classic bench forms (blasphemer!) to show how they can be modified to be more effective.

And we'll have a chapter on how to make your workbench knock down and an updated chapter on workholding – there have been a lot of new vises that have hit the market since 2007.

The book will be published later in 2010. More details to follow.

We're also making a DVD that will document the construction of this old-school Roubo bench. Glen Huey has filmed every step of the process (except when I used the band saw. I still feel dirty about that).

As of today, the top of my old-school Roubo workbench is complete, and I am itching to get started on the legs. These will be joined to the top with a sliding dovetail and tenon, which is going to be a lot of fun to cut, especially on this grand scale.

But before I get into that joinery, I wanted to give you a quick video tour of the top so you can see how the epoxy looks and the workholding I've installed so far. Take a look.

— Christopher Schwarz

When I am deep into a sawcut, you could walk into the shop totally naked, on fire and covered with leprous monkeys, and I probably wouldn't notice.

Accurate sawing is tantric. It's a rhythm. It is meditation.

Today I was sawing the legs to length for this Roubo workbench and I was surrounded by mahem. We had a photographer in the shop shooting photos. All the overhead lights were out and there were wild flashes and beeps every minute or so. We had a guest in the shop learning woodworking. Router. Circ saw. Benchtop table saw. Jigsaw. Animated conversation. And we're trying to close the June 2010 issue of the magazine and there is a lot of torn hair on the floor.

I finished cutting a 5" x 5" leg to 33" with a handsaw. I split the line on all four faces. I was feeling no pain, and I was hearing the sound of one hand clapping. But then I heard this:

"What are you doing working so hard?"

I looked over at our guest, who was learning all the hand-held power tools today. I opened my mouth to explain, and then I knew what it must feel like to wear a saffron robe and live in a cave without speaking for a decade. I couldn't explain it.

But for you, dear reader, I can explain a couple things.

1. My block plane was not cleaved in thrain by epoxy yesterday. That staged photo was my sick sense of humor leaching through my training as a journalist. I'd apologize for the misunderstanding, but we Midwesterners apologize for anything at the drop of a hat. So it would be meaningless.

2. Here's how to saw a 6x6. Start sawing on a corner as per usual. Immediately lay down the saw to cut at a low angle across the uppermost face. Saw until you have traversed the face. Rotate the stock 90° away from you. Put the saw in the kerf and advance on the face that is now uppermost. After a few strokes, lay down the saw again and traverse the line facing up. A low sawing angle is less aggressive, but it is more accurate.

Flip the work 90° away from you again. Do the same routine. Start at the corner. Lay down the saw. Traverse the face. When you finish that face, move the saw to 45° and saw like crazy. Throw the handle like you would a baseball pitch. Don't use much downward pressure. Let the tool do the work.

When you have sawn from corner to corner, flip the leg 90° away from you one last time. Connect the saw kerfs by laying down the saw. Then return to 45° and finish the cut.

If you take your time, I think you'll find this technique crazily accurate and weirdly fast.

— Christopher Schwarz

Several weeks ago I was planing a piece of palm when my hand slipped, and a deep sliver of the nasty grass dove into the middle finger of my left hand.

I dug out as much of the splinter as I could. But now almost six weeks later, the foreign object (as my doctor calls it) is deep inside my soft tissue. I can wait things out, or I can see a hand surgeon (I'm a good waiter).

Wood can be nasty stuff. Rosewoods make my tongue swell up like a Ballpark Frank. Some species (redwood, especially) sting like crazy when I get a splinter. And spalted stuff can kill you dead.

But aren't you worried about what wood can do to your tools?

On Wednesday I was slathering epoxy into the cracks of my workbench top when Megan Fitzpatrick asked me if I was worried about what the epoxy would do to the blades of my handplanes.

"I don't really give a weevil's (expletive deleted)," I replied.

"Why?" she asked.

"Because I know how to sharpen."

The way I see it, unless the material I'm working is going to split my tool in half, I'll plane it. Laminated veneer lumber? Plywood? MDF? OSB? Epoxy? Plastic resin glue? Yup, I've planed them all. Here's why: It's easier to sharpen a handplane blade than it is to sharpen the blades in my electric jointer or planer. So I think a handplane is a great tool for dealing with engineered material. This is wacky chat, I know.

I too was afraid of planing odd stuff until one day in the late 1990s. We were training our fellow publishing employees in basic woodworking techniques, and each student was building a little project with our help.

We let the students pick the wood for their project, and half of the women in the class picked purpleheart. Purpleheart, I discovered, is not a wood. It's a mineral. After two swipes, my block plane began to dull. I had to hone my block plane a lot that week, but we made it through the class.

After that experience, I stopped worrying about what I was planing and focused on becoming a faster and better sharpener. The way I see things, a dull blade is a good thing because it means two things. 1. You are working the wood and not just fondling the forgings. 2. You get to sharpen it, which makes you a better sharpener.

And now back to scraping epoxy (which cuts a lot like maple).

— Christopher Schwarz