Sending one half of the (heavy) workbench top over the jointer
During my five day Roubo workbench building marathon with Jacob, I didn’t take much time to pick up the camera. But I did snap a few photos when I could. The days were rather long. Now that we’re home and the workbench is painfully close to completion, I thought I would share a few from our recent expedition.
Roubo-style Ash Workbench
The time has finally arrived. After almost two years of dreaming about building a workbench for woodworking, and sitting on a cache of wood for the project for nearly a year, we’re building a Roubo workbench. This style of bench is named after André Jacob Roubo, a French woodworker who lived during the 18th century and wrote a massive three volume series on the subject of working wood called L’Art du Menuisier (The Art of the Joiner).
One of his particular drawings of a workbench design has become newly popularized by the likes of Christopher Schwarz and other current day woodworkers. Lost Art Press, a small publishing outfit is actually translating Roubo’s writings into English. Schwarz’s book on workbenches and blog probably helped catapult the Roubo design to the point where you can find many, many images and videos of different people’s own Roubo workbench designs.
Having only been recently exposed to this type of workbench a couple of years ago, it’s hard to imagine wanting to build anything else. The beauty of the Roubo workbench lies in the sheer simplicity, versatility, functionality, and heft of the design.
In Part 2 of my ‘Build a Better Outdoor Cob Oven’ series, you’ll learn how to build a cob arch doorway, install a chimney, prepare a sand form, and build the actual cob dome of the oven.
This is where the real fun starts… Check it out below!
(Need a refresher from part 1 of the outdoor pizza oven series? Check it out here!)
Learn how to build this outdoor oven in this new how-to
Several years ago, I wrote about how to build (the now-infamous) $20 outdoor cob oven. That oven I built worked decently, produced a lot of delicious meals, and advanced my pizza baking fever to new heights. Since then, we’ve built several more outdoor pizza ovens, and each of them has been a great improvement upon the original.
This newer model is slightly bigger, allowing for easier access to the oven interior, it has even more food baking potential, and the insulation is vastly superior. This sucker gets hot, and stays hot… for a long, long time. The oven has a small roof shelter, protecting it against the weather, and a chimney keeps smoke out of the face of the fire tender. Best of all… the oven is still very inexpensive to build.
This is a very achievable, low cost, and effective oven that will not cost you thousands of dollars to build. Here’s a look at the new and improved outdoor pizza oven plans and how you can build your own.
More than four years after I posted my how to build your own cob oven for $20, it is still the most popular entry on The Year of Mud. Clearly there is a big audience out there interested in building DIY backyard ovens. Gotta love that.
Since building several other ovens after the original $20 incarnation, however, we’ve made some significant improvements to our design, increasing the efficiency, the ease of use, and the baking potential. Needless to say, it’s hard for me to recommend the outline for the former design, because the new oven is so much superior.
I have finally begun an updated series on how to build a better cob oven, which I will begin posting next week. If you’re dreaming about projects you can do once spring rolls around, be sure to tune back in!
Update: Here’s where you can find the Better Outdoor Pizza Oven Plans!
Up close look at one of the new sack back Windsor chairs
During our recent annual winter pilgrimage to Greg’s shop, I made two new Windsor chairs for our growing collection. The first year, I started with a simple hoop back, and last year I made a continuous arm Windsor. This winter, however, I decided to make two chairs simultaneously — both sack backs. This proved to be a really valuable learning lesson for me. Doing two at the same time really cemented in some of those many detailed steps more firmly. It was twice the practice in one go.
Here are the results.
Properly designing for thermal curtains results in a tidier look, and no loss of your view through the window
Though not often discussed, curtains are an important design consideration for any energy efficient house. Specifically, thermal curtains are the way to go if you want to help keep your house warm in winter (and cool in the summer), and save energy for heating and cooling. These insulative curtains require some forethought, and in a natural building such as a straw bale house with recessed windows, it’s important to think about how to hang curtains and curtain rods before your house is even ready to live in. How you decide to hang your curtains and rods will affect your window framing and trim, so you really want to plan ahead to ensure the most functional and aesthetically appealing result.
Here’s how we designed the windows in our straw bale house specifically for heavy thermal curtains.
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I can hardly recall such a dynamic, diverse year as 2014. 2014 marked a transition year for April and I, and I’m happy to say that it was a smooth one. It was our first year living in the Berea, Kentucky area, having left Dancing Rabbit in the fall of 2013. This move was not an insignificant event, as I spent seven full and formative years in the northeast Missouri ecovillage.
I like to think back on the year past and try to remember all that has happened — maintaining this blog is actually an important way for me to be able to do that. It’s as much about documenting what we’re up to as it is a way for me to preserve some of life’s countless details. Here I’ll share some of the notable events and experiences of 2014, the year of our transition into a new life outside of Berea, Kentucky.
When April mentioned the idea of building a little chest this winter, I thought, “Sure… that would be fun. Maybe we can use it like a coffee table, too. You know, throw books and our feet up on it.” Needless to say, I didn’t quite have the expectation of building a bomb-proof, beautiful piece of furniture.
Once we got the bug in our heads, and once Greg started showing off his amazing cherry wood supply, things started looking a bit different. We ended up finding a set of Shaker blanket chest plans we really liked, and all of a sudden the outlook was looking a lot more refined than I would have originally imagined.
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Ziggy oils the newly finished Shaker-style blanket chest
We’ve been having way too much fun for the past two weeks. April, Jacob, and I just spent the latter half of December with our great friend Greg Pennington of Hendersonville, TN. Greg is a world class Windsor chairmaker with a killer timber frame workshop to boot. When we met two winters ago, Greg graciously invited April and I to make chairs with him and so began on winter woodworking tradition. Since then we’ve learned a lot of new woodworking skills under his most expert guidance (though he would never claim any of his amazing skills as such himself.) This trip, we embarked on a pretty ambitious series of projects, which I’ll preview here!
Hi there, I’m Ziggy. In 2008, I launched The Year of Mud while building my first natural home. This blog is a collection of personal stories and experiences building with clay, straw, and wood over the past 15+ years. A few of the things that get me fired up are natural plasters, timber framing, & Japanese architecture. Since 2012, we’ve been hosting Natural Building Workshops so you can learn essential skills to build your own natural home.
