When researching Roman workbenches, one of the things that leaped out at me was how low many of them were low, knee-high like a sawbench. After building a low bench based on drawings from Pompeii and Herculaneum, most visitors to my shop had one question: Were the Romans really short? The answer is: no. These low benches are used differently. You sit on them to plane faces of boards. You […]
The post Roman Workbenches High And Low appeared first on Popular Woodworking Magazine.
Screw-driven vises are not modern inventions. The earliest screw-driven vise that I know of is this Italian vise that is circa 1300. I am always looking for earlier vises because the screw mechanism has been around since Archimedes, though his screw was originally used for irrigation. This year I have been delving deep into a codex that was written in 1505 by a patrician named Martin Loffelholz. The 76-page proto-book […]
The post Another 511-year-old Woodworking Vise appeared first on Popular Woodworking Magazine.
With only six days before Woodworking in America, I’m starting to wonder if I’m going to get everything ready for the big three-day woodworking geek-fest a few blocks away from my shop. Today I’m putting the finishing touches on one of the two Roman-style workbenches I’ve built for Woodworking in America. I’ll be presenting a seminar on the research and reasoning behind these benches on Sunday morning. But I’ll also […]
The post A Quick Preview of the ‘Vampire Vise’ appeared first on Popular Woodworking Magazine.
Woodworking in America is next week, and if you have never been to Covington, Ky., here is a primer on where to eat and drink. My workshop is in the heart of Covington, just one block off of Main Strasse. So the following recommendations are based on how a local (not a tourist) sees the world. All of these places are walking distance from the Northern Kentucky Convention Center. Note: […]
The post A Local’s Recommendations for Woodworking in America appeared first on Popular Woodworking Magazine.
Sharpening a misbehaving tool will almost always fix its wagon. But I always take an extra step when taking apart a handplane: I clean the interior of shavings and dust with a brush and an oily rag. It might seem like overkill, or like I am on the verge of compulsive, but I don’t think that’s the case. Little fragments of shavings or even dust can wreak havoc on a […]
The post Sharp (and Clean!) Fixes Everything in a Handplane appeared first on Popular Woodworking Magazine.
