The Workshop
Celebrating The Place Where Craftsmanship Begins

By Scott Gibson

A workshop is much more than a physical place full of tools. It is the place where a woodworker imagines, designs, tries, fails and succeeds in making something beautiful out of wood. Some shops are used to earn a living, some to pass on the craft. In all shops new designs are forged, limits are tested, and art is created.

Author Scott Gibson takes you on a guided tour of over 30 workshops. Youll meet furniture makers, boat builders, turners, and others -- all of whom share a common love: creating in wood. Over 290 photos give you an inside look at these outstanding shops. Youll learn how they evolved and how they suit the individual needs of the woodworkers who own them.

The Workshop:

• Is a highly visual look at more than 30 amazing workshops and the fascinating people who use them.
• Celebrates the wide variety of wood craft, providing points of inspiration and identification for anyone dreaming of becoming a woodworker.
• Uses the shops and visits to their owners/users to tell the story of why people are drawn to creative expression in wood.

Scott Gibson is a former editor at Fine Homebuilding, Fine Woodworking and Home Furniture magazines who now works as a freelance writer, editor and photographer from his home in southern Maine. A contributing editor to Fine Homebuilding, he writes about residential building, architecture and furniture for a number of publications. He is a long-time furniture maker whose work has appeared in Fine Woodworking.

"This is not just another book about shops -- not that I ever mind the opportunity to snoop around other woodworker's shops and shop solutions. Instead, Scott acknowledges that our shops are, in essence, a subtle (and sometimes not-so-subtle) expression of their owners -- and that breathes life as well as lessons into these stories of workspaces around the country".
-- Jim Tolpin

Introduction:

The workshops in this book were chosen because they fairly represent the diverse spaces in which American woodworkers now find themselves. There are shops in recycled button factories, two-car garages, white clapboard buildings in tiny New England villages, old onion barns, industrial parks, and strip malls. Many woodworkers looking through these pages will think of a favorite shop they've seen -- their own or one they've visited -- and wonder why it has not been included. No list could possibly be complete, but there is some common ground here. Nearly all of the shops in this book are relatively small, just big enough for one or two woodworkers. Not counting the woodworking schools, the largest covers roughly 9,000 sq. ft. If that seems generous by most standards, it is still nothing more than a speck compared with the factories that produce much of the nation's furniture and woodenware.

Woodworkers prove as diverse as their shops. Some keep their workspaces fastidiously clean. Their tools are carefully arranged in drawers and on walls, and not a single wood shaving litters the floor. At the other end of the spectrum are spaces seemingly arranged by happenstance. Tools, lumber, furniture parts, and bits of hardware lie abandoned where they were last needed. Woodworkers who have been in the same space for many years often accumulate an agreeable clutter that makes them feel at home. Walls are painted or decorated with photographs torn from magazines or postcards. For others, a shop itself seems to hold little inherent interest; it's just four walls and a roof.

However different they may look, all of these shops exude an air of creativity and inventiveness. Each is a place where an artisan, professional or amateur, turns raw materials that could be almost anything into an object that is only one thing. Whether the piece is sold, given away, or ends up in the dining room of the person who made it hardly matters.

What can we learn from a tour of nearly three dozen small woodshops? Something, I hope. Most woodworkers seem curious about the workshops of others. And while these profiles of shops and their owners are not intended as technical descriptions of lighting, wiring, dust collection, or lumber storage, nor as recommendations on what kind of vise or table saw to buy, a detail in a photograph or a woodworker's description of his work habits may suggest a solution to another woodworker who has been wrestling with the same problem. In truth, however, most of these details are no more important than the intent and expectations we bring to our work -- maybe less. Great shops are really a combination of all of these things, not only how we arrange the space and stock it with tools and raw materials but also how we use the space when we get there.

Table of Contents:

Introduction

1. The Perfect Bench
What Kind of Woodworking Do You Do?
Locating the Bench
Bench Size
Weight
Height
A Comfortable Bench Area
Designing Your Bench

2. Workbench Tops
Benchtop Dimensions
Top Configuration
Tool Trays
Materials for Tops
Keeping the Top Flat
Flattening a Benchtop
Fastening the Top to the Base
Finishing the Top

3. A Solid Foundation
Base Configuration
Frame Bases
Base Joinery Options
Strengthening the Base
Legs Made from Metal
Enclosed Bases
Leveling the Bench
Electrical Power

4. Getting a Grip
Locating Vises
Types of Vises
Screw Mechanisms
Manufactured Vises
Shop-Built Vises

5. Holding Your Work
Bench Dogs
Stops
Holdfasts and Hold-Downs
Board Jacks
Bench Hooks
Fixtures and Auxillary Tables

6. Bench in a Box
Bench Components
Manufactured Benches of the Past
Contemporary Bench Makers

7. No-Frills Benches
Getting Down to Basics
Sam Maloofs Bench
Building the Bench
Niall Barretts Bench
Building the Bench

8. Tradition Meets the Twenty-First Century
English-Style Workbenches
Building the Bench
European Traditions
Building the Bench
The Best of Old and New
Building the Bench
Shaker with a Twist

9. Innovative Workbenches
A Different Kind of Benchtop
The Torsion Box
Storing Large Worktables
Thinking Outside the Box

10. Benches for Special Tasks
Assembly and Finishing
Portable Workbenches
Benches for Working on Irregular Parts
Other Woodworking Specialties
Dedicated Task Benches

Resources

Index
 

Hard-cover, 9-1/4 x 10-7/8 in., 208 pages with over 290 color photos and drawings
Published 2003

ISBN: 978-1-56158-575-5

Hardcover, 208 pages

The Workshop - Hard-cover RC-T070653 $34.95 $26.56 Usually ships in 24 hours