In the Background, My Next Project
Drawings of early shops can teach us and mislead us about pre-Industrial woodworking.
But I don’t want to get into a debate about how artists interpret or misinterpret
a scene. Please. Pretty please?
Instead, feast your eyes, peasants, on that cool shelf and chisel rack behind the
fine waistcoated gentlemen in the foreground. That is the answer to the blank wall
in my shop at home. During my lunch hour (hour?) on Tuesday I dragged the above engraving
of a shop in the suburb of Saint-Antoine from the book “Les
Rabots” into SketchUp and drew and drew until I got something I liked.
It’s not exactly like the rack in the engraving, but it will do nicely. The shelf
on top is 10″ deep and the rack itself is about 24″ high. I designed it so I could
build it out of dimensional stock – probably poplar – that I can paint.
Then I just have to ask Thomas Lie-Nielsen if I can borrow one of his old vests and
I’ll be all set to go full-on French.
— Christopher Schwarz
More Shop Stuff
• Taunton’s “The Workshop
Classics” by Scott Landis and Jim Tolpin contain three of the best books on workbenches,
shops and toolboxes in a nice slipcovered case. Every woodworker should own this set.
(I think I have two.)
• I’ve written two book on workbenches. The 2007 “Workbenches”
book has been one of our best-selling titles for three years and is in its third printing.
It’s companion volume, “The
Workbench Design Book” just came out in September.
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