Indeed a very nice job. Does the domestic oven get hot enough for tempering, mine didn't seem to get quite there. Do you just pop it in, or use a sand tray ?
AndyT":1ousfnea said:
Have you been following Chris Schwarz's blog? He's been exploring Roman workbenches, from one or two surviving fragments and from images in art.
Hah, Andy beats me to it again. I was going to say that there is an article by Chris Schwarz on Roman woodworking benches in issue 2 of
Mortice and Tenon, which I have just re-read. He also draws on (or maybe plugs !)
Woodworking in Estonia. I think we dicussed when playing with rxh's Silchester plane at Mac Timbers that the horizontal handles suited the low Roman bench ? Schwarz's reconstruction is low (I think he mentions around knee height), one thought that occured to me having been to Pompeii, is that judging by the plaster casts of the victims of the Vesuvius eruption, and various ceiling and door frame heights, Romans may have been quite short by modern standards, so you wouldn't want to overdo it. The other thing that struck me is that "Roman" in the widest sense covers an awful lot of ground, and probably a lot of different bench designs.
I read the article with quite some interest ... Why ? because as a green woodworker, I often use a low workbench. It is a shave horse with the clamping parts removed, i.e., what is to hand when working in a field. It is rather wobbly, being three legged and suffering from seasonal shrinkage in the (knock down) leg joints at just the time of year you need to use it. But it had occured to me that with some extra leg holes and a spare leg, it could be converted to a 4 legged low bench when needed, and a line of dog holes would make it rather versatile. I'll look more closely at Chris Schwarz's drawings...