I took wood shop classes starting in junior high school back in the 1960s. I really enjoyed it; we had a wonderful shop teacher named Dana Hinckley. Mr. Hinckley had been a Maine backwoods guide for many years. I think he was in his 50s, always dressed in matching khaki work shirts and pants and wore flannel jackets and work boots. He smoked a pipe, was kind and soft spoken. He looked exactly like what I thought a Maine guide should look like. He never raised his voice or got too excited, even when I had a bowl I was turning come off the lathe (my fault) at a hundred miles an hour and go flying across the shop. I really flourished under him; he taught me how to use a lathe, jointer, table saw and other bench and hand tools. He let me tackle his “master class” bench project, normally reserved for upper classmen when I was in the eighth grade. It was a solid mahogany fireplace bench that could only be made with hand tools… no power tools allowed.  

The bench has a solid two inch top with angled legs that were mortised and tenoned in. At the time I didn’t even know what a mortise and tenon were, but I found out the best way by having to make them. I had to drill inch and a half diameter compound angle holes through the top with a bit brace for the legs. The top of the legs were cut with the same bit brace with a funky cutting bit that went over the end of the leg. It worked like a giant pencil sharpener… powered by me. The fluted undersides of the bench were done with an old fashioned spoke shave or draw knife. Even the tapered ends on the underside of the top were cut with a hand saw. It’s got to be the longest and most difficult cut I have ever made with a hand saw. I hand planed the tapered legs; that took a long time and had to be checked against a template over and over again during the many hours of planing. In many ways it remains one of the coolest things I have ever made. Kudos to Mr. Hinckley for thinking it up and letting us do it. I still have it. It’s just as rugged today as when I first made it. Yes, it definitely needs to be refinished; it has lots of dings and scratches and the original shellac has pretty much worn off. But, it is 57 years old and a bonafide antique… that I built when I was twelve.

I’ve included two photographs of the bench. The above shows the top with hand drilled holes for the mortise and tenon legs. The photo below better shows the tapered legs and underside end taper and the spoke shaved detail.