Drawsharps In Stock

After a short period of being a tad low on stock, we've got a new batch of Drawsharps finished, packaged, and nearly ready to ship.

We've made a couple small changes to the way customers receive their Drawsharp. First, instead of gluing the diamond abrasive pads directly to the sleeves, we're now including two pieces of 3m brand double faced adhesive strips for that purpose. This isn't hardware-store variety tape. It's industrial stuff that we chose from a long list of specific parameters that would suit the Drawsharp. And it wasn't cheap. But it offers the distinct advantage of allowing us to get Drawsharps packaged and shipped quicker than before. The other change is to the stud at the bottom of each post. Customers will now assemble this part. We shot this little video to show the process.

Drawsharps are $84 and available on our store page as well as through several of our dealers.

Ten Feet Of Beech

Customer benches. We love them. Especially when people put their guts into them. If the word awesome hadn't been ruined by generation X, I'd use it here. Cody, your bench is succinct.

Dear Benchcrafted, 

I just wanted to say thanks for your advice and how much I like the vise hardware. The vises are awesome.

I finished the bench a few days ago and I love it. I must say it was quite the project and am glad to be able to say it is finished.

I've got over 300 hrs in time on the build.

The finished dimensions of the top are 10' in length 5" in thickness and 28" wide.

I stuck by the plans where I needed but as you can see sized a few things up.

Many thanks for providing high quality vise hardware to the woodworking community.

Sincerely,

Cody Armstrong

French Schools and Shops

Our public library flooded 6 years ago. All the books were ruined. It gave those in charge a chance to rebuild a library to "21st century" standards.

The result? No reference section. No microfilm. No out-of-print books. What was added? Treadmill-powered computers. A cafe with drive-up window (no joke), a young-adult section without books, outfitted with computers and video games, a bay of DVD-rental vending machines.

And the woodworking section? The bottom two shelves of my Jefferson bookcase at home rivals it. The old library had all the bound back-issues of Fine Woodworking, Krenov, Sloane, Nutting, Kingshott, etc. etc. They made no effort to replace any of these books. None. Want to do some research on local history? Look up an obituary? Find an old newspaper article? Sorry, we don't offer that here. But we can supply you with the latest issue of Weekly World News and a Grande Caramel Macchiatto Panchetta Panini.

What does the future look like for libraries? Who knows. But if our's is any example, it's not good. That's why I'm thankful for the internet. Transferal of knowledge is up to us now. Not that my library ever had any info on old French vocational schools, mind you. But if it weren't for the internet, much of this imagery would be out of reach, gathering dust in boxes and cabinets half a world away.

I gathered these images during our research for our Classic Leg Vise. Hope you enjoy them. We love them.

For the full gallery, click here: French Schools and Shops

Benchcrafted Classic Leg Vise - First Look

We've been hard at work getting the first run of our new Classic Leg Vise ready for sale. Our goal was to have loads of vises on the shelf ready to go, make a fancy announcement, throw open the gates, sell out, then retire to a private island in the Caribbean. I thinks its safe to say we'll get close to at least one of those. Fancy announcements are cheap and easy.

The reality is, we've been tweaking one aspect of the vise that we wanted to really get right. And its taking longer than we anticipated. But this week we nailed it. All that's left to do is get all the bits of fasteners kitted up and the vises packaged. We hope to be ready to start selling these by the end of the month.

We'll have more info on the Classic in the coming weeks, including pricing and availability. And maybe even a fancy announcement.