Here is a link to a French woodworking video from 1912 that shows students building period chairs.The actual woodworking starts at 2:50, but the things leading up to it are worth a look. There is an interesting vise at 5:30, an unusual router/shaper at 6:50, and carving a 8:57.
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16 comments:
Wow, this is awesome Kari, thanks for linking it! Hundreds of details to assimilate. I'll have to watch this several times. Having just a built a Queen Anne foot stool, I want to build a QA side chair. The process shares many similarities to what they show in this video.
Steve, your foot stool is awesome. You posted an excellent tutorial on your site (as always).
Awesome. I love this stuff. That was a cool set up for marking out the shoulder on the tenons.
Thanks!
Fantastic find Kari. The tenoning fixture with the horizontal saw for cutting the shoulders is very nice. I think a lot of hand-tool centric woodworkers are not aware of just how many jigs and fixtures were used for mass production before the industrial revolution. Roubo is chock full of them.
Great video, the guy was warming his glue joints when picking up a pot of hide glue.
That kid was sure prying with that mortise chisel.
I have one of those vices and saws for making tenons, still haven't built a bilboquet.
Stephen
I wonder how many tacks that upholsterer accidentally swallows in a day. He sure had a mouth full.
That shaping machine was downright scary!
Thanks, Kari. That vertical shaper looks useful, but highly dangerous. Probably why there isn't a modern equivilant.
This is really good stuff! George Ellis, in "Modern Practical Joinery" (1903) shows a similar freehand spindle-moulder setup called a "dumpling block". I have only contemplated setting one up, and seeing it in action is not reassuring.
Great find Kari. Interesting to see the mixture of industrial technology and traditional hand tool skills blended together. Also sobering to think that all those boys would soon be pulled into the trenches of
WWI. Perhaps another reason many of these skills were so difficult to pass on, both France, England, and Germany lost an entire generation.
Thanks Kari!
Safety was not a great concern at the time! My great grandfather was 15 years old, living in France, in 1912, when he lost two fingers in a shop class. He could have been one of the students in this video! It is also sad to imagine that most of the students shown in this video went to war only two years later, and that most of them did not come back...
Wonderful video, I would have liked to attend these lessons
Thank you for all the comments. Lots of good tips in that video for sure. There are other similar videos on that site if you look around. I sure wish I'd paid more attention in my high school French class...
It hadn't occurred to me that those young boys would be going to war soon. That brings a whole other perspective to the film.
Julien, considering the lack of safety features on the power tools it's no wonder your grandfather was injured in shop class. We're fortunate that we have safer machinery to work with now.
Finally had some time to watch this and found all kinds of interesting stuff in this video.
All I can say is that my glue ups are not as calm and sedate looking as they are in the video.
There is much to learn from this one. Thanks for posting.
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