Musings

Workbench Wednesday – #15 (2017), part III; The “LC” Bench

A few months before the benches were built for and debuted at Handworks, I had been invited to teach woodworking to my colleagues in the Rare Book Conservation lab of the Library of Congress.  The emphasis for this two-day workshop was on fabricating oak book boards by hand. In antiquity the covers of a book were almost always leather covered this wood boards, usually quarter-sawn white oak.

The workshop was simultaneous delightful and frustrating.  Delightful because the staff there was congenial, skilled, and highly motivated.  Frustrating because they did not own a workbench worth lighting on fire.  At the time I vowed to rectify that situation, and by repurposing one of the petite Roubos I did.

Several months later, as other projects were winding down in the studio, I was able to find the hours to transform one of the Handworks knock-down display Roubos into a workbench worthy of daily use by my friends at LC.

The initial steps were straightforward, as I simply reassembled the basic bench as I drove home the legs in their twin sockets with a sledge.  They were so snug I did not bother with glue, I simply pinned them in place with 4″ screws and wedged any spaces.   This construct was so stout that it would hold up to vigorous use even without integral stretchers.

The top surface needed only a few minutes of flattening, first with a #5 set up as a fore plane, followed by a freshly sharpened #7, and concluding with cross-hatching with a toothing plane.  The stretchers and shelf were equally simple, just screwed in place.

In the end the “transformation” might be better expressed as “tartification” that came in the guise of a modified vintage leg vise I had in my inventory.  Given the mundane nature of the original, probably a late-19th Century unit I picked up who knows where, I felt some enhancing was in order.  The barrel head of the original was entirely uninspiring, simply inappropriate for the new setting and the artifacts it was to be part of.

I gave it some new life in its contour, and inset a large mother-of-pearl button at its center.  Just because I could.

Not to abandon the foot of the movable jaw, I spent a few minutes with a saw and a file to give it a bit of pizzazz also.

My final flourishes were a double planing stop attached to the end of the top and some sharkskin pads for the top  of the vise.

The true beauty of the bench was that with the addition of the risers underneath the legs it was suited for every person in the Rare Book Conservation group, and the petite size was absolutely perfect for the very limited space they had for it. It was the example of something turning out perfectly almost accidentally.

The second of the petite Roubos remains in the classroom of the Barn, awaiting re-fitting for my nephew’s wife who want to learn woodworking and will need a bench in their Philly apartment.