If you use your workbench for wood alone, you are unusual. My workbenches get used
for all sorts of things, from wrapping presents to cracking walnuts. Opening stubborn
jars of peanut butter to holding acetate horsies while I glue on their wounded legs.

So I was delighted when a reader reminded me of this passage from Herman Melville’s
“Moby Dick.” And it gave me a few ideas as to how we can save on our medical bills
in 2011 in the Schwarz household.

— Christopher Schwarz

Chapter 107

The Carpenter
The one grand stage where he enacted all his various parts so manifold, was his
vice-bench; a long rude ponderous table furnished with several vices, of different
sizes, and both of iron and of wood. At all times except when whales were alongside,
this bench was securely lashed athwartships against the rear of the Try-works.

A belaying pin is found too large to be easily inserted into its hole: the carpenter
claps it into one of his ever ready vices, and straightway files it smaller. A lost
landbird of strange plumage strays on board, and is made a captive: out of clean shaved
rods of right-whale bone, and cross-beams of sperm whale ivory, the carpenter makes
a pagoda-looking cage for it. An oarsman sprains his wrist: the carpenter concocts
a soothing lotion. Stubb longed for vermillion stars to be painted upon the blade
of his every oar; screwing each oar in his big vice of wood, the carpenter symmetrically
supplies the constellation. A sailor takes a fancy to wear shark-bone ear-rings: the
carpenter drills his ears. Another has the toothache: the carpenter out pincers, and
clapping one hand upon his bench bids him be seated there; but the poor fellow unmanageably
winces under the unconcluded operation; whirling round the handle of his wooden vice,
the carpenter signs him to clap his jaw in that, if he would have him draw the tooth.

Woodworking Magazine

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