Issue No. 57 - Published April 19, 1890

Lately, people have been coming up to me and showing off ambitious projects. It's great. I love to hear about people punching above their weight at the workbench. For instance, two days ago I saw an early American pocket watch that was smuggled out of the Warsaw Ghetto restored to its former glory and keeping astoundingly accurate time. This afternoon, a visitor to our shop on vacation showed me photos of his baroque and neoclassical furniture projects, complete with ornamental bronze hardware cast in his own home-built foundry.

Bold forays into complex and difficult arenas of craft and production are the very spirit of Work and its contributors. Now that I have laid eyes on a year's worth of issues, I'm starting to see contemporary examples of that spirit more often. With a little luck, I'm hoping to be able to pair news of these activities with our weekly releases. Obviously I could use some help with this. If you know about any Work-related or Work-worthy goings on in the world today, please direct me to it the comments fields below. I'll try to write it up or pair links with pertinent, future issues.

Since I only came up with the idea a few minutes ago, I'm going to cheat a little just to get the ball rolling. Today's issue features a treatise on bandsaws that I'm sure will be of interest to a good portion of our regular readers. To up the ante though, I'm also going to direct your attention to Matthias Wandel's homemade bandsaw article at woodgears.ca.

I've been watching Mr. Wandel's site for quite a while now, and I've found plenty of interesting and helpful info. If you aren't familiar with woodgears.ca, you are in for a treat. If you are really fussy about your bandsaw setup, I think you'll get a kick out of comparing the remarks in Work to the considerations applied to the homemade bandsaw project. -TIM








Disclaimer: Articles in Work: The Illustrated Weekly Journal for Mechanics describe materials and methods that would not be considered safe or advisable today. We are not responsible for the content of these magazines, and cannot take any responsibility for anyone attempting projects or procedures described therein.

The first issue of Work was published on March 23rd, 1889. The goal of this project is to release digital copies of the individual issues starting on the same date in 2012, effectively republishing the materials 123 years to the day from their original release.

The original printing was on thin, inexpensive paper. There are many cases of uneven inking and bleed-through from the page behind. Our copies of Work come from bound library volumes of these issues and are subject to unfavorable trimming, missing covers, etc. To minimize harm to these fragile volumes, we've undertaken the task of scanning the books ourselves. We do considerable post processing of the scans to make them clear but please bear with us if a margin is clipped too close, or a few words are unreadable. We would like to thank James Vasile and Karl Fogel for their help in supplying us with a book scanner and generally enabling this project to get off the ground.

You are welcome to download, print, and pretty much do what you want with the scan for your own personal purposes. Feel free to post a link or a copy on your blog or website. All we ask is a link back to the original project and this blog. We are not answering requests for commercial downloads or reprinting at this time.

• Click to Download Vol.2 - No. 57 •