André Jacob Roubo

I was surprised to find that the Wiki Article on André Jacob Roubo was so scant, given that he published, in his day, one of the masterworks of the state of woodworking in late 18th century France.

 To quote:
He wrote a highly influential complete treatise on woodworking that covers practically all the associated trades. This multi-volume work, L'Art du Menuisier (The Art of the Joiner), published between 1769 and 1774 by the Académie des Sciences, contains sections and illustrations on: building carpentry, furniture making, and precious woodworking (ébénisterie), carriage making, and garden woodworking.

I watched an online episode of the The Woodwright's Workshop recently, and am inspired to build Roy Underhill's ||Roubo inspired Workbench from the original engraving.

Having spent some time reading 18th century  treatises on lute music of the period, the examples show more and more details after some time seriously considering the proportions, ratio and methods.

I'll need to acquire a top for this stout workbench, and being inspired by a grandmother's "waste not, want not" Depression-era upbringing, I hope to demonstrate that buy builing a workbench such as this, might allow someone interted in the idea that the old techniques and practices, of understanding one of the basic "building blocks" are FAR more sustainable than our current practice of using  our available resources for fast and quick.

An invaluable resource on Japanese Architecture and Art

A great resource for explaining Japenese art and architecture.
Here ...

A couple of useful tools ...

On the left is a 16 inch Makita beam saw and on the right is a regular 7 1/4 inch blade sidewinder, circular saw. Although the pic saw is around 30 lbs or so, it is relatively easy to handle although a healthy fear and respect for it is always in order.

 


This is a Makita Chain mortiser which is basically a little plunging chainsaw used to create mortises in beams. 

The word of the day ...

Axometric Projection:
There is a good Wikipedia article explaining how a 2d planar model can be rotated along an axes to create a 3d representation. It was interesting to me that this is not how photography or our eyes work and it is one of the methods that MC Escher expoited in his drawings.




 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axonometric_projection

Some of the people I've worked with

Here are a  few of the people and companies I've had the pleasure of working with over the last few years

Woodenshoe Timberframes
Davidson Log and Timber Frame Homes
Arman Design
Spearhead Timberworks
College of the Rockies

Allegory of Deduction

http://www.charpentiers.culture.fr/node/545

Cette allégorie de la Déduction (3e quart XVe s.), rarement présente dans les documents, est figurée par un personnage féminin entouré des attributs du charpentier : fil à plomb, hache, planches de bois… et aussi deux livres. On aperçoit un chantier de construction d’une charpente et d’une maison de bois, à l’extérieur.
Texte accompagnant l’enluminure (transcription de Lionel Dumarche) :
"Sans doute j'arrive tard et je suis lente à parler pour avoir droit à une place importante dans cette haute assemblée. Mais je suis pertinente, je fonctionne et suis bien utile pour achever toute belle œuvre. Celle-ci assemblée, il faut lui donner un titre, car plus une œuvre est excellentes de riches matériaux et de bel aspect, plus j'y mets une main prudente pour lui apporter gloire et titre, qui la structure et lui donne ses règles par des moyens si clairs et évidents qu'il n'y reste ni trou ni fente par lesquels elle pourrait être détruite"

Bibliothèque nationale de France, Département des manuscrits,
Français 1174, fol. 31v.

A useful glossary of French Scribe techniques

Here is a usefull glossary of terms of the French Scribed timberframed buildings.
http://www.traditionaltimberframe.com/V1_0/index.php?mod=glossary&ac=glossary


The majority of European traditionally timberframed buildings were constructed using a full sized plan lofted on a level surface, whereas in North America, after the 19th century, most buildings were constructed using a square or mill rule technique. Today, in shops using CNC machines, timbers are identically sized and joined because they are for the most part consistent in dimension. This was not the case in earlier times where inconsistently sized timbers were joined together to fit each other individually.

In many instances in a square rule system of layout, individual pieces such as knee braces are interchangeable whereas in the French Scribe system, each component is individually fitted to it's mating piece.