Casgliadau Arlein

Bench with wooden vice on East wall of shop. 6 legs 85.5" x 26" x 30.5".

Bench with a worktop made from two pieces of 50mm thick wood laid on top of each other. The lower board is wider than the top and extends beyond it at the back. Nailed to the lower board at the back is a strip of iron shaped into a semicircle. Fixed to the top of the worktop is a 360mm length of cleaner, newer looking wood (in line with the two semicircles made from iron strap) and a toothed metal tool. Also fixed to the top of the bench at one end is a metal vice with the accession number F69.200.193 painted on it. Two lengths of rough sawn 2"x2" have been nailed to the bottom of the worktop and these exted 230mm beyond the back. A 400mm long iron strip of iron, pointed at one end with three holes in it, has been bolted to the lengh of 2x2" on the RHS (as viewed from the front) underneath the worktop. The 2x2 used to support an extension to the bench to make it wider, this part is now detached. The bench has five legs, one of which as a threaded iron fitting fixed behind a large hole towoards the top of the leg where a vice used to be attached. There are holes in the other two legs on the front of the bench. The detached section of worktop from the back of the bench is made from a 2160 x 220 x 22mm piece of clean wooden plank with a length of 2x2" nailed to one side at one end. Fixed to the other side more towards the middle is a curved block of wood with a strip of iron bent into a semicircle nailed to it, matching the one on the main part of the bench. The bench seems to have been altered whilst in use, possibly several times. The worktop was probably a single thickness originally and made double thickness by removing the back half and fixing it to the top at the front. The leg that held the, now missing, vice appears to have been replaced whilst the bench was in use either at the same time or after the worktop was doubled in thickness.

Some of the alterations to the bench seem, from the condition of the wood and fixings, to have been made even more recently most probably after the bench entered the museum. One of the back legs (LHS) and the baten conecting the three front legs at the bottom are probably museum additions, and possibly the detached board used to extend the bench at the back. Unfortunaltely there seem to be no pictures of the bench in situ and so it is not known what the bench looked like prior to entering the museum. The fact that a vice from a different accession was found fixed to the top of the bench definitely indicates that the bench was used after entering the musuem. Possibly it was altered, along with F69.200.47, to make it suitable for use in the tinsmithing demonstration(s) carried out by Mr.G.H.Scammel.