When I first became intrigued by hand-tool woodworking, I kept encountering people who said things such as: “Yes, but Moxon says jointer planes should have their cutters sharpened straight across – not curved.”
“Moxon says you should cut mortises this way.”
“Moxon says you should test a handsaw by bending it.”
As Jan Brady of “The Brady Bunch” might say: Moxon. Moxon. Moxon!
At the time, I figured I should really try to take a woodworking class with Joseph Moxon. He seemed to have the ear of the entire woodworking hand-tool community. As I soon found out, however, Moxon has been dead since 1691. Not even the long arm of Marc Adams would be able to get that guy to teach a class. Nor would Marc want to. Moxon was a printer and globe-maker by trade. Not a woodworker.
What Moxon did, however, was remarkable. He published the first ever English-language account of woodworking shop practice. He covered tools, techniques and general shop practice in a series of pamphlets titled “The Art of Joinery,” which were later combined with accounts he wrote about other trades into the seminal “Mechanick Exercises.”
So I snagged a reprinted copy of “Mechanick Exercises” and read it several times. It was slow-going. The English language of the 17th century transposed the letter “f” for the letter “s.” So the sentence “…so shall the bounds of your mortise be struck” reads as “fo fhall the bounds of your Mortefs be ftruck.” Plus the sentence structure of the time can be a maze for the modern mind.
Fourteen months ago, I began to update the text of the chapters that comprise “The Art of Joinery.” I cleaned up the transpositions, shortened the run-on sentences without changing the meanings, and I added notes in the text to help the reader. I split up Moxon’s plates so the drawing of the paring chisel is with the text about the paring chisel.
Then I added my own plain-spoken explanation of Moxon’s original text, which can be bedeviling at times. I tried to explain what was going on in each section of “The Art of Joinery,” and I illustrated Moxon’s techniques with more than 40 photos.
It’s not an academic book by any means – I’ll leave that to the people with more college degrees. The text I added is from the perspective of a modern woodworker seeking to understand historical shop practice and find techniques to make life easier. And I did indeed find some good stuff in Moxon, from using a fore plane properly to using spit to sharpen.
I’ve put it all in a 96-page book that is now at the printer in Maryland. This will be a hardbound 6” x 9” book with a linen cover and embossed letters. The interior pages will be Smythe sewn – meaning the pages will be sewn together instead of simply glued. The entire book will be in old-fashioned black and white.
The book will be $17 and will be available here at Lost Art Press and through a select few woodworking retailers. It will not be available through mass-market channels. All copies sold through the Lost Art Press web site will be signed, of course.
As soon as the book arrives in house later this fall, we’ll update the site.
— Christopher Schwarz
Wow that is impressive! Not even Marc Adams can get Joseph Moxon, but you’ve managed to get him to sign the books. Now that is something.
Thanks for working to keep this type of writing/knowledge alive and make it accessible.
You got Moxon to sign them? Sweet! 🙂 Looking forward to the volume, Chris.
Thanks for the heads up and for your hard work. Looking forward to reading it!
Looking forward to its printing, Chris.
I have looked in vain for what I consider a reasonable price. So I am pretty stoked about this.
Thanks for all this hard work.
Take care, Mike
Should I send my check now?
roy
I’m ready with the checkbook too! I think I know what Santa will leave under the tree for me, but I might have read it before he puts it there 😉
This if great! Look forward to getting a copy. Moxon’s sentence structure, punctuation, and spelling are problems only if you’re not a Shakespeare fan. I’ll also keep searching for an original text version as well. It will be nice to have my woodworking and Shakespeare hobbies overlap. In the world of Shakespeare scholarship, modern notes explaining the text often exceed the text itself. Perhaps you’ll be starting a similar trend in woodworking. Now, on to Diderot and Nicholson?
Can’t wait. Are you gonna take pre-orders?
Thanks for the show of support!
Our web site isn’t configured to allow us to take pre-orders I’m afraid.
But rest assured we will have thousands of these books available — enough for several years. So you’re certain to get one as soon as they are available.
Chris
Will it be available in Berea?
David,
I hope to bring some to Berea. But, to be fair, I imagine that selling books will low on my list of priorities that weekend. In any case, we’ll have plenty before and after the conference in case we don’t connect.
Chris
Moxon, Moxon, Moxon? Now we are hearing, "Schwartz, Schwartz, Schwartz." It’s all good, man!
I’m sort of an "academic" (using the word loosely.) I truly appreciate the effort to get back to primary, and especially historical sources. After the Roubo project, what’s next?
Mack
Mack,
The next book will probably be another primary source — but one that almost no one has heard of because there are only a few copies extant. I can’t say more than that at this point for competitive reasons.
Then I’m considering a book on handplanes.
Chris
Just out of curiosity (and because I have an unhealthy aversion to shipping costs), can you tell us which "select few woodworking retailers" will have the book in their shops?
Thanks!
It will be Lee Valley and Lie-Nielsen.
Shipping from us in the United States is via Media Mail and is $4.
Chris
Chris,
Just received the book today and it is another excellent piece of work by you. Great job!
Also, thanks for signing it as well ;0)
It is a wonderful book! I read a little at bedtime each night and then think about creating joints in bed instead of counting sheep. Although Moxon’s antiquated writing style is hard to digest, it slows my thinking down enough to really focus on what he’s trying to say and I find that I have learned a great deal about the fundamentals of woodworking. Thanks!