#HTE
Tools & Craft #30: Answers to the Workbench Challenge
Last week I posted the following challenge: Match up, with their trades, seven engravings of old workbench designs from the Diderot Encyclopedia. I didn’t expect it to be easy, but I thought it an interesting way to allow people to look at benches critically and try to figure out what particular design features would be good for. Here are the answers:
See the double screw vise in the one below? That marks it as a type of bench used for cabinetmaking or marquetry. 18th century French cabinetmakers were far more specialized in their work than their modern counterparts, and a cabinetmaker would mostly be doing the fine part of assembly, smaller joints, and marquetry and veneering if they were capable. The double vise is perfect for clamping boards for joinery, and the uncluttered benchtop is great for assembly. In those days “go-bars,” flexible sticks of wood that sprung against the work and ceiling, was a common method of clamping on a wide surface and it would have been easy to lay out your panels on the bench, and use a bunch of go-bars to put all the downward pressure you wanted on it.
Musical instrument makers (Lutherie) use a bench that’s pretty much the same as a cabinetmaker’s bench, but the work is lighter overall, and the glue pot is indicative that instruments are mostly glued together rather than joined like furniture. There is a small planing stop on the bench, and of course precisely planing wood is an important part of the job.
Wood engravers don’t need a fancy bench, just something that will clamp the work on the surface. Here we see a holdfast and the dogholes to put it in, nothing else.
The case maker’s bench (for making briefcases/suitcases and the like) is pretty simple, as cases aren’t very heavy. So this is a light-duty bench with a single leg vise.
This bench is shown several times in the Encyclopedia, once in a workshop illustration but twice as a detail, in the joinery section and in the cabinetmaking and marquetry section. The engravings are identical down to the placement of the wood in the holdfast, except for a detail of the size of a plane in the till under the bench.
This very simple bench belongs to the chest, case, and trunk maker. The support under the table is unusual; my guess is that it’s a lighter bench than the others and the leg helps stiffen the top.
The box maker’s bench is the one drawn the most accurately. The top doesn’t cast a shadow on the legs, indicating the top is mounted flush to the legs, and we see a hook on the left which serves as a support for wood mounted in the crochet. Unlike the benches drawn in Moxon and other places, the crochet seems more like a simple stop, and the wood would be held in place by holdfasts stuck in the legs rather than a wedged clamp. Considering that the crochet dies out and disappears from benches in this period (the 18th Century), the smaller crochet/stop might be an interim design. Of course it could also be just a drawing error, like the shadow of the benchtop shown on so many other benches.
Trades that were listed in the original entry but whose benches aren’t shown:
Sawyers and carpenters of the era didn’t use workbenches - they worked on-site. To clarify, carpenters traditionally didn’t do trim, mouldings, or any of that stuff–joiners did. Carpenters only did the main timber construction and framing. There were very extensive guild and union rules on who did what. Joiners of various levels of competency did all the finish work, stairs, windows, etc.
Clogmakers use a narrow mini-bench that is designed to allow you to easily clamp two clogs at a fairly low height for working.
There is no illustration of a carriage-maker’s bench, and picture framing isn’t separated out in the book as a distinct trade.
I wrote this all up because I think it’s very instructive to look at a consistent group of benches all from the same time and place. By reverse-engineering what we knew of their work and seeing what tried-and-true devices and methods they used to execute it, we can gain insights into how to make our own modern-day workflow better, faster and more efficient.
http://www.core77.com/posts/59524/Tools-n-Craft-30-Answers-to-the-Workbench-Challenge