The Lost Art Press has produced another book in their Anarchist's series. Christopher Schwarz wrote this one on building a workbench. It's being printed and will be available in August($27), but if you want an electronic copy you can download it now for FREE!!!! Just jump on the link below to get more info and download the book. I haven't started reading it yet but its on my todo list.
Anarchist's Workbench link
“The Anarchist’s Workbench” is – on the one hand – a detailed plan for a simple workbench that can be built using construction lumber and basic woodworking tools. But it’s also the story of Christopher Schwarz’s 20-year journey researching, building and refining historical workbenches until there was nothing left to improve.
Along the way, Schwarz quits his corporate job, builds a publishing company founded on the principles of mutualism and moves into an 1896 German barroom in a red-light district, where he now builds furniture, publishes books and tries to live as an aesthetic anarchist.
“The Anarchist's Workbench” is the third and final book in the “anarchist” series, and it attempts to cut through the immense amount of misinformation about building a proper bench. It helps answer the questions that dog every woodworker: What sort of bench should I build? What wood should I use? What dimensions should it be? And what vises should I attach to it?
These questions are answered with the perspective of 2,000 years of workbench history.
Surprisingly, the way we immobilize pieces of wood to work on them hasn’t changed much in the last 700 years. But what has changed are the raw bench-building materials available to the modern woodworker. Gone are the massive slabs of oak, maple and beech that built the Western workbenches of our ancestors.
Anarchist's Workbench link
“The Anarchist’s Workbench” is – on the one hand – a detailed plan for a simple workbench that can be built using construction lumber and basic woodworking tools. But it’s also the story of Christopher Schwarz’s 20-year journey researching, building and refining historical workbenches until there was nothing left to improve.
Along the way, Schwarz quits his corporate job, builds a publishing company founded on the principles of mutualism and moves into an 1896 German barroom in a red-light district, where he now builds furniture, publishes books and tries to live as an aesthetic anarchist.
“The Anarchist's Workbench” is the third and final book in the “anarchist” series, and it attempts to cut through the immense amount of misinformation about building a proper bench. It helps answer the questions that dog every woodworker: What sort of bench should I build? What wood should I use? What dimensions should it be? And what vises should I attach to it?
These questions are answered with the perspective of 2,000 years of workbench history.
Surprisingly, the way we immobilize pieces of wood to work on them hasn’t changed much in the last 700 years. But what has changed are the raw bench-building materials available to the modern woodworker. Gone are the massive slabs of oak, maple and beech that built the Western workbenches of our ancestors.