Monday, August 30, 2010

Nostalgia For The Work- Final Part

Here's the last of the nostalgic photos. Enjoy!

Woodworking school for black young women

Vocational school for boys, New York
Furniture shop, late 19th c. Note that two leg vises have no sliding handles on the screw.
Woodcarver
Woodcarving, really crisp and fine work.
Boys' woodworking class
April, 1901
Boys' school. Nice chute board and plane on the bench in the foreground.
Prison woodshop. Note these leg vises are missing their handles too. Makes sense here...

Small furniture shop.

Tuskegee

The Stanley display at the World's Fair., early 20thc.


For those interested, I obtained most of these images from the following sites:

David Rumsey Visual Collections

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Reading Room

New York Public Library Digital Gallery

Hope you've enjoyed these vintage images. I had a great time assembling them.

Wednesday, August 25, 2010

For Sale: Leg vise from my Roubo bench


 Last year I installed a Glide Leg Vise on my Roubo bench. This replaced the original leg vise I built from a vise screw kit I purchased from Joe at Big Wood Vise.

Since then, the vise has sat in a rare empty spot in the corner of my shop. I actually have two of these vises, but the other one is part of my sliding leg vise, and I'll be keeping that one.

I'd feel a lot better if this excellent vise was being enjoyed by someone in their own bench.



The entire vise is made of Ash. The chop is 3-1/8" thick, 7-1/2" wide, and 26-7/8" long. The parallel guide is about 22" long, including the chop thickness, and is joined to the chop with three 3/8" drawbored pegs. The handle is not stock. I turned it from ash to match the vise. The original (which went AWOL some time ago) was too long for my tastes and wasn't made of ash.



The inside face of the chop is lined with thick leather. Also included are two polyethylene guide bushings. The loose one you'll have to mortise into the front of the bench's leg. This provides extra stability when operating the vise. It's not necessary though.


The two-piece ebony garter (which contrasts nicely with the screws's figured ash hub) fastens to the chop with stainless-steel cap screws. The vise has a couple coats of oil varnish and is in excellent condition. There are a couple "witness marks" here and there to add some character. This is a massive vise that would be perfect for any Roubo bench, and is ready to install. Price is $210 plus shipping (weight will be about 20 pounds). One other thing. Big Wood Vise isn't producing these screws at the moment, so if you'd like an ash vise screw (with an awesome vise attached), now's your chance. If you'd like the vise, drop me an email. First one gets it.

Wednesday, August 18, 2010

Nostalgia For The Work- Part 3 - Vocational Schools, Internment Camps and More

Lady woodturner, California 1940's

Woodturning school outfitted with rows of Oliver lathes.
Foot-powered scrollsaw
Shot of workers outside a small shop
Young man from the same shop working on a machine.
Late 19th/early 20th. c. boys school. Nice benches and vices!
Boys school
Sighting....
Nice clothes. When even young boys dressed with class. No sagging pants in this room.
And even nice caps too.....
Tow Japanese boys selecting their tools from the tool shop at the Amanche relocation camp, Colorado.
Rebuilding San Francisco after the great 1906 earthquake.
Woodworking School for Blacks.

Shop class. Good thing they phased this out of schools....

Saturday, August 7, 2010

Nostalgia For The Work- Part 2 - Woodworkers of the Near and Far East

These images are all from the late 19th and early 20th century.

Woodturners in Damascus



















Door shop, Damascus



















Turning furniture legs. Damascus
More woodturners in Damascus




Woodworking Shop. Nazareth


Nazareth
Nazareth
Nazareth
 Japan



Japan

Monday, August 2, 2010

Nostalgia For The Work--Vintage Photos and Daguerreotypes Part 1




















A Cooper. Mid 19th c.

I thought it would be interesting to share some of the nostalgic woodworking (and related) imagery that I've discovered over the past year in various places through the internet. Several public libraries around the US now host online digital image galleries, and there are thousands of images from the past century and a half that are free to view and download. I have a fair number of these images, so as to not overwhelm the viewer I'll be posting a few at a time. At the end of the series, I'll post links for my sources. This doesn't apply so much to the following images, but one thing I like to do is look closely at the backgrounds of the images--the stuff that's going on besides or behind the main subject. You can discover quite a bit about what's going on in the photos this way.

These dagguereotypes are from the 1840's and beyond.



















Man with chisel and mallet.



















Man with hammer, plane, saw and other tools.




















Stone carver















Blacksmith