Assembling workbenches in the old-school manner is a nail-biter. If the drawbores are too close together, then you drive the peg in and nothing happens. The tenon isn’t pulled into the mortise. You start looking around for your framing nailer. If the drawbores are too far apart, you drive the peg in and it explodes … Read more
It’s funny how my chainsaw skills have gone through the roof since I started to build lots of workbenches in 1999. Today I cut down a buttload of 6 x 6 x 16’ Douglas Fir beams for a bench-building class at the Marc Adams School of Woodworking that I’m teaching next week. And when you … Read more
Christopher Schwarz and Lucy May are pleased to announce the newest addition to their family. Length: 18”. Weight: 9 lbs., 4 oz. Birth date: Feb. 15, 2012. Delivered by: Peter Ross, blacksmith and white smith. After more than seven years of searching, I have finally found a bench holdfast that works effortlessly with a French-style … Read more
For me, the highlight of 2010’s Woodworking in America conference was The Feast of André Roubo, a dinner held high above the city of Cincinnati. And I was not alone. One attendee stopped me as I was leaving the feast to tell me this: “I’m not interested in history, old stuff, André Roubo or old … Read more
Woodworkers are always looking for a better way to flatten the top of their workbench after they finish building it, or when the top has gone out of truth for some reason. I like using a handplane to flatten benchtops, which takes about 45 minutes on average. Other people build a special router jig that … Read more
It is unwise to rush when installing vises on a workbench. So I stopped whipping the maggots students during the last two days of the class and encouraged them to work at their own pace. Some slowed down, but some stayed at the fevered pitch established in the first four days of the class. In … Read more
This is my Roubo Design based very heavily on Christopher Schwarz Design from his book “Workbenches from Design & Theory to Construction and Use”. Read more
