>It occurred to me this morning that most of the time we see a plane being pictured, there are shavings pouring out of it.
But for some reason, most of the showpiece benches I've seen are almost never holding anything, and there aren't many pictures of people working at them. There are some... I remember seeing pictures of Sam Maloof shaving away at somethign being held in his Emmert, but generally the benches are being spotlighted (spotlit?) as pieces on their own.
Why do they show how cleanly a plane can cut, but not how versatile a bench is?
>Hi James, If I had to venture a guess I'd be willing to bet that most pictures are taken by solitary woodworkers who don't have someone around to take pix of them working at their bench. Unless you have a tripod and a timer handy it's hard to shoot a picture of yourself working.
Well, here's a non-showcase bench, holding something in the vise, with the typical mess...
Take care, Mike
Who does understand and appreciate what you wrote. I am hoping Schwarz's book on benches goes beyond staged photos, though I assume it is going to show work holding as that seems to be one of the main points of the book.
>That was pretty much the gist of it. Over the past few years, I've had to devise some... creative... ways to hold the work while I was at it. None of the benches, it seems, are every really shown holding something that would otherwise be very difficult to work on or clamp together. I've heard stories lately of people clamping parts of chairs together with an end vise, I've heard of french chairmakers who use specialized fixtures, some of which are very ingenious, but you never see those in play. Just pictures of benches, that aren't being used for work at that moment, even though people swear up and down that the design is so versatile... you never get to see anything to prove the versatility of the bench. I'd even settle for seeing something holdfasted to the leg of a roubo bench, but no.
I was up at Lie-Nielsen a couple of weeks ago for Chris Schwartz' bench seminar. Wow, he's a smart guy. After that, I'm very much interested in seeing what'll be in this book of his. Can't wait...
>It's not just the solitary types, it's the big publishers, too. The Taunton Workbench book is full of benches, almost none of which have anything clamped to them, or help in the vises. I hear so much about how versatile such and such a vise or clamping method is, but noone seems to want to take pictures of actual work being done.
A plane is a plane, and we get pictures of gossamer shavings all the time. A bench is the place where the work happens. And inevitably there's some creatity and wild mojo involved in some part of a project. There's always something, for a detail, or an odd clamping. It's nice that people can build nice benches. But the bench is supposed to be a tool. The shaving is a result of a finely tuned plane, and it's evidence that it works as a tool. Where's the evidence that these benches work as well as they should?
I dunno, I guess this is devolving into a rant, and I didn't intend to rebut you so forcefully, I hopeyou'll forgive me. I've seen acres of pictures of sexy tools. I want to see sexy work. I want to see someone securing a really oddly shaped piece so that they can join it to something delicate. I want to see someone building complicated chairs, or performing what would otherwise be a really hairy glue-up, had it not been for... whatever. I yearn to see someone doing something truly involved, so I can see that yes, this bench is really something more than just a surface or a piece of eye candy. Or that the fixtures and hardware are really worth the time and money, and THIS is why.
You know, something to demonstrate that it's more than just a very pretty, expensive, and very stoutly built table.
>Not to worry James. We all need to rant occasionally and yours raises an interesting point.
As for why most of the magazines don't show stuff, I think it's because almost all of their photos are carefully staged after cleaning and dust removal. Pro photographers are really worried about dust in the air, dust on their lenses, etc. Personally I too would rather see the work being held in neat and unusual manners instead of just pristine photos.
>Well, so you schlep that thing into the studio (or the lighting setup to the bench which is not all that much easier), setup your lights, make sure the specular reflections off all the shiny objects we woodworkers like so much or just right, and then some galoot puts a big old board into the vice that give you nasty shadows all over (which means more fill-lights, reflectors, flags, scrims, snoots, barndoors, you name it). The alternative is of course completely flat (i.e. shadow less) light that is also extremely boring (after all you are trying to map 3 dimensional object into a 2 dimensional space).
Joel usually has interesting shots on the cover page of his catalog. Take a look at the highlights in Lee-Valley/Veritas' product shots and compare them to some of the smaller vendors' photographs. There is a world of a difference.
