About 8 a.m. Wednesday morning I’ll pack a thermos of coffee and hit the road for North Carolina in the hopes of gaining some small understanding of the craft culture of ancient Rome.

Thanks to Will Myers, there’s a large load of dry oak waiting for me in North Carolina that I’ll use to build two Roman-style workbenches. The benches are separated by about 1,400 years but share the same DNA.

The reason I do this stuff, which is admittedly a bit bonkers, is the same reason I started building nearly vanished French and English style workbenches in 2005. I’m not looking for a better workbench, just another one that might make sense for your work and mine.

For me, the appeal of 18th-century French and English workbenches is that they are simpler. They are far easier and faster to build than your typical Scandinavian or Germanic bench. I don’t have anything against those central and northern European benches. The ones that are made by woodworkers for woodworking are great.

But not everyone wants to build a bench that is that complex, with a tail vise and a shoulder vise, a fifth leg, a dovetailed skirt and square dogs. Some of us would rather do something else with our time.

In the same vein, the Roman workbench has always interested me. It is even simpler than a French or English bench. No stretchers. Simpler joinery. Less mass (perhaps). And during my last 11 years of ongoing bench research, I’ve concluded that the Roman workbench has never fully gone extinct. Instead it has gone out to pasture, so to speak.

By building and using these two Roman benches in my shop, I hope to learn their strengths and weaknesses – all bench forms have upsides and downsides. None is perfect. My hope is that I can show how these even simpler benches can be used to hold boards so you can work on their faces, edges and ends. Because that goal has never changed for woodworkers, whether they wear togas or flannel.

— Christopher Schwarz

One of the workbenches in Andre-Jacob Roubo’s French masterwork on the craft is called out as a “German” workbench in Plate 279 of “l’Art du menuisier.” It features a sliding deadman/leg vise, lots of storage and a complex tail vise.

While I am still searching, I’ve yet to find an historical bench that matches the image of the German bench in Plate 279 (in contrast, I’ve seen hundreds of benches that match Roubo’s Plate 11).

So what did 18th-century benches look like from the area we now call Germany? The answer, of course, varies. Here we’re going to look at a 1764 bench from “Hallens, Werkstätte der Künste” (I think I have that right; I’m not the best at reading German blackletter type).

This entire plate could occupy a book of discussion because there is so much to see and explore. But let’s stick to the bench for the most part.

It is drawn as being made from fairly thin components with joinery providing the rigidity. Tusk tenons do most of the work in keeping the base from racking. And lest you think tusk tenons are weak, please ready this fun article from Will Myers where tests them to destruction.

The first thing I noticed about the bench (besides that the tail vise was missing its dog), was the tool well. This might be the earliest depiction of a tool well I have in my archive – I’ll have to check.

Also interesting: the face vise. It’s a shoulder vise that looks like it hasn’t quite cast off its crochet origins. Check out the nice bead to the left of the hook, which is really the only ornamentation on the bench.

Finally, we have the system of dogs that works in conjunction with the tail vise. I usually curse modern manufacturers for placing the dogs and drawer so they interfere with one another, but it appears this is not a modern problem. Two of the dogs are in the way of the drawer. Sigh.

And finally finally, look below at Fig. 20. A bench like this (where the legs are not coplanar to the front edge of the benchtop) requires a board jack. And this is a nice one.

I hope you enjoy the plate as a whole – there’s lots to see here.

This is the most conventional of the German benches we’re going to look at. Next up, some vise mysteries.

— Christopher Schwarz

As requested: A detail of the face vise on the 1764 bench from “Hallens, Werkstätte der Künste.”

The workbench shown above is featured in Johann Georg Krünitz’s “Oekonomische Encyklopädie,” a remarkable work of 242 volumes. I don’t have the translated text that accompanies this plate, so I’m going to make some educated guesses about this workbench. (In other words, you get what you paid for with this blog entry.)

This 1781 plate looks like a French workbench, not just in its form but also based on the handplanes shown on the floor (that tote is tres French). Also, this bench is shown on a page of “Oekonomische Encyklopädie” with other benches that are quite obviously Germanic, perhaps as a contrast between the forms.

My best guess is the engraver copied it from another work, which is why the bench is shown in reverse – the crochet and planing stop are on the right side of the bench.

Several things are notable about this bench. Briefly:

1. It shows a “doe’s foot” in use on the benchtop, secured under the pad of a holdfast.
2. And look: A fathom leaning against the wall to the left of the bench.
3. The most titillating part of the plate is the double-screw device shown on the floor at bottom left. It looks like half of a Moxon-style vise that is missing its back chop. My best guess is that the screws thread into the holes shown on the left side of the benchtop. This is what Moxon’s engraver seemed to be showing in his 17th-century plate. I measured the distance between the two screws on this plate from Krünitz, and it matches the distance between the two holes on the left end of the benchtop. And this is exactly where I would put such a device.

For me this plate raises a lot of questions about the original source material. I have always assumed that Joseph Moxon copied his bench from André Félibien and modified the engraving to add a double screw vise and some other bits and pieces. This plate makes me want to search a little harder for French drawings of benches in the 17th century in addition to André Félibien’s. I know this sounds like a grassy knoll theory. That’s because it is.

— Christopher Schwarz

Jeff Burks pointed out that the bench shown in this entry is indeed French and was copied in reverse for the German encyclopedia. But even more important, Burks offered this translation of the description of the bench from the French source: “L’ Art Des Expériences” (Volume 1), Jean-Antoine Nollet, 1770.

Tools and Processes of the Joiner

The Joiner can not do without a workbench; it must be sturdy & such that we can turn (lathe) upon it: take for it a slab of beech or female elm, which is six to seven feet in length, eighteen to twenty inches wide and at least three and a half inches thick; raise it from twenty-seven to twenty-eight inches, on four oak legs (feet) of four inches squared, joined with a forked top end, with four rails from below, beneath which you form a bottom with boards for placing the tools; See Plate 1, Fig. 1.

At one end of the bench there must be an iron toothed claw A, pressed into a square wooden shank, that goes through the thickness of the bench & that we raise and lower with the mallet. This claw or hook serves to hold and support the flat parts, which we draw up to plane the faces.

At the same end of the workbench & on the edge which is to the right hand of the worker, you will attach a flange or wooden hook (crochet) B, to similarly stop the boards you wish to dress on the edge. It is a flat piece of wood five to six inches in length and as wide as the bench is thick. The end is cut on a slope to form an angle with the edge of the bench in which we place the end of the board; & if it is sufficiently long it is supported at the other end by a movable peg that we put into one of the holes that are drilled in the post C,  otherwise it is held by a piece of board D, notched to form an angle, and held to the bench by a holdfast.

As we will need the holdfast in different places on the workbench, there must be several holes, not on the same line, but on two, which include between them nearly one third the width of the workbench & those that are made on one of these two lines meet in the middle of the spaces left between those of the other line; these holes should be larger than is necessary to fit only the shank of the holdfast, for it must take a forward slanting position, that is to say, it must touch the right upper edge of the hole & the left lower edge when it is struck with the mallet.

On the opposite edge, and always at the same end of the workbench, you will attach two small cleats and a stick (rule) fifteen inches or so in length E e, leaving between it and the workbench an interval of seven to eight lines to place the tools we most often need, such as firmer chisels, bench chisels, mortising chisels, compass, &c. You can do so at the other end of the same edge, to have at hand brace bits, some marking gauges, a couple of rasps, many large files, &c. Add in one end of the bench a small drawer with compartments F, which contains grease for the brace bits, chalk, black stone, pieces of dogfish skin, some more worn than the others because in many cases it is too coarse when new.

Your bench will offer you a great convenience if it is garnished with a press, Fig 2. which can be removed when not needed. It should have two wood screws, each of which is fifteen or sixteen inches in length and about twenty or twenty two lines in diameter, with two nuts an inch and a half thick formed in an S shape. About five or six inches in length: You tap two holes G H, four inches deep into the thickness of the workbench, two feet apart from each other, there you will enter the two screws, and on their protruding parts you slide a bar that is not less than eighteen lines thick and three inches wide, and from over this the nuts will squeeze what you put between the bar and the workbench.

Make a third threaded hole h, between the first two and get a second bar pierced to conform to the distance H h;  you will thereby have two presses of various lengths to choose from according to the dimensions of the pieces that you will contain or clamp.

The screws and holes must be made of very firm wood that will not break. The cormier (quickbeam) and l’alizier (beam-tree) make the best of all for this usage. Failing them you will take the wild pear, or elm if you can not find better. I will say below how it is done with the screws and wood nuts; about the press bar, it should be stiff wood such as ash, for Example.

The translation confirms that the press was indeed inserted into the holes on front edge of the benchtop. And that you could even have two different-size vises for larger or smaller work. Also interesting: Nollet points out the doe’s foot is used for restraining boards that you are edge-planing in the the crochet. I’ve not tried this technique (but will today).

As this bench is from 1770, I still think there is an earlier bench out there that Joseph Moxon or his engraver were looking at when they added the double-screw to the bench in “Mechanick Exercises.”

— Christopher Schwarz

I have a theory, which I’ll delve into in my next book, called “Roman Workbenches,” that the transition from the old-style Roman workbench to the more formally joined French or modern bench occurred in the 16th century.

So I was thrilled when the above engraving showed up today from researcher Suzanne Ellison. The engraving was made by Johannes of Lucas van Doetechum after a work by Hans Vredeman de Vries in 1572. The work is part of a series of four prints that depict carpenters’ tools in an artistic way – bunches of chisels are depicted as flowers and so forth.

There is, as always, a lot to see and process. Because we are on a workbench kick this week, the bench is of particular interest. It is firmly in the Roubo camp of modern benches with its stretchers and rectilinear construction. Also worth noting are the crochet, holdfast and peg holes in the legs.

In real life, this engraving is about 7-1/4” tall , but I wish it were 7’ tall.

— Christopher Schwarz

Five years after the 1770 publication of “L’ Art Des Expériences” by Jean-Antoine Nollet, came M. Hulot’s “L’art du tourneur mécanicien,” an influential book among turners especially.

In it, Hulot describes a “twin press” for a workbench in some detail. Jeff Burks offers this translation on what Hulot wrote about the press.

XI. Description of a press that is attached to the side of the joiner’s workbench; & which serves to hold the wood while we prepare it for turning.

AB, fig. 11, same Plate, represents a twin Press that attaches to the side of the Joiner’s workbench: it is about 3 or 4 feet long, two inches thick, and 4 to 5 inches wide; make 2 holes entirely through [the bar], through which pass all united, without threading, the wood screws C or D c d, fig 12; the ends of the screws D, enter into a threaded hole in the side, and in the middle of the thickness of the workbench Pl. 31, fig. 5. (Editor’s note: the twin press is not visible in this plate.) The nut  E G F is tapped, and rotates freely on the screw; the middle of the nut G is left thicker than the ears E F, e f, fig. 11 & 12, so that these ears do not rub on the bar A B. G E F, c D, fig. 11, represents the screw and nut seen in perspective; Figure 12 shows the same screw and nut in profile: I, represents the end of the bar A B. It is an accepted usage in drawing and engraving that wood seen by their end are marked with two diagonal lines, as we see them here.

This Press is very convenient for holding workpieces that we can not put in a vice (étau); the large gap that exists between the two holes through which pass the screws, gives the freedom to place parts of large diameter: it is easily seen that the side of the workbench forms one side of the Press, & the bar A B makes the second. We will have the opportunity to speak often about it in the subsequent portion of this work.

This press is remarkably similar to Nollet’s vise (check it out here), with the exception of the length of the screws. Nollet’s screws look at least 2’ long. If I made one of these twin presses (and I probably will), I’m likely to make the screws similar to Hulot’s, which are shown about 8 pounces (French inches) long.

Next up: More unusual German workbenches.

— Christopher Schwarz

Check out the right leg of the workbench in this 1826 plate that Jeff Burks dug up from “Les Amusemens de la Campagne” (Vol. 3) by M.A. Paulin Desormeaux. Take a look at Fig. B there. It’s a small cleat used for edge-jointing.

Here’s Jeff’s translated text:

Fig 1. of the plate represents the workbench. A is the head of a screw clamping a strong board against the front leg forming a vise; when you want to work on a board, you take it from one end in this vise, and the other end is placed on the small cleat B same figure. And if need be is maintained with the help of a holdfast placed in hole C.

I’ve not seen a cleat exactly like this one before. But I have seen cleats that retract below the workbench’s top or are removable. Woodworker Yoav Liberman has a metal removable one on his bench that is made from some bed hardware I believe.

Here is an historical example, but it’s located up by the face vise.

Oh, and check out the cool fireworks displays you can build below. Danger on a stick.

— Christopher Schwarz

This afternoon I got a good start on my first Roman workbench – a knee-high bench with almost no workholding, aside from holes for pegs or holdfasts.

I’m building it using a red oak top from Will Myers, who dried the slab in his homemade kiln in North Carolina. The legs are some white oak stock that is sold at the lumberyard for making rustic mantles. (I was going to instead use some firewood I have in my shop, but that firewood is actually going into two upcoming commissioned chairs.)

The real fun part of the project is the measurement system. Thanks to Brendan Bernhardt Gaffney at burn-heart.com, I have a Roman ruler to guide me as I design and build these two workbenches. I’m using his Cubitus Ruler, which combines several Roman systems onto one pretty stick.

So here is the cutting list for this first Roman workbench:

1 benchtop, measuring 3.4 thumbs x 14 thumbs x 4.9 cubits (or 87.8 thumbs)
4 legs, measuring 2.2 thumbs x 2.2 thumbs x 1.25 cubits (or 21.3 thumbs)

Before you do the math, just think of the cubit as the distance from your elbow to the tip of your middle finger. And the thumb as the length of the second segment of your thumb. That’s accurate enough.

Today I dressed the front edge of benchtop with my jointer plane, making sure it was square to the benchtop (the benchtop is the heart side of the slab, FYI). Then I marked the final width of the benchtop using a large square – my panel gauge is in my other shop.

That’s when I found that I had to remove almost 1/2 thumb of wood in places to make the front edge and back edge parallel.

I looked for my hatchet. Dangit. It’s also in my other shop.

So I decided to traverse the edge with my jack plane. After marking the final width of the benchtop, I use my jack to create a chamfer on the corner that touched the line that represented the final width of the benchtop. The chamfer acted as gauge – as the chamfer disappeared I knew I was closer to my finished width. It also protected the corner from spelching during the traversing.

This dodge worked surprisingly well.

Tomorrow I’ll dress the benchtop and start shaping the legs.

— Christopher Schwarz

P.S. The book “Roman Workbenches” is unlikely to have any photos because we are printing it via letterpress, so I’m not sure why I’m documenting every step. Old habits die hard, I suppose.

Here I’m traversing the underside of the benchtop.

I only want to work each surface of this benchtop once. The slab weighs enough (approximately 115 pounds) that I have to struggle with it to get it in and out of the vise and onto the benchtop.

So every move with the slab is planned with care so I don’t end up injured or (at best) embarrassed at having to ask a friend to help me get the benchtop off the floor.

Today I dressed the two broad faces of the benchtop: the underside and the benchtop itself. Both have to be fairly flat and free of twist in my experience. Of course, this slab turned out to be a weird one. Typically the bark side of a slab will be concave across its width, and the heart side will be convex. This slab was reversed.

So I started on the convex face. Normally when I dress a rough convex face I remove the hump in the middle using with-the-grain strokes with my jack. But because I had a lot of wood to remove (about a quarter of a thumb), I used a different tactic. I traversed the hump alone at first and stayed away from the long edges of the benchtop. Traversing allowed me to take a bigger bite with the jack plane.

The winding sticks showed the slab was twisted significantly.

Once the hump was gone, I checked the top for twist. It was indeed twisted. So I used my jack plane to work away the two high corners, which were diagonal from one another.

When the underside was flat (according to the winding sticks), I dressed the entire underside of the top with the jack to leave a consistent and tidy (if scalloped) surface.

Then I flipped the benchtop over to work on the concave side.

Here I’ve darkened the two high corners of this slab. I worked away the two high corners until all four corners were in the same plane.

Because I knew this surface was also twisted, I began working away the two high corners straightaway. After bringing all the corners into the same plane, I dressed the surface with a jack. I’ll probably dress it with the jointer in the morning and leave it like that until after assembly – that’s when I’ll clean up the leg joints protruding through the benchtop and tooth the surface with a toothing plane.

I also managed to rough out the legs on the band saw today and hope to turn them on the lathe tomorrow.

If this sounds like a lot of work, it’s not. I have logged only two full hours of shop time. How much more time I’ll log will be determined by whether I decide to build an opossum or an arachnid.

— Christopher Schwarz

The almost-finished underside of the benchtop. I love the furrowed surface and wouldn’t trade it for anything smoother.

Today I turned the first four legs for the low Roman workbench but I left my lathe set up because I might need to turn four more tomorrow.

While most images I’ve come across of Roman workbenches show them made with four legs and with staked construction, there is one image from Herculaneum that looks a lot like there are eight legs. The image below is actually an 18th-century drawing of a painting from that doomed city that has deteriorated – all we have left is this image (plus a host of wrongly interpreted images).

Suzanne Ellison and I are fairly convinced this image is accurate for a variety of reasons that I’ll discuss in the forthcoming book. But even if the 18th-century image is accurate, a few experts have suggested that the Roman image it is based on is inaccurate.

It’s a bit of a hall of mirrors to discuss. But the bottom line is that some people think that the Herculaneum image actually depicts a work surface on top of two four-legged sawhorses. I tend to disagree. But there is no way to settle the issue.

So what I’m planning on doing is making the bench with four legs, like this image from Pompeii.

Then I’m going to work with the bench and see if I think it needs four more legs to be robust enough for operations such as hand mortising.

So stay tuned.

These four legs feature 4”-long tenons that are 1-3/4” in diameter. I roughed them out on the lathe and then shaved and scraped them to the finished shape. I like the process and the finished texture.

— Christopher Schwarz

Building this bench has been a lot more like building a daybed for a giant snake than a typical workbench.

After drilling the mortises last Thursday, I got some time yesterday to cut the wedges for the legs, to kerf the tenons (to make it easier for the wedges to do their job) and assemble the entire thing with hide glue.

The wedges are made from an ash plank I’ve kept around since 2007, believe it or not. It’s an offcut from making the benchtop to my first Holtzapffel workbench that year. It is the most springy and resilient ash I’ve ever worked with. And as I wanted to wail on these wedges, that ash was just the ticket.

After getting all the mortises and tenons painted with glue, I put all the joints together and flipped the bench onto its feet. Then came the fun part with a small sledgehammer.

When building chairs, I have to be careful not to split the seat when driving in the legs or wedges. I try to stop beating the parts exactly one blow before splitting the seat.

With these enormous 1-3/4”-diameter tenons and the 3-1/2”-thick oak top, however, splitting was not going to be a problem. So I knocked the wedges in like I was playing Whack-a-Mole, Deathmatch Edition. When each wedge seated fully, it made a Biblical thunk.

Today I’ll clean up the assembled benchtop, level the legs and start drilling the holes for holdfasts and wooden stakes.

— Christopher Schwarz

Editor’s note: Below is the first post from Will Myers, a woodworker who teaches at Roy Underhill’s school and specializes in teaching a class on building a Moravian workbench and researching and reproducing Shaker pieces. Both John and I are huge fans of Will and are very excited to welcome him to our blog.

I am back at Hancock Shaker Village in Pittsfield, Mass.  I came up last fall for a quick visit and figured out that this was not a “quick visit” type of place.

There is so much to see; around most every corner are rooms and furniture pieces that give me a bit of déjà vu. Perhaps the feeling comes from seeing so much of this stuff in furniture books and articles over the years. Even so, the genuine articles are so much better than the photos.

On this trip I am attending the annual woodworkers and iron workers weekend. I will be doing demos on making one of the candlestands in Hancock’s collection all day on Aug. 6-7. I brought along a Moravian workbench as well (they have not kicked me out…yet!).

If you are in the area stop in and have a look around and experience the only genuine Southern hillbilly accent in Massachusetts!

— Will Myers, host of the “Building the Portable Moravian Workbench” DVD

I hope that Labor Day means free time around your house and not “try to catch up day” like it it is here. I’m not complaining though. When catching up consists of picking up after a fun weekend and reading through a bunch of Lost Art Press folks sharing ideas and builds then life is good. Hopefully you are doing the same. Remember, if you have a question about our products, procedures in our books or anything related to Lost Art Press, the fastest way to get an answer is our forum. Check it out here.

Rehandling a Hammer
Jacob has a ball peen hammer that he loves using, but it has a crack in the handle right near the head that makes him a little nervous. (picture at right) He is looking for advice from anyone who has tried re-handling a hammer. Help him out here. And learn about a tool that can fix the problem.

Kitchen/dining Table Finish
Have any suggestions on a durable finish for a beech kitchen table? Martin wants the table to maintain its natural look but still be able to stand up to his family’s nightly dinners. Let him know what you think would work best.

Softwood Chop
Jason is building a knockdown Nicholson bench and is getting to the point where he needs to figure out his plan for the chop on the leg vise. He is thinking he will laminate 2×12 Douglas fir boards but hasn’t decided on the final method yet. Vote for one of his two proposed plans here.

Left-Handed Workbench
Are you a lefty? Are you a lefty who has a preference on whether your bench is built for a lefty or not? Perfect. Marvin wants to know what you think. He is building his own bench and can’t decide which route to take.

Repair My Ash – Kerf on the Wrong Place
Nathan originally posted looking for help on how to repair a few dings to his bench build. As it turns out, the LAP community pretty much all suggested he leave them and and let the bench have the early battle scars that it has earned. I think it was the right move and the final product looks sweet (picture above). It gets my vote for best build of the week. See the story here.

— Meghan Bates

Tool vendor on the Rainbow Bridge in the “Qingming shanhe tu” 12th c. scroll. Image from Yale University.

Lu Ban, born some time between 770 and the 5th century BC, is the divine protector of Chinese carpenters and artisans. He is credited with inventing the basic tool kit of the carpenter and the rules, measurements and rituals associated with building construction. He and his wife* are featured in many Chinese folktales. One story, as told by the Bai ethic minority of Yunnan Province involves how the palm, or planing stop, was invented.

The Origin of the “Palm”**

When Lu Ban needed to plane a piece of wood he would call his wife to come and hold one end of the wood with both hands. She would use all her strength to hold the wood steady. But this was not a good way to evenly plane the entire piece of wood. Too light a hand and the wood would not be smooth and too heavy a hand and the plane would run into his wife. Once, Lu Ban’s strength on the planer was too heavy and the head of the plane hit his wife in the chest, the blade cut her hands and she was pushed to the ground. Lu Ban dropped the plane and rushed to help his wife.

Lu Ban’s wife sat dazed on the ground gazing at her bloodied hands while Lu Ban fretted and did know know what to do. His wife suddenly smiled and realized what she should do. She got up, grabbed a saw and  cut two pieces of wood in the shape of a palm. Next, she nailed the pieces on the bench top. She had Lu Ban place the wood to be planed between the two pieces to hold it steady and there was no longer any need for a person to hold the wood while the carpenter used the plane.

Lu Ban admired this idea of his wife and he called the two pieces a “palm.” Later, carpenters changed from wood to iron but still called this invention a “palm.”

Finding the “Palm”

I asked Chris if he could visualize the palm and he suggested placing your hand palm-up (that was the bench surface) and bend four fingers pointing towards the ceiling (the stop). But that configuration didn’t help me see a “palm.” Many images of the low Chinese workbench are hand-drawn and do not show a huge amount of detail. So, the next step was to check through the images I already had and also look for new ones.

The Arrowmaker, 19th century.

The Arrowmaker has a planing stop, but it doesn’t look as though it would be termed a “palm.”

17th c. Chinese wallpaper on silk at Saltram. Carpenters making tea chests. National Trust photo.

Four benches but no “palms” here.

Lu Ban’s wife nailing a planing stop to a bench.

In this 20th century Chinese comic strip Lu Ban’s wife nails what looks like a doe’s foot to the bench. The doe’s foot, a work holding appliance, is featured in Plate 14 of the forthcoming “Roubo on Furniture” and you can read a blog post Chris did about using one here.

Doe’s foot (top) and workman using a planing stop, 18th century, from Plate 14 by A.-J. Roubo.

The notch in the doe’s foot seemed to be closer to what the “palm” might look like. The answer came from “Qingming shanhe tu,” a scroll done with ink and brush by Zhang Zeduan during the Song Dynasty in the first quarter of the 12th century. The scroll is 25.5 cm high, 5.25 meters long and is in the collection of the Palace Museum in Beijing. The scroll shows the gatherings for the Qingming celebration in a vibrant riverfront city. The image at the top of this post is one of two where a woodworker’s bench can be seen.

In a short passage in a book about 15th-century Chinese carpentry there was mention of a wheelwright’s shop in the scroll and whether the workman at the bench is using a drawknife or spokeshave.

Center: the wheelwright’s shop on the “Qingming shanhe tu” scroll.

Find the large tree just off center in the scene above. The wheelwright’s shop is just to the left of the tree and partially under an overhanging roof.

Wheelwright in the “Qingming shanhe tu” scroll. Image from Yale University.

Given the large size of the scroll the scene is too small to discern which tool is in use but what can be seen is the workman is pushing the tool as evidenced by the V-shaped wooden ‘bench stop’ nailed to the end of the bench. This ‘bench stop’ is called a “Lu Ban qi” which translates as Lu Ban’s wife. As Lu Ban’s wife knelt at one end of the bench she held her hands on either edge of the wood. Placed together her hands would form a V. This is the “palm.”

*In the folktales of the Bai Lu Ban’s wife is not given a name, but in other stories she is called Yun.

**This story is based on a Bai folktale translated by Jessica Marinaccio for her thesis for a BA with honors in Chinese at Williams College in 2006. 

–Suzanne Ellison

Several commenters to yesterday’s post about the origin of the  Chinese planning stop, known as the palm, offered some additional information and a Western version.

In the wheelwright’s shop shown in the 12th-century scroll “Qingming shanhe tu” we see a palm at the end of the bench. It is made of two pieces of wood nailed to the bench.

The palm was later known as the Lu Ban qi, or Lu Ban’s wife, because the palm was the brilliant idea of Lu Ban’s wife. (Not to mention she no longer had to act as the planing stop or sustain injury when Lu Ban got a little crazy with the planing). Ban Qi is still used as a term for a planing stop. A modern version of the V-shaped palm is below and is adjustable.

A Western planning stop with similarities to the palm comes from “The Young Mechanic” by James Lukin published in 1872:

Another version using two pieces of wood and wedges to secure the work piece:

My thanks to our readers for joining the discussion and offering more ideas!

-Suzanne Ellison

Megan Fitzpatrick at Popular Woodworking Magazine has posted a video tour of the 1505 Holy Roman Workbench that was filmed at Woodworking in America last month. Roy Underhill has also shot an episode of “The Woodwright’s Shop” about both of the Roman workbenches I built this summer. I’m not sure when that will air during season 36. When I get news, I’ll post it here.

— Christopher Schwarz

Joshua Klein and company are working hard on the second issue of Mortise & Tenon magazine, and from all accounts it looks like it’s going to be another fine issue.

They’ll start taking pre-publication orders on Nov. 1 here, which is also where you can read about the articles that are planned for the issue.

Joshua had asked me to write an article for the issue, and had I proposed a piece on Kentucky-style furniture, a backwoods style that I’ve admired for many years and is on display at the Speed Museum in Louisville, Ky. (If you’d like a woodworker’s view of the museum, check out Mark Firley’s photo collection here and here.)

My summer went to crap, however, and so I wasn’t able to do the research and interviews that would make my article worth publishing. Luckily, Joshua was also interested in my Roman workbenches and let me write up an article on the interesting workholding on the low one that I built from Pompeii.

My understanding of the bench has increased greatly since Woodworking in America, and after working on it every day this fall. You might not think that it’s easy to work while sitting down, but you might give it another thought after you read the article. Roy Underhill helped me decode a couple of the important details for the article, and I hope to have a short book on the bench (and a 1505 workbench with a Roman undercarriage) ready for the printer by the end of the year.

— Christopher Schwarz

While picking up some work from Steamwhistle Letterpress, the owner, Brian Stuparyk, said he had a workbench to show me.

Brian’s letterpress shop is where all manner of interesting mechanisms end up, including printing presses, woodworking machines and machinist tools. Recently he received a load of woodworking equipment, much of it barely used.

One of the gems was a vintage Danish Levard workbench that looks like it had never been used. Brian said he found only one small sawcut and a single blotch of glue.

It’s the first time I ever had time to examine a Levard in detail. While being extremely well made (details to follow), I was surprised how lightweight it was. I know I’m biased toward massive French benches, but this seemed like a delicate flower.

So now for the good stuff. First take a look at the jaws for the end vise. The top corners of the benchtop and jaw are inlaid with boxwood, like a moulding plane. It’s an interesting detail. That area of a vise can see significant abuse, but I’d never considered adding boxwood to the jaws.

Also interesting: the underside of the benchtop. Like many European workbenches, the core of the benchtop is fairly thin and banded by thicker pieces. This saves on wood, but it reduces the bench’s overall weight and makes clamping things to the benchtop an occasional pain.

What really interested me was the way they had made the thick dog blocks that were glued to the thin core. To save material, the dogs are fully enclosed on only one side. I can’t think of any disadvantage to their approach.

The vise screws were all well-machined and moved smoothly, like someone cared. Also nice: The steel dogs (actually they were more puppy-sized), were well-made with nicely chamfered corners.

All in all the craftsmanship was excellent. I just think it could use a lot more mass.

— Christopher Schwarz