Lost Art Press will be offering signed copies of "Handplane Essentials" as soon as the book becomes available the first week in August.

The book, a 312-page hardback, is a compilation of all my writings on planes during the last decade from Popular Woodworking, Woodworking Magazine, The Fine Tool Journal, my blog at Woodworking Magazine, my blog here at Lost Art Press and the writing I have done for other web sites and the Lee Valley Tools newsletter.

Honestly, if you've kept up with all the publications and outlets above, you won't find much new in the book. In putting the text together I eliminated some redundancies, filled in some potholes and generally recast some of the articles so that everything made sense. I think it's a very good introduction to sharpening, bench planes and joinery planes. I didn't get into the moulding planes so much – I'm still not confident enough there to really write about it with any authority.

So I'm generally pleased with the result. The interior is going to feature sepia-toned photos like Woodworking Magazine (if you want a full-color version, we will sell you a box of crayons as well). The book's paper will be nice, as will the cloth-bound hardback cover and dust jacket. I'm also pleased to tell you that we negotiated hard to get this printed in the United States (in Ohio, actually).

Here's how the pricing and availability will work. Lost Art Press will lose some sales by telling you all this, but I'd rather just be honest with you.

Lost Art Press will be selling the book for the full retail price of $34.99 with free shipping. It will be signed by me (and by my daughter Katy as well if you please).

Right now my employer, F+W Media, is offering the book at a pre-sale discount until the end of July. It's $27.99 plus free shipping. Click here to get to their store.

Starting in August, F+W's price will return to $34.99 (plus free shipping) for six months. Lee Valley Tools will then be carrying it and will (almost certainly) sell it for less than full retail.

Amazon.com, Buy.com and other retail outlets will not be carrying the book until at least January 2010. Their websites might say they are going to carry it and discount it, but they are in error.

In any case, thanks for all your support. No matter where you buy the book it will help support the work we do and show there is a solid base of support for books on traditional tools.

As a way of saying thanks, you can download a copy of the introduction to the book, which will give you a flavor for its look.

HPE_FrontMatter.pdf (1.36 MB)

All the best,

— Christopher Schwarz

My city editor put down the phone, pursed her lips and looked at me, a scrawny and green 20-year-old newspaper intern.

"That was the Klan," she said. "They are pissed at you."

That summer I was an intern at my hometown paper, the Southwest Times Record, a small daily in Fort Smith, Ark. Most of that summer I wrote hard-hitting pieces about mutant chicken trading societies, Chamber of Commerce luncheons and the hot weather.

But all summer long I also worked on a series of articles about how the local public schools were still as segregated as they were in 1954. Still as segregated as they were when I went through the system. And so segregated that the local NAACP was considering a lawsuit.

After my stories ran, the Klan called the newsroom to ask about the New York Jew-boy reporter sent down by the ACLU to stir up the black population. And to tell me that I should watch my back.

I was terrified. And then I was furious. Those people didn't know me. I'd lived in that town since I was 5. I went to public elementary, junior high and high school there. I was a member of First Presbyterian Church. And I doubt the ACLU even knew my hometown existed.

This week I stumbled on the first woodworking chisel I ever bought. It's a Popular Mechanics 1/2" bevel-edge chisel I bought from Wal-Mart about four presidents ago. It was my only chisel for about eight years. But I took good care of it until I bought my first set of Marples.

I've forgotten how much I actually like that little chisel. Sure, the steel is as soft as the Pillsbury Dough Boy, and the handle is a lovely clear plastic. But that was the chisel I used to chop out my first dovetails. My first mortise. My first half-lap.

As I looked it over I noticed it was getting some rust on it. So I decided to bring it back to its former blue-light special glory. As I worked on the tool, my mind began to wander to the e-mail beatings I've been taking lately for some tool reviews I've written – reviews both positive and negative.

These whuppings come with the territory, but sometimes they do get to me. (Just like I'm sure my reviews occasionally annoy other people.)

As I honed the secondary bevel of the chisel this morning I held it up to the light and thought, "This is who I am."

I'm taking this chisel home tonight to give to my youngest daughter, Katy. It's not the best tool in the world, but it is a good place to start. And it does come with a lesson, one that I learned that summer day at the Southwest Times Record.

Despite my city editor's warnings that day, I walked out the front door of the paper to my car every day that summer instead of ducking out the door by the pressroom.

— Christopher Schwarz

This summer I'm building a few reproductions of pieces from the White Water Shaker Village that I will donate to the village's caretakers. I want these reproductions to be as faithful as possible, but I'm wondering just how far I can go on faith.

Take, for example, this 13'-long bench. It's all in walnut and nailed together with cut nails. The curves in the base are clearly cut with some sort of turning saw with a little rasp work behind. The notches for the aprons were sawn out.

So far, so good.

I think the top piece was milled on some sort of reciprocating saw. The marks on the underside are too regular to be pitsaw marks. They're not planer marks (like I've ever seen). And they are certainly not circular saw marks.

Is somehow reproducing these marks on the underside important? Or should I treat it like I would treat any non-show surface – fore plane it and call it done?

In other words, I want to use fairly authentic methods. I'm just not sure how far I should (or even can) take this.

We'll be publishing plans for four of these White Water pieces in Popular Woodworking and Woodworking Magazine in the coming year. This bench is the simplest project. The other three projects should get your heart thumping pretty hard.

— Christopher Schwarz

Sometimes you read old accounts of workshop practice where there’s a pot of raw linseed oil by the bench. Andre Roubo’s bench had a little swing-out pot of oil underneath the bench. Likely it was used to oil the soles of the planes or the plates of the saws to make them slide more easily.

Today I found another good use for an oil pot on the bench.

I just finished raising three panels by hand that will be dust panels between the drawers of a chest. Each panel is a single board of 17”-wide Eastern white pine. Raising the first two panels was a piece of cake. But the third one had a nasty knot on the corner.

The knot was denser than any maple I’ve worked and so raising that corner was slow going, and the results looked pretty raggy, too.

To make it easier to push my plane I lubricated the sole a few times with camellia oil. It helped, but it was like spitting on a forest fire, it wasn’t nearly enough.

So without really thinking I squirted the knot a few times with the oil. That made quite a difference, and I finished up the panel with a few more squirts and a few more strokes. Not only was the knot easier to cut, but the result looked much better, too.

I better buy another bottle of the oil.

— Christopher Schwarz

A couple years ago there was a kid in Iowa who was trying to learn to use hand tools. He had no teachers, just a few books and limited access to the Internet.

But he had a phone. So he’d call me and ask me questions for 30 minutes at a time. (Note to self: Get a 900-line for this. “Hey, I’m wearing a shop apron – and nothing else.”)

This kid’s first major crisis: Planing the top of a dresser. His iron was sharp. His plane was set correctly. His work was held firmly. Yet he couldn’t even get the tool to cut.

Diagnosis: Maple.

He was using rock maple as the wood for his first hand-tool project. I like maple and can get along with it fine. But it wouldn’t be my first pick for a wood to learn hand tools on.

I used to recommend walnut and poplar as good choices for beginning planers and sawyers. Both of those woods cut fairly easily with hand tools and aren’t stringy or hard or ring-porous or infused with silicates. (Ask me some time about the mouth-breather who insisted on using purpleheart on her first project, a birdhouse.)

This year, however, I have become smitten with Eastern white pine. It’s not common in the Midwest, but we came into a stash of it and I have been using it for everything possible. Unlike the yellow and white pine we get here, Eastern white cuts beautifully, planes easily and doesn’t seem as easy to mangle as the local stuff. Plus, the Eastern white moves less in service and (I think) it looks better.

On the downside, it’s quite lightweight and not nearly as strong as yellow pine or even the weirdo Swedish pine the local Borg is pushing.

But that, I figure, is just an engineering equation.

So this morning I’m building a complex frame-and-panel back for a five-drawer dresser. The back has six through-tenons, two blind ones and four floating panels.

I did a dry assembly of the stiles and rails right after lunch and everything looked nice and tight. So I took it apart to start fitting the panels when I snapped one of the tenons off like a Butterfinger bar.

I was too stunned to even curse. I don’t think I’ve ever snapped a tenon (by accident). The good news was that it was quick work to fetch a new piece and cut new tenons and mortises to replace the broken stick.

Note to self: Eastern white prefers 5/16”-thick tenons. But other than that, I think it’s the most hand-tool-friendly wood I've used.

— Christopher Schwarz