At 09:48 AM 1/22/00 +0100, William Jurgenson wrote:
>boxwood plane a day or two ago;  I would be curious where the plane
>was from and how big it really was. Boxwood doesn't get very big. I

I'm sitting here looking at an Auburn Tools coffin bodied smoother, 8 1/2 x
3 and an H. Chapin smoother that is 7 1/2 x 2 3/4 made of box wood.  Some
of the older boxwoods got fairly big...considering all the 100's of
thousands of boxwood rules that were made plus the fact that the boxing on
a wooden molder isn't cut with the grain but at an angle to the end
grain...to get 5 1/2 pieces of endgrain, you need a tree with at least 11"
of heartwood.

>Bear in mund that the bench vise and the German bench dog system are
>a mid nineteenth c.invention. Before that, the bench had a dog at the
>far end to plane against, a few holes for holdfasts in the top, and

I have to disagree with this...  I'm on the road tonite and don't have my
materials in front of me but if you are thinking of Roubo as a
source..remember he was 17th century.  I have seen enough benchs from at
least around the Revolutionary War period to disagree just based on my
observations.

Tony

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        Old tools..don't leave home without them
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