The great people at Alexander Brothers have put together a new kit of materials that help you make a Roman workbench, the earliest design of bench that we know of. The Roman bench isn’t just an historical footnote. It’s a dang-good bench that we use all the time in our shop. The bench is portable,…
Read moreMy book on Roman workbenches and early workholding is now a free download for everyone. You don’t have to register, or give up your email, or sign up for sausage-making lessons. You can just click here, and the download will begin. If you forget to do this, you can always go to the book’s page…
Read moreThe following is excerpted from “Ingenious Mechanicks,” by Christopher Schwarz. This book is a journey into the past. It takes the reader from Pompeii, which features the oldest image of a Western bench, to a Roman fort in Germany to inspect the oldest surviving workbench, and finally to Christopher’s shop in Covington, where he recreated…
Read moreAny time a picture or video shows up of Chris or me or a student using the low bench to shave spindles, I get questions about the “planing stop” against which the workpiece is held. That’s the “Hulot Block” or “head” that shows up in 1775 book “L’Art du Tourneur Mécancien.” Chris reproduced it for…
Read moreSomehow the stunning mosaics unearthed at the Huqoq synagogue during the last 12 years have escaped my attention. Reader Richard Mahler pointed them out to me, and I have been thinking about them all week. (Why? Roman woodworking is the subject of my book “Ingenious Mechanics.”) The mosaic I have been poring over is the…
Read more