What this means to me is that I will take all the information that I now have: the Benchcrafted plans. The jury is deliberating, yeronner.įor the rest, what really stuck in my mind yesterday was your phrase “You should start simple and go from there”. Then on the other hand, solid and permanent is rather nice … Yup. In particular it might make all the difference between getting and not getting the work bench into my next workshop. I do know for certain that we will move at least once in the next six to eight years or so, and being able to detach the top from the base might make such a move rather easier. The jury is still out on whether or not to do the same for the top. And yesterday’s read settled for good an argument I’ve been having with myself over the last 12 months: I will not use the knock down bench bolts I bought, but draw bore all the joints on the base. After the chat I had with you about split tops in London last year, I’d already decided to go for a solid top instead (I once worked a bit on a split top Nicholson, and didn’t care for the way the split wanted to swallow up smaller tools and stuff, and the way it neatly deposited a lot of the shavings on the shelf below, turning it into a huge hamster nest). Those plans were (and to a certain extent still are) based around the Benchcrafted Split Top (sorry, Spit Top) Roubo plans. Your book, however, has already convinced me to change my plans in certain respects. Love the colour, love the tight grain, just love it. For me the main contender would have been European ash, which here costs about half what hard maple does per cubic measure (I haven’t bothered figuring out the difference per measure of weight), and I do like ash a lot. Yes, one can find American SYP on this side of the Puddle, but the price per pound is nowhere near as good as what it is over on your side of said water. However, that would never really have been an option in any case. Your advocacy of Yellow Pine did not sway me, nor could it, as I read it only after buying the wood anyway. I acquired the vises (’twill be Benchcrafted all the way: an M-Glide with a retro Crisscross and a tail vise) back in January after your recent post, I got in touch with Tom Latané about one of his planing stops and last Thursday I finally set out Northwards to Arnhem in the Netherlands, where I bought 0,425 m3 (≈15 ft3) of 8/4 hard maple that is now stickered up in my workshop to acclimatise. I thoroughly enjoyed the read as a piece of writing, I thank you sincerely for giving out of yourself, and I am now full-on busy processing and digesting all the information, advice, suggestions and ideas.Īs so many others who have commented, and as I’ve already mentioned in other comments on this blog, I’m myself gearing up to a bench build. On top of that it feels even more personal and unvarnished (“just a couple of thin coats of oil”, maybe?! □ ), in a very positive sense, compared to your other books. It strikes what for me is just the right balance between solid information, humorous asides and passion for the subject. In my opinion, Chris, this is one of the finest pieces of writing from your pen that I’ve ever read. That said, I would very much like to first of all thank Chris and the LAP team for a fantastic book! I downloaded (and pre-ordered that goes without saying, although I just said it anyway) and read it all the way through yesterday. Then again, given my views on collectors, as opposed to *users*, of vintage whatever, maybe it’s all for the best anyway … □ In a way it is of course a pity that the “spit top” error was spotted, or the first (print) edition of this book would over time have become a collector’s item on a par with the Wicked Bible (“Thou shalt commit adultery”) and other pearls of the printer’s art from throughout the centuries.
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