While I'm enjoying the food and culture of London and Paris this week with my wife and girls, I have squeezed in some serious work for Lost Art Press. In London, Maddy and I turned up two antique English woodworking books (one from 1875) that I have never seen in the United States.

One is quite promising and features plans for a treadle table saw and an absolutely ingenious freestanding leg vise. The writing is also delightful -- the author mentions that he has used the leg vise for chaining up a monkey and a trained squirrel. No lie.

I also spent an afternoon in London's Victoria & Albert Museum, which I have been writing about all week and inspired several forthcoming entries about the English Arts & Crafts movement.

In Paris, Lucy and I spent today soaking in some impressionist paintings (for her) and stunning Art Deco and Art Nouveau furniture and housewares at the Musée d'Orsay. Sadly, I couldn't take photos at the M.O., as the locals call it, because American woodworkers need an education in Deco and Nouveau.

But the highlight of the trip was a brief visit to the Librarie du Camée at 70 rue Saint-André-des-Arts. This bookstore is surrounded by art galleries and other bookstores and feels so much more like the Paris of your imagination than the Paris surrounding the monuments (I wanted to put a gun in my mouth at Versailles).

The store is about the size of a half-decent American closet, but is absolutely crammed with books dealing with traditional crafts, including housewares, tools, horology, textiles and even making perfume. And, of course, there is a large section devoted to woodworking.

I spent about an hour going over all the shelves. I could have dropped about 1,000 Euros without regret, but I restrained myself (for now). Instead I picked up some more modern books so I can get my rusty French skills back on track.

Two volumes were a reprint of "Menuisier En Baitiments," an 1882 book describing the craft in great detail, including many plates I've never seen. I also bought a new book, "Les Rabots: Histoire, Technique, Typologie, Collection" by Pierre Bouillot and Xavier Chatellard, which is an enormous and comprehensive book on Continental handplanes of all types. And I bought a third book -- not a reprint -- describing machine and hand woodworking operations circa 1965.

Also hanging out in the closet was a husband and wife team from Washington, D.C., who tipped me off to a tool museum and library that I'll have to visit during my next visit to Europe in September.

Then it was off to get some iced coffee and start devouring the books. Right now, it's a bit like reading "Riddley Walker," but I'll get my French back up to speed.

— Christopher Schwarz

The Victoria & Albert Museum in London has some great furniture that's squirreled away amongst the tapestries, sculpture and ceramics. Some of the pieces that I find most amazing (such as one of the earliest Morris chairs made by Morris & Co.) are tucked away in dark corners behind other objects.

But one of the personally most appealing pieces in the museum gets a lot of attention. It's one of the first free-standing bookcases ever built, which shares an exhibit with a very early gate-leg table, caned chair and tall case clock.

According to the museum's account, the first free-standing bookcase know was built for diarist and Naval administrator Samuel Pepys in 1666. The bookcases are shown clearly in his library, though I am not sure if they are mentioned in his diary.

The oak bookcase at the Victoria & Albert was built about 1695, probably for William Blathwayt, also a civil servant. The bookcases are similar in construction to the ones in Pepys's library. The bookcase is in four pieces for easy assembly on-site (though the museum description did not say what the four pieces were -- my guess would be plinth, lower case, upper case and top cap).

The doors are mullioned, which was all the rage at the time with the advent of sash windows. Each piece of glass is individually set into the frame. And the shelves are adjustable to accommodate different sizes of books.

After learning about a lot of forms of furniture that "evolved" through history, it's almost shocking to see a new form that springs forth almost fully formed.

The piece was easily 8' tall -- that's probably a bit too much for modern homes. But still, wouldn't it be cool to build one like this for your woodworking books?

— Christopher Schwarz

I wasn't born or raised in Cincinnati, but I feel a deep kinship with the city and its incredibly rich history with the decorative arts, including furniture.

The city was a hotbed of decorative carving in the 19th century, with a world-class school devoted to carving that was dominated by women. Furniture-wise, the city experienced an intense Asian-inspired burst of creativity in the 1880s that resulted in many furniture companies here producing Asian-inspired furniture that was sold all over North America. The Greene Brothers were born here. Rookwood Pottery was founded here -- and is still here and making objects of intense beauty.

And we had the Shop of the Crafters.

Now, if you are a fan of Arts & Crafts furniture, you might have heard of this shop, which is now beneath a highway I drive on every morning on my way to work. The Shop of the Crafters was different than all the assorted Stickleys that populated New York.

The output of the Shop of the Crafters was unique because of its inlay, European influence and profound unevenness. In the Cincinnati Art Museum, there is a display of some of the shop's work. On the left is a beautiful china cabinet that delights you the more you stare at it. On the right is a clock that looks like it was made with home center materials.

I have owned a Shop of the Crafters Morris chair since I was 23, and it is one of my most favorite tangible objects. I bought it from an antiques warehouse in South Carolina for $335. They had a big scarecrow sitting in it and the cushions were green leatherette covered in the ugliest flowers you've ever seen.

But I scrimped and saved for that chair (we qualified for Food Stamps at the time) and it is the first thing you'll see when you walk into our house.

Today Lucy, Katy and I went to the Cincinnati Art Museum and I renewed my love affair with many of the decorative objects in their collection. If you come to Woodworking in America this fall, I hope you'll take some time out to visit this absolute jewel box of a museum. Admission is free (thanks to the sweat and blood of me and my co-workers). But the wankers now charge for parking.

— Christopher Schwarz

I'm good with computers. I'm good with CAD. And I'm good with Google SketchUp. Still, Robert W. Lang has me beat by a mile.

His new eBook, "Woodworker's Guide to SketchUp," is so far ahead of anything I've read before that it is in a class by itself. It begins by teaching you the basic strokes – even if you've never used SketchUp you'll be in fine fettle. But it takes you so far so fast, you'll wonder why no one ever conceived of this sort of product before.

The genius of  "Woodworker's Guide to SketchUp" is that it exploits every iota of its medium to make the process of learning SketchUp – the greatest free gift to woodworkers ever – as easy as possible.

Yes, there is text. And screen shots of the important steps that lead to a proper drawing. But the real killer is the short bursts of video that are embedded in the text. Sometimes when you need to see motion, Lang has created short movies that elegantly show you how to create a moulding or a turned part in SketchUp – something that is hard to explain with a static medium.

For Woodworkers – Really and Truly
The other big plus to this eBook – which is available on CD – is that it is totally unlike the tutorials offered by Google. Google's short video tutorials are designed for people who are building cities or (at the least) houses. Building furniture is easy with SketchUp, just not with Google's instructions.

"Woodworker's Guide to SketchUp" is all about woodworking – building furniture-scale components, mouldings, turnings, cutting lists and the like with no silly trees or pitched roofs and bushes. Want to build a living room floorplan with square corners? The Google directions will do fine. Want to make cabriole legs, cabinets, bookshelves, built-ins and frame-and-panel doors? You need Lang's new CD.

He shows you stuff that Google doesn't even think to show you. Make dovetailed drawers, coped-stick doors – then alter those basic components with just a few clicks and drags to suit your needs.

The skeptical among you might be thinking that I'm writing this review because I work with Lang and that he's paying me off. Nothing could be farther from the truth. He handed me his CD to review it for technical errors, and I became totally sucked into the text and have spent the last three nights studying the text, looking at the drawings and marveling at the short videos.

Heck, my parent company doesn't even carry this CD – Lang has written and published it on his own – so I have no financial interest in the product. But I do have two $20 bills in my pocket, which I plan to lay on his desk in the morning in exchange for this CD.

You, however, don't have to pay as much. Until July 1 you can order this CD from Lang's web site for $29.95 with free shipping in the United States and Canada. It is absolutely the best money you will spend on improving your woodworking all year. For less than the cost of a router bit, you will be able to draw anything your brain imagines and transform it until you can build it in wood, steel and brass.

I rarely say this: Buy this. Cash in your pennies, sell some plasma and just buy it. "Woodworker's Guide to SketchUp" is a mind-blowing revelation for anyone who wants to design simple or complex projects using this free design software.

Visit Lang's Craftsmanplans.com web site to order the CD.

— Christopher Schwarz

I've hesitated to write this blog entry because it will seem self-serving. But by now, all the people who visit this blog have made a decision. Either you've bought "The Joiner and Cabinet Maker" or you haven't.

So I'm not trying to change your mind about the book. I really don't care either way if you buy it. In fact, if you want to borrow my copy to read it, drop me a line. I trust woodworkers to send it back.

Today, April 4, is one year to the day that I threw myself into this project like a virgin into a volcano. I'd read the original 1839 text about three or four times. I'd bought $300 worth of white pine and another $300 of black cherry harvested from an Indiana cemetery. (Yes, I do worry that the wood is cursed.)

As I stood before the pile of wood in the shop I wondered if I was doing the right thing. It would be so much easier just to republish the original 1839 text with some quick historical notes. That finished book could be at the printer in a matter of a couple weeks. Instead, I thought it would be a good idea to test the original text by rebuilding the three projects by hand, just as Thomas – the hero of the book – did.

There was no guarantee that I'd learn anything from the process. In fact, there really wasn't anything presented in the 1839 text that I didn't already know how to do quite well by hand – mortising, tenoning, dovetails, stock prep, carcase construction. I've been comfortable with all those hand operations for some time.

So I was looking for something else when I started slicing into the pine to make the Packing Box, the first project in "The Joiner and Cabinet Maker." But I didn't quite know what.

Let me spoil the ending: I did learn something that I now carry with me every day. But I didn't realize it until the book was published and mailed out to readers. My little moment of insight came months later when I was building a reproduction of a small side table for the White Water Shaker Village.

Unlike when building projects for "The Joiner and Cabinet Maker," there were no "rules" about how this Shaker table got built. I could crank up the CNC machine (if I had one) and barf out the table. But I didn't take the machine route. Sure, I used a couple machines to get the legs into shape. Those were a nightmare.

But almost everything else was by hand. Why? Because I knew this table had something to teach me, even though I had no idea what that something was.

I know this is starting to sound like an Escher drawing so let me short-circuit the spiral. Hand skills develop differently than machine skills. I can say this because I have both. Hand skills develop in strange ways that aren't linear.

When you learn to saw – really flipping saw – you learn something else other than tracking a line. You learn what perpendicular is. Not theoretical perpendicular. Real gut-check perpendicular. You can look at anything, and and your perpendicular senses start tingling when things are just right.

And that makes you awesome with a chisel, moulding planes and the brace. Learn to saw, and the quality of your mortises take off.

Oh and so does your ability to prepare stock by hand. Once you know perpendicular, you quickly learn flat and you learn to sense right angles. So stock prep becomes easier. You don't need to try your stock with winding sticks as much, you can feel, hear and quickly see when your stock is twisted, cupped or bowed.

So "The Joiner and Cabinet Maker" made me a junky for this stuff. Somewhere out there are a set of tasks that will unlock my ability to saw curves the way I want to saw curves. So when it came time to build my next workbench, I decided to give up the machines as much as possible. Not because of something about personal hand-tool purity. Far from it.

I just want to be better than you. And this is the fastest way to get there.

— Christopher Schwarz

I never solicit reviews of my work. In this business, that is called "logrolling" – I'll pretend to enjoy your book if you pretend to enjoy mine.

Most of the crap on the backs of books is logrolling. Ignore it.

When we get an honest review from someone who has taken the time to really read the book, think about it and write down their thoughts, we want to share it. Simon St.Laurent wrote a detailed review of "The Joiner and Cabinet Maker" for WoodCentral.com that was posted today. I haven't seen as thoughtful a review of our work to date.

I spent about a year of my life reading, researching, building and writing the text that accompanies "The Joiner and Cabinet Maker" with one hope. That someone, anyone, would understand why this book was important. How its grounding in 1839 is still relevant in 2010. And what we as woodworkers can take away from the experiences of the fictional apprentice named Thomas W.

Don't be fooled. Simon's review isn't a gush-fest. He's thought about these issues as much as we have. And for that reason, his review is definitely worth a close read.

Check out the review here.

— Christopher Schwarz

"To Make As Perfectly As Possible" by Donald C. Williams and Michele P. Pagan

Andre Roubo's 1769 "L'Art du Menusier" is one of the most important Western works on woodworking. Roubo, a learned man and a Master Cabinetmaker, chronicled the craft and its tools from the unique perspective of a practicing menusier (woodworker). Yet until now his five-volume masterwork has never been translated into English.

Lost Art Press is pleased to announce that we will publish the first of two volumes of Roubo in 2011 (the second in 2013) that have been translated into English and annotated by a special three-person team that possesses unique knowledge of the history of woodworking and the language, history, craft and skills of 18th-century France. Our title for these volumes, "To Make as Perfectly as Possible," is taken from a phrase Roubo used repeatedly in his exhortations to excellence.

As a result, these two volumes – one on marquetry and the other on furniture making – will be more than a simple transliteration of the text. These books aim to capture the spirit and intent of Roubo, explain the processes in language that a modern woodworker can understand and (in some cases) fill in the gaps of knowledge that Roubo assumed his readers would have.

Work on this project is well underway. And after reading more than 80 pages of the team's initial work, I can tell you that it is mind-blowing and is easily the most important publishing project I have ever been involved in.

The Team and its Work
The translation process begins with Michele P. Pagan, a Washington, D.C.,-based textiles conservator with more than 20 years experience in preservation of historic materials. Ms. Pagan has previously translated conservation and other historical and technical materials privately for colleagues.

Pagan translates Roubo as verbatim as possible, making no alterations to the original syntax unless that renders it incomprehensible. This is the best way to capture both the information and the flavor of the original.

Then the text goes to Donald C. Williams, an internationally recognized furniture conservator, educator, writer and scholar who has been employed for more than two decades by the nation’s largest cultural institution in Washington, D.C. He is the co-author of the highly successful "Saving Stuff" (Fireside: Simon & Schuster, 2005), and is an expert furniture-maker, marqueter and finisher (his specialty is shellac).

Williams edits the text, reconfiguring it as much as necessary to make it readable to an artisan of the 21st century. He is not rewriting Roubo, but merely modifying it enough to make it comprehensible and read smoothly. He also inserts explanations of some of Roubo's processes. Readers of this blog may be most familiar with his writings on historic finishes (especially shellac) and historical tool marks.

After a couple rounds of editing, the manuscript then goes to his colleague Philippe Lafargue who trained as a traditional chair maker at the Ecole Boulle in Paris. He is well-versed in the arcane jargon of ancient French cabinetmaking, which is fortunate since some of the phrases Roubo used are simply untranslatable otherwise. Lafargue reviews the result from the perspective of a native Frenchman and historical craftsman to make sure the new English version would meet with Roubo’s approval.

In addition to this, Williams is constructing tools and exercises contained in Roubo, combining photos with new essays on the making and using of the tools, and explaining processes that Roubo glosses over.

The Result
Lost Art Press will publish two large-format hardbound volumes (the exact size has not been established), on acid-free paper with Smyth-sewn signatures. Like all Lost Art Press books, these will be produced entirely in the United States, from production to printing to binding. We have not yet determined the price.

The volumes will feature replicas of the artful original plates, plus the translated text with details of the plates inserted into the text at the appropriate place.

As this project advances we will keep you posted here on this blog. I've already received two extensive chapters for review and am practically sick that I cannot tell you everything I've learned so far. But I guarantee this: It will be worth the wait.

When we first spoke of this project, Williams stated the team’s goal as, “… to let the reader practically experience the sounds of the saws and fragrance of the wood shavings and glue pot in the shops where Roubo worked.”

They have succeeded.

— Christopher Schwarz

We now have 26 leather-bound copies of "The Joiner and Cabinet Maker" available for sale that will be individually lettered, signed by both Joel Moskowitz and myself and include the DVD in a sleeve that can be affixed to the book.

The leather-bound edition is $165 plus $8.50 for priority mail shipping anywhere in the United States. (Foreign orders will cost more for shipping. Contact Sharon at sharon@lostartpress.com for a quote.)

This edition is quite special. I picked up the 26 copies on Wednesday from the bindery, which is located in the basement of the Ohio Book Store, a Cincinnati institution since 1940. The two brothers who work there, Jim and Michael Fallon, have been binding books using traditional methods and materials for more than 20 years. (Their father owns Ohio Book Store.)

When I picked up the books Michael gave us a tour of the bindery and the processes he used to take our unbound copies of "The Joiner and Cabinet Maker" and add marbled end sheets, stout boards, a hand-aged leather cover and the gold lettering on the cover and spine.

The process uses many 19th- and early 20th-century machines (one machine was clearly once attached to a line shaft), plus many traditional tools and materials, such as hide glue and simple knives, and modern ones, such as PVA.

The 26 unbound editions had to be trimmed slightly to tidy up the edges, some of which were damaged in shipment. The books were trimmed with the guillotine. Then the books were taken to the rounder machine to have the spines rounded. This curved shape on the spine is a traditional touch and is done by pressing the spine against bar that squeezes the book, allowing the operator to shape the book to the desired shape.

A second machine squeezes the spine again to create a lip for the boards. Then the leather is trimmed to size and thickness (a tricky process that involves skilled handwork at the corners). Then the book is assembled and pressed overnight.

The foil lettering is added to the spine and cover by first creating a stamp using a Ludlow machine, which casts the stamp from lead – much like an old Linotype machine. The slug is then chucked into an arbor press. The press first debosses the leather (which simply creates an impression). Then the foil is inserted and the book is stamped again.

The work the Fallons do is very nice – I looked at a lot of their volumes before selecting them to bind these copies of "The Joiner and Cabinet Maker." And if you have binding needs of your own, I highly recommend them. The prices are reasonable – I shopped around – they are fast, easy to work with and do jobs for people all over the country.

For those of you who can afford a leather-bound edition of this book, I can promise you that you will be impressed by the craftsmanship – you'll find that the same care that we put into writing the book is also in the binding job.

— Christopher Schwarz

I'm a fairly good instructor, but there are some things I just cannot teach.

When I work with a student who keeps saying: "That's good enough" as they put a project together, I despair. When they say: "This is just a classroom experience," I freak out (inside).

The way I look at woodworking is that we get only one chance to get things right. Not close enough. Right. With most things in life I'm an "I'm OK, you're OK" kind of person, but not with woodworking. Either it's sharp or it's dull. Either the joint is tight or it's trash. Either the toolmarks are gone or they aren't.

How can you teach that? I point out problems, gaps, toolmarks, but either they can see it or they cannot at that point in their lives. (Be assured that I think that sometimes people have to be ready to receive the message. And people change.)

So today, my daughter Katy and I started building a version of the Packing Box from "The Joiner and Cabinet Maker." This was Katy's idea. She volunteered to build a box for her third-grade class that would hold the class's craft supplies. And she picked out the Packing Box as the ideal form (with hinges, a hasp and chains).

So today we trekked to my office to pick over the pine in the racks and get a good start.

I decided to introduce her to the machines today, including the jointer and planer. She wasn't going to operate them, but she was going to understand how they worked. So we picked our wood, cut it to rough length and started milling it on the machines. I pushed. She caught.

Immediately chips started flying in my face. The dust collector was clogged.

So we stopped what we were doing and flushed the sucker out. I took the 55-gallon bin out to the dumpster. When I returned, Katy had swept up the entire area and deposited things in the garbage. It was at that moment I knew this was going to be a good day.

We milled all her stock, and she would settle for nothing less than correct. She adjusted the rip fence on the table saw to exactly 5" (I did the ripping). When we milled the joints for the top and bottom panel, she could spy every gap and send me back to the jointer to fix the error.

When the panels went together, she adjusted all four boards in the glue-up. They were as flush as a veteran cabinetmaker's. I didn't even have to tell her what to do. She pushed the boards around until they were dead flush.

She pre-drilled, glued and nailed the entire carcase together by herself. I was only there to hold the boards. She became frustrated when one of the 16 cut nails split the end grain a bit.

"We have to start over," she said.

"No, I'll show you how to fix it," I replied.

She wanted it done right. She didn't want to cut corners. She wanted to do it herself. I can't teach that. After four hours of hard work (she was drifting off to sleep over dinner), she asked: "Can we attach the bottom tonight?" I told her it would be better to wait 24 hours for the glue to cure. She replied: "I can clean the shop."

I'm sorry to gloat here about my daughter, but this day was the best Christmas present I got.

— Christopher Schwarz

"A book on cheap paper does not convince. It is not prized, it is like a wheezy doctor with pigtail tobacco breath, who needs a manicure."

— Elbert Hubbard

One of my prized possessions does nothing but make me angry.

It's an autographed copy of Kurt Vonnegut's "Deadeye Dick" that's signed: "And for Chris. Kurt Vonnegut." What ticks me off is that the paperback itself is disintegrating. The binding is falling apart. The pages are yellowing, fragile and feel like they are disappearing into the air.

I'm almost afraid to pick it up and read it. And it's one of my favorite books.

When we publish a book here at Lost Art Press, we want to make sure it outlives us. We use acid-free paper; we get the book's signatures sewn and glued. We use thick boards covered in cloth.

And now we've gone over the top.

When we sent "The Joiner and Cabinet Maker" to the printer in Pennsylvania, we asked to keep any leftover copies from the print run without the hardback boards. We got a few boxes of these spineless book guts, and they have been sitting in my basement since November.

Recently I took some to the Ohio Book Store in downtown Cincinnati, which has a binding division that specializes in restoration work and creating fine volumes for libraries and private collectors. The work of the three restoration specialists there was superb, so I asked them to finish these books like a mid-19th-century volume.

The result is beautiful.

What you see here in the photos is aged calfskin on heavy boards with marbled endsheets. The spine of the book is shaped to give it a nice curve, much like high-quality vintage books. The cover and spine are hand lettered in gold.

It is a delight, both to look at and read in this form.

We've asked Ohio Book to bind 26 of these books like this, which we'll offer for sale here and on the Tools for Working Wood web site. These books will be signed by me and Joel Moskowitz (the other modern author of the book). They will include the DVD, which will be glued into a sleeve at the back of the book. And each book will be lettered ("A" through "Z") and marked with the year, 2009.

The book should be available in a couple weeks, so save your pennies. Price: $165.

Believe me, this isn't about making money. The profit margin on this kind of hand work is pretty slim. But because we thought that offering a vintage binding on this important book would be a cool thing for our libraries, we thought you might feel the same way.

So if "Joiner and Cabinet Maker" ever does become one of your favorite things (and it's fast becoming one of mine) you can be sure that it will be around long enough to also become a favorite thing of your grandchildren.

— Christopher Schwarz

"Hand-covered books break up friendships. You loan a hand-covered book to a friend and when he doesn't return it you get mad at him. It makes you mean and petty. But twenty-five cent books are different."

— John Steinbeck

The first thing I need to do is apologize to almost everyone reading these words.

Since January 2009 (well, in truth some time before then) I began work on "The Joiner and Cabinet Maker" and have been neglecting almost every other aspect of my life to get it done to the best of my ability.

So here goes:

To the readers of this blog, Popular Woodworking and Woodworking Magazine, I'm sorry I've been such a slacker about answering e-mails and phone calls. In my mind, anyone who takes the trouble to write deserves the same effort at a response. Yeah, I get a ton of e-mail, but I don't mind. What I do mind is when I have to rush through my mail and give answers that are superficial or that pass the buck to someone else. I've not been the editor that you deserve since January, I'm afraid.

To my employer and co-workers, I'm sorry I've been bleary-eyed and (a bit more) dim-witted and wrung-out. This book has commanded a lot of mental and physical energy. Staying focused on a single task for months on end takes its toll. And building stuff entirely by hand (with a fierce deadline) has worn me out. With this book behind me, I know I'll be easier to work with.

And to my family, I'm sorry I've been chained to my workbench and laptop since the day I embarked on this book. I've missed too many events at school, too much homework and too many of the day-to-day moments of growing up. Even as I write this I'm missing out on helping out on Spanish homework (even though I only know "burrito," burro" and "donde esta de casa de pepe").

But now, it's all over. The book "The Joiner and Cabinet Maker" is done and is on its way to customers. Is it perfect? No. I can think of at least six things I'd change if I could turn the clock back. Am I happy with the book? Well, you're a woodworker. You know how these things are. It takes some time to figure out how much you like a project you've built. You have to live with it for awhile.

Is it the best I could do? To that I can say, yes. Despite its flaws (which I'll be writing about in an honest fashion in the weeks to come), I think it's worth reading if you are interested in pre-industrial history, hand-tool woodworking or traditional casework.

Everyone who worked on this book did their best, from Joel Moskowitz, who spent his life finding the original "Joiner and Cabinet Maker" book and researching the time period. To Megan Fitzpatrick, who edited every word we wrote. To Tim Corbett, who designed the cover. To John and Sharon Hoffman, who right now are mailing out hundreds of copies to customers. And to my family, who lets me build and type and read and travel to my heart's content.

And to all of you who have ordered the book sight-unseen, thanks. And to those of you who are bound to read the book in the coming months, I hope "The Joiner and Cabinet Maker" has the profound same effect on you as it did on me.

— Christopher Schwarz

P.S. I almost forgot the reason for this post. If you'd like to order a signed copy of "The Joiner and Cabinet Maker," click here. (I'd starve if my career were in marketing.)

Our printer has informed us that our new book "The Joiner and Cabinet Maker" will ship to us on Oct. 29 or 30, which means we should start shipping all the pre-orders to customers next week.

If you filled out a pre-order form, you will receive an e-mail from us next week where we will get your credit card information and ask if you want to also receive the companion DVD. You can read more about the DVD here.

We'll be selling this DVD separate from the book for $10. Or you can buy the book bundled with the DVD for $34. And you'll be able to buy the book alone for $29.

The other fun news is that the first 900 orders for "The Joiner and Cabinet Maker" will also receive a free temporary tattoo, shown on one of my daughter's arms above. (I would show the tattoo that's on my arm, but it's a bit too furry for a family-friendly blog.) The tattoos are 1-1/4" wide and 2-1/4" tall. They feature the dividers shown in Joseph Moxon's "The Art of Joinery."

And thanks to all of you who have pre-ordered our new book. I think you're going to enjoy the book as much as we have.

— Christopher Schwarz

Now you can pre-order a copy of "The Joiner and Cabinet Maker" signed by me. By pre-ordering the book today for $29 (plus $5 shipping in the United States), you'll get one of the first copies of this landmark new woodworking book. But, in true Lost Art Press fashion, you will not be charged (or even asked for a credit card number) until the book is available and ready to ship.

In other words, you cannot lose.

Click here to visit our pre-order form. Click below to download an excerpt of the original text (it's different than what is posted at Tools for Working Wood).

Preview_Joiner_&_Cabinet_Maker_LAP.pdf (998.55 KB)

Or read on....

Right now we're making the final arrangements with the printer, but the book is complete and we're just waiting for some time on a printing press. I'm trying to get back to my normal life, and I'm sure that Joel Moskowitz at Tools for Working Wood is doing the same thing.

If we were dumb enough to conduct a true tally of hours Joel and I spent on this book, plus the money for the wood, hardware, finish, a few critical woodworking tools and scanning services, then our wives would surely ask us to take up a more-profitable sideline, such as selling our plasma.

But believe me, we're not complaining. This book was tremendous fun for us to piece together, from the very early stages of researching the original text of “The Joiner and Cabinet Maker” to the eight full months of poring over old texts, building and writing that followed.

The real reason we published this little book is because we were both so excited when we first read the text of “The Joiner and Cabinet Maker” that we wanted to share it with other woodworkers who were as enthusiastic about history and hand-tool woodworking as we are. You are the people who sustain us in our day jobs. You buy tools from Joel at Tools for Working Wood and Gramercy Tools. You buy magazines and books from me at Popular Woodworking, Woodworking Magazine and Lost Art Press.

And after many years of working with our customers, we were certain that you would find the contents of “The Joiner and Cabinet Maker” as thrilling as a beach novel.

Within this small and obscure 1839 book is the direct evidence for how many day-to-day tasks were executed in an 18th- and early 19th-century English workshop. Told through the tale of a fictional lad named Thomas, it is a remarkable account of many aspects of the apprentice system and how basic skills were conveyed. Here is a sample:

• Dovetailing: See exactly how the joints were laid out, cut and assembled, including 19th-century advice on fitting the joint that should prove helpful to 21st-century woodworkers.

• The basic toolkit: By modern standard, the projects in “The Joiner and Cabinet Maker” were built with surprisingly few tools. Discover what the core kit is and how to stretch your tools to accomplish more.

• Case construction and vernacular furniture forms. The three projects presented in “The Joiner and Cabinet Maker” aren’t high-style urban pieces. Instead, they are simpler forms with less ornamentation that look surprisingly contemporary. However, the three projects in this book form the backbone of cutting traditional case joinery by hand and are the foundation for every form of furniture, from Shaker to Rococo.

• Tool-buying decisions. Find out how 19th-century craftsmen purchased tools. Did they scrape by and improvise, did they purchase the most expensive tools available or did they perhaps choose a third path?

Is “The Joiner and Cabinet Maker” the Rosetta Stone of early woodworking? Hardly. There still are many unanswered questions about how some basic and many advanced operations were performed. The book doesn’t even mention moulding planes or carving, for example.

But this book is an excellent place to begin – both for hand-tool woodworkers who want to commence their journey and for experienced woodworkers who want a sense of how their ancestors were trained to work so productively. Our edition of this book begins with a chapter written by Joel that provides a snapshot of England and the state of woodworking in the 19th century. That’s followed by the original text, which we have reset in a larger font but left otherwise unaltered. Joel has provided footnotes throughout the original text that will help explain the significance of what you are reading. Next are chapters that I wrote that detail how to build the three projects. He also compares the techniques in the book with hand-tool techniques that have either developed since then or simply aren’t discussed in "The Joiner and Cabinet Maker."

The last section of the book is quite useful. There you will find some conclusions, a chapter on how the different editions of the original “The Joiner and Cabinet Maker” were printed and bound, plus a list of other useful books on history and hand-tool woodworking.

We encourage you to read this entire book and attempt to build the three projects using hand tools. That is a tall order, we know. However, building the Packing Box, the Schoolbox and the Chest of Drawers will unlock the basic skills needed for all hand-tool woodworking, and it will offer insights into how traditional, high-quality casework was really built.

Click here to pre-order the book.

Click below to download the Lost Art Press excerpt.

Preview_Joiner_&_Cabinet_Maker_LAP.pdf (998.55 KB)

— Christopher Schwarz

We don't know who originally wrote the 1839 book "The Joiner and Cabinet Maker." There's no author listed anywhere in any of the editions we've found. And many long nights of searching Google Books for clues have turned up mostly dead ends.

The reason I have spent hours looking into this mystery is that the book's tale of Thomas Walters, the joiner's apprentice, rings true. As if the author had been an apprentice joiner or cabinet maker. And if the author really was an apprentice, then "The Joiner and Cabinet Maker" is an even more important book that Joel Moskowitz or I thought.

Managing Editor Megan Fitzpatrick has been copy editing the book for us, and she has a theory about who the author was. Keep in mind that Megan has a William Shakespeare problem, so muddy questions of authorship bring out the Nancy Drew in her.

Megan's theory: The author was Tredgold, an early 19th-century engineer.

Megan thinks that Tredgold is the author because "The Joiner and Cabinet Maker" goes out of its way to praise him as a "very eminent scientific writer." And then praises Tredgold saying that he had "received no better an education at school than we have supposed our apprentice to have had." And on and on. Tredgold, Tredgold, Tredgold!

So I decided to sniff down the Tredgold path.

Clue No. 1: Though it's not mentioned in "The Joiner and Cabinet Maker," Tredgold's first name is "Thomas," the same name as the hero of the book. Coincidence?

Clue No. 2: Tredgold was a carpenter's apprentice starting at age 14 in Durham, a northern English county that has a history of mining and agriculture. The shop in "The Joiner and Cabinet Maker" was also a rural shop.

Clue No. 3: Tredgold was a writer. Among other books, he authored "Elementary Principles of Carpentry," a landmark volume in the history of construction.

So I was ready to drink the Tredgold Kool-Aid until I looked a little closer. Perhaps Megan has a thing about both Shakespeare and zombie authors. Tredgold died in 1829 – 10 years before the earliest known edition of "The Joiner and Cabinet Maker" was published.

While it is possible that Tredgold wrote the book and it was published posthumously, I think it's unlikely. With our current leads all dead, maybe we'll break out the Ouija board at our next dinner party and try to solve the mystery.

— Christopher Schwarz

Like a lot of hand tool woodworkers, I wonder what it would be like to work wood in a time where mastering wood and tools was an essential skill to survival and success. After a few moments of reverie, I quickly thank my stars that I was born in the 20th century.

I am legally blind. Really. My vision is terrible. One time I let my eyeglasses prescription lapse, and then even with my glasses on I was considered legally blind (the diagnosis of the optometrist). Eyeglasses weren't tolerated in early woodworking shops. Wear glasses, and you were sacked. It was a sign of being old.

When I was 15, I contracted pneumonia. I was so sick that I can remember clutching the rubbery bladder of my water bed (please don't ask) and wishing I were dead. Had I been born before antibiotics, I probably would have gotten my wish.

I could keep going. When I was a kid, my front teeth stuck out like I was holding two little communion wafers between my lips. I have the upper body strength of a jellyfish. I got chicken pox twice. In other words, Natural Selection has been trying to weed me out of the garden for a long time, and it has only been through the grace of technology that I am still here and able to work wood.

So anytime I start thinking about how cool it would be to live in the time of Duncan Phyfe, I think how cool it is to be breathing right now.

Our new book "The Joiner and Cabinet Maker" paints a rather rosy picture of an apprentice's life in a shop, and co-author Joel Moskowitz has tried to balance it with accounts of how horrible some apprenticeships were.

And I have tried to balance the narrative by remaining alive, even though by the 19th-century perspective, I should be dead or – even worse – the village idiot.

— Christopher Schwarz

In 1839, an English publisher issued a small book on woodworking that has – until now – escaped detection by scholars, historians and woodworkers.

Titled "The Joiner and Cabinet Maker," this short book was written by an anonymous tradesman and tells the fictional tale of Thomas, a lad of 13 or 14 who is apprenticed to a rural shop that builds everything from built-ins to more elaborate veneered casework. The book was written to guide young people who might be considering a life in the joinery or cabinetmaking trades, and every page is filled with surprises.

Unlike other woodworking books at the time, "The Joiner and Cabinet Maker" focuses on how apprentices can obtain the basic skills needed to work in a hand-tool shop. It begins with Thomas tending the fire to keep the hide glue warm, and it details how he learns stock preparation, many forms of joinery and casework construction. It ends with Thomas building a veneered mahogany chest of drawers that is French polished.

Thanks to this book, we can stop guessing at how some operations were performed by hand and read first-hand how joints were cut and casework was assembled in one rural England shop.

Even more delightful is that Thomas builds three projects during the course of his journey in the book, and there is enough detail in the text and illustrations to re-create these three projects just as they were built in 1839.

"The Joiner and Cabinet Maker" was virtually unknown to modern woodworkers until Joel Moskowitz of Tools for Woorking Wood obtained a copy and immediately saw its significance. He loaned a copy to me, and as soon as a I read the book I knew that we had to republish it.

Simply reprinting the book would have been the easy path, however. What Joel and I did was much more involved.

This month we are putting the final touches on a project that has taken untold hours of research, building, drafting and writing. This fall, Lost Art Press will republish the original text of "The Joiner and Cabinet Maker," with additional chapters that will help you understand why the book is important, plus details that will make you a better hand-tool woodworker. In our expanded edition, you'll find:

• A historical snapshot of early 19th-century England. Joel Moskowitz, a book collector and avid history buff, explains what England was like at the time this book was written, including the state of the labor force and woodworking technology. This dip into the historical record will expand your enjoyment of Thomas's tale in "The Joiner and Cabinet Maker."

• The complete text of "The Joiner and Cabinet Maker," unabridged and unaltered. We present every word of the 1839 original (plus a chapter on so-called "modern tools" added in a later edition), with footnotes from Moskowitz that will help you understand the significance of the story.

• Chapters on the construction of the three projects from "The Joiner and Cabinet Maker." I built all three projects – a Packing Box, a dovetailed Schoolbox and a Chest of Drawers – using hand tools (confession: I ripped the drawer stock on my table saw). My chapters in this new edition of "The Joiner and Cabinet Maker" show the operations in the book, explain details on construction and discuss the hand-tool methods that have arisen since this book was originally published.

• Complete construction drawings. I drafted all three projects in SketchUp to create detailed drawings and cutting lists for the modern woodworker. This will save you the hours we spent decoding the construction information offered in "The Joiner and Cabinet Maker."

In the end, we got more than we bargained for in our effort to bring this book back to life. To be sure, I expected to become a better hand-tool woodworker by building these projects, but I didn't expect this book to give me my own apprentice to train. You'll have to read the book to find out more about that.

Like all Lost Art Press books, "The Joiner and Cabinet Maker" will be hardbound, printed on quality acid-free paper and made in the United States. As soon as we have a release date, we will publish it here. In the meantime, look for additional blog entries here about the "The Joiner and Cabinet Maker" and its significance to the hand-tool woodworker.

— 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

Like every woodworker, I have a short list of tools that I wish were still widely available today. Most of these are tools that have wound up in my shop and proved themselves useful.

About five years ago I got a cool mallet that was common in England but not so much here. It has a heavy brass head, wooden striking faces and a nice chamfered handle.

The whole thing weighs more than 3 pounds – my wife weighed herself with it on our digital scale. Then she weighed herself without the mallet. (That is what passes for both love and entertainment in the early 40s.)

This is not a tool you want to wield all day. In fact, mortising with it wears out my forearm after only a couple mortises.

However, it is great for assembly tasks. It knocks dovetails together with ease. I use it for driving drawbore pins – both through a dowel plate and into the holes. I use it for knocking together mortise-and-tenon joints. If you want to see it in action, check out this video on YouTube. Anytime I need force with finesse I reach for this tool.

Well, I used to.

About a year ago, the wooden striking faces dropped out of the brass head like two rotted teeth. They had shrunk out just enough – friction was the glue. I set the mallet aside on my bookshelves until a month ago. I decided to try to fix the thing.

I considered fabricating new wooden faces, but their shape is complex. So I decided to first try to get the pyramid-shaped faces back in their holes. The staff at the magazine suggested removing a little wood from the back of the faces and driving the faces back into the brass. The hope was that this would compress the wood, and friction would do its job again (lazy friction).

I tried it. It didn’t work. Another suggestion was to drill through the brass head and pin the faces with a metal rivet. I wasn’t sure I wanted to do that kind of implant surgery.

So today I took a different tack: high-impact epoxy. I glued and clamped the faces in place this morning, and now I’m just waiting for the clock to make it around the horn again so I can take the thing for a test beat.

— Christopher Schwarz

P.S. I know that Australian toolmaker Chris Vesper has this tool on his drawing board. If you’re interested, you should drop him a line through his web site. To see a photo of his prototype mallets scroll to the bottom of this page.

Editor’s note: Here’s another great installment from hand-tool woodworker Dean Jansa. This one guides you through the process of moulding and assembling and ogree bracket foot.

The same chest that has the molding shown in “Sticking a Moulding” will have ogee bracket feet. Just like making a molding the first step is laying out the profile of the ogee on the edge of the stock.

Here’s a quick side-step: You'll note the stock I'm using is made up of the primary wood laminated to a piece of pine. Not all period pieces used this laminated foot. If you choose to copy a piece without such a lamination, just ignore the pine in the photos.

The benefit of the lamination is the added strength it lends to the otherwise fragile "ankle" of the foot. That is, the area where the ogee sweeps inward. As you will see, without the lamination, this part of the foot can end up very thin after the ogee profile is cut with the hollows and rounds.

As with moulding, start with a single piece of stock long enough to cut all the feet for the chest. I'll need six "foot parts" total. A pair will be mitered together for each front corner, and a single foot for the rear, for a total of six.

Lay out the desired profile on the end of the stock.

Remove as much waste as you can with a drawknife from the convex portion of the top of the foot. This is much faster than using a hollow to do all the work.

Clean up the profile with a hollow after removing the waste.

Next I create the concave portion of the ogee. I use a plow plane to remove waste from the concave portion of the stock, approximating the curve with a series of steps. The narrower the blade you use, the closer you can approximate the curve. But I find it is a balance, as too narrow a blade takes more time as you have many little steps to cut. Too wide and you are left with a lot of material to remove with the round plane. Your experience will be your guide. (Remember Riemann Sums from calculus days? Here’s a real world example!)

I work from the furthest point away from the bottom edge toward the bottom edge as my wooden plow has its depth stop on the left side of the groove it cuts. If you work with a metal plow you may want to work from the bottom edge toward the top of the foot as many metal plows have their depth stops on the right side of the groove they cut.

After the steps are cut, remove the edges of the steps with a chisel or gouge. In fact you can rough out the entire concave portion with gouges if you'd like. In maple I find it easier to use the plow to remove the bulk of the waste.

Here the majority of the concave portion is complete.

A little more round plane work gets you to the complete molding, ready to be cut into individual parts of the feet.

Mark the outline of the foot on the rear of the profiled stock and cut it with a turning saw.

The rear feet are easy, no miters. The layout above shows the side profile of the ogee, but I will not cut out that profile, rather I just cut the rear-facing portion of the foot square. A little rasp work, and a rear foot is ready for a pine brace and glue blocks.

The front feet are mitered. I choose to cut and fit the miters before I cut out the profile of the foot.

Fitting the miter first has its benefits and risks. The benefit: The foot profile will be full sized. If you cut the profile first you may have to remove some material when fitting the miter, making the feet slightly different sizes. The risk: You have to be careful not to damage the sharp edge left on the mitered edge while cutting out and shaping the foot profile. The benefit outweighs the risk for me, so I choose to fit the miters first and am vigilant while cutting and shaping the profiles.

There are options for cutting the profiles as well. Here I am cutting the profile with a turning saw.

But if you look the foot below you'll see evidence of a different method. Note the saw kerfs along the profile, most evident in the pine backing. Cutting the bulk of the waste with a hand saw and removing the rest with chisels and or gouges leaves such marks.

Having fit the miters and cut out the profile all that is left is the glue up. There are several methods seen in period work. Most common is to glue the miter and reinforce the foot with glue block with their grain running vertical. Here is a pine mock-up of the feet I'm working on, with vertical glue blocks and no lamination.

Now you can see why one may want to laminate the foot stock. Note how thin the foot is where the ogee sweeps inward. Add to this the crossgrain of the glue blocks and the result is a cracked foot at the thin point.

One solution to the crossgrain issue is to stack glue blocks so the grain is running the same direction as the feet. In the photo of the period piece above you can see the stacked glue blocks on the rear foot. This was a common feature of the Williamsburg area from the Scott Shop. Here are the stacked glue blocks on the front feet for my chest:

I'll add on last small glue block when I complete all the feet. The chest really is supported by the glue blocks. Again, refer to the period piece above, you can see the glue blocks extend slightly below the bottom of the feet.

And here you have it – an ogee bracket foot ready to attach to the case.

— Dean Jansa

The T-shirt slogan contest was great fun. I eventually had to stop checking the entries while I was at work, however, because I was worried that human resources was going to nail me for some of the stuff scrolling across my screen.

The three winning slogans are:

“Trying Stuff Since 1678” from Mike Siemsen. Lucy, my spouse and a writer, called out this one as the most clever of all the entries.

“We Nail, We Screw, We Bolt” from Ben Davis. When I insisted on this one, Lucy rolled her eyes as if to say “You wish.”

I let Lucy pick the third winner, which turned out to be quite disturbing on a personal level.

“Inch-prickt Since 1678” by Dave Fisher.

Ben and Dave: Drop me a line at christopher.schwarz@fuse.net. My blog software ate your e-mail addresses.

The winners will all receive the Pin-Eez sawnut tool and one of the T-shirts with the current slogan. As soon as we sell out of those, we’ll use one of these new ones.

Thanks to everyone who entered.

— Christopher Schwarz

The waitress rushed up to me at the cash register with a desperate look in her eye. In defense, I held out a $6 tip, but she ignored it and fixed me in her gaze.

“Will you sign a placemat? Or a napkin?” she asked. “Do you have something you could sign?”

I shook my head and started walking to the exit.

“Sign anything,” she said. “The cooks will be so disappointed if you don’t.”

This was the final and odd scene of my four-day odyssey at the Woodworking in America show in Berea, Ky., where 350 hand-tool woodworkers got together during Nov. 14-16, to talk about tools, techniques and history.

The show itself was great fun, and I’ll be posting lots of photos and stories on my blog at Woodworking Magazine (one of the organizers of the show). But for the readers of the Lost Art Press blog, I saved this particular tale. It begins about an hour before getting rushed by the waitress.

After four days on my feet and 12 hours (total) of sleep during that period, I packed up our rented Ryder with all the workbenches, grinders and clamps we’d brought to the Woodworking in America show. Senior Editor Glen Huey climbed into the passenger seat of the truck and we drove north to get some lunch with some of the other magazine editors and John Hoffman, the other half of Lost Art Press.

We met at the Richmond, Ky., Steak 'n Shake, and our party of five snagged a window seat and started looking at the menus.

Our waitress took our drink order and when she returned, she asked: “Are you guys the Oakridge Boys?”

To which Hoffman immediately answers: “Yes.”

I start laughing and tell her that no, we’re not the country/gospel quartet. But she is undaunted.

“The cooks up there in the red ties say you are the Oakridge Boys,” she said, pointing to the rear corner of the store. I look back to see two young guys with enormous smiles on their faces looking right at me.

I point to Associate Editor Drew DePenning at the end of the table.

“He’s 23,” I explain. “He would have been a fetus when the Oakridge Boys were popular.”

She gives me a quizzical look but takes our food order. Glen Huey is chuckling so hard he’s having trouble ordering. Senior Editor Robert Lang is his typical placid and inscrutable self.

After the waitress walks away, I start singing the base vocal to “Elvira” and try to get Bob to join in. He smiles, but he won’t take the bait.

We eat. And as we try to leave, I’m ambushed by the waitress, who insists that I’m the band’s manager. “Don’t you have some posters or CDs you could sign for us?” She chases us to the door.

We all scurry to our cars. I fetch my laptop from Hoffman’s Honda and head back to the Ryder truck.

“Crap!” Hoffman says. “I locked my keys in my car.”

Hoffman calls a locksmith, who promises to be there in 10 minutes. We stand there for a minute and realize it is too cold to wait outside.

“I guess you gotta go back into the Steak 'n Shake,” I said.

“Oh no,” Hoffman said, shaking his head.

But then he turns and heads back into the arms of fame.

— Christopher Schwarz

P.S. After I got home, I looked up a photo of the Oakridge boys and busted out laughing. I can see it: John Hoffman is Joe Bonsall. Glen Huey is Duane Allen. Robert Lang is a better-coiffed William Lee Golden. And I’m Richard Sterban. And Drew? Just another 23-year-old gospel/country fetus, I guess.  

Now that shop class is as common in high schools as poodle skirts, lots of woodworkers worry about passing on our enthusiasm for the craft to the next generation. In my house, I’ve started treating my kids more like apprentices, and it seems to be working.

They help clean the shop. They assist me on projects at assembly time. They can work on their own projects on the side when I don’t need them. And – here’s the odd part – I pay them (a pittance) for their help and swear them to secrecy on the “arts and mysteries” of the craft.

This weekend has been a perfect example. I assembled a large run of shelving that I plan to install in the recipient’s home this week. There was a lot of tedious gluing, clamping and clean-up work involved, so I hired 7-year-old Katy to help.

First, I showed her the “secret” to making the lacquer finish perfectly smooth to the touch – a folded up brown paper bag. We rubbed all the surfaces vigorously, which knocked down any surface imperfections without cutting through the film finish. Katy did the shelves; I did the uprights.

“Cool,” she said. “It works!”

As we were bagging the lacquer, both of us noticed that there were some small dings and scratches in the color. This is was the result of the parts getting moved around more than I like. So I swore Katy to secrecy again and introduced her to the mystery of stain pens. In this case, the best match wasn’t one of my stain pens (which I keep hidden away), it was a black Sharpie marker.

In fact, Katy became incredulous when I took her picture at work with the marker.

“What if someone sees the picture and figures out our secret?” she asked. “Then they’ll know!”

Then we glued up the shelves. I applied the glue. Katy added the Dominos. We both applied the clamps and cleaned the glue squeeze-out. Assembly can be stressful for me, but Katy’s amazement at how the project came together kept my anxiety in check.

We did four major glue-ups this weekend, and by the fourth one, Katy dove into the work like she had been doing it all her life. I wonder if learning woodworking is like learning a foreign language – it might be easier when you are young.

As I added the kicks to the cabinet, Katy worked at the bench at her own project – she’s transforming my discarded shop jigs for this shelving project into a wooden alligator.

Then I paid her (about $1 an hour for the shop time) and I asked her if she’d come along on the installation next week. With hesitation, she said: “Yes! Hurray!”

Next step: Getting the apprentices to fetch the small beer for the master.

— Christopher Schwarz

It’s 5 p.m. on Sunday, and almost all of the students in my “Precision Handsawing” class are packing up their tools to head home after two punishing days of listening to my drivel while trying to perfect their handsawing.

But in one corner of this picturesque Kentucky classroom, Michael Rogen refuses to stop laying out his half-lap joints. He refuses to lay down his tools and quit. Michael above all refuses to lay down, give up and wait to die.

Things are geting worse for Michael. His degenerative disease – its name is unimportant – has claimed most of his mobility, nearly all of his natural dexterity but absolutely none of his stubborn will to be able to saw, plane and chisel furniture-quality joints by hand.

These tasks are hard enough for a grown man in good physical condition – most of my students from this weekend are probably still recovering from sore feet and forearms. But when you add on the fact that Michael can barely stand without two canes and has virtually no grip in one of his hands, it makes you ashamed to be so dammed healthy and lazy in comparison.

I’ve known Michael – a former actor – for a few years now. He started asking my advice on buying some tools and bit by bit has worked his way into my life and the lifes of other woodworkers, tool makers and woodworking instructors.

Despite the advice of his doctors, Michael traveled to Indianapolis last year to take my "Introduction to Hand Tools" class at the Marc Adams School of Woodworking. He was in better shape then, but by the end of the week I couldn’t believe that the guy was on his two feet and pounding out mortise after mortise with a mallet and chisel.

As we parted last May, Michael said, “I think this is it. I think this is my last class.”

Hardly.

Michael went on to take a class in building a blanket chest at Kelly Mehler’s School of Woodworking. Then he took a class in making moulding planes from Larry Williams and Don McConnell followed directly by my class in sawing.

For the class, Michael took the bench next to mine, and while he had to have a little assistance with knifing a couple notches, he stubbornly declined other offers of help. He insisted on cutting his stock to rough length on a sawbench (I don’t know how he kept his balance), and he plowed through the project at a steady and slow pace.

At the end of the first day of this sawing class, I held a contest. I asked each student to make the best tenon he or she could manage with handsaws and a chisel. The tenon had to be consistent in its thickness and have clean shoulders.

Then all the students wrote their birthdate on their tenons and tossed them on my workbench. I left them there overnight so I was certain to forget whose tenon belongs to whom. On Sunday morning before class, I sorted through the joints, marked up their good points and bad and decided on a winner.

To everyone’s surprise (and delight) it was Michael’s tenon. For a piece of hand-cut work, it was solid. The tenon varied in its thickness by only a thousandth of an inch (or maybe two). The shoulders weren’t dead-nuts perfect, but they could be cleaned up with a shoulder plane easily and they outclassed many of the other tenons on my bench.

Michael (who lives in New York) was naturally suspicious that I had rigged the contest.

No so, my friend. You beat us all. Not only on that day, but in many other ways that have nothing to do with cheeks and shoulders, or tools and joinery.

— Christopher Schwarz

No matter how long you have been working at the craft, you sometimes flirt with the idea that you can buy your way to better craftsmanship.

I first picked up a crosscut saw at age 8, so I should know better than to fall for this false hope. But occasionally as I page through a catalog or look over someone’s tool collection I think: If I only had that Felder/Lie-Nielsen/Ultimatum thingy. Then it would be easy to be fast/skilled/way sexy to other British brace collectors.

And so now you think I’m going to lecture you on how “it’s not the arrows; it’s the Indian,” or that skill is something independent of our personal pile of brass, rosewood and high-carbon steel.

Actually, I’m not.

I’d like to share with you the tool that has improved my craftsmanship every day I’ve owned it for the last nine years. And I expect it to continue doing this astounding feat for another 30 years.

The tool is a maker’s stamp that my wife purchased for me for my 30th birthday from Mazzaglia Tools in Salem, N.H. It’s a simple piece of steel that’s 3/16” thick, 1-1/4” wide and 2-1/2” long. And cut into reverse on one end is “C. SCHWARZ.”

This is always the last tool to touch my work – if it touches it at all. You see, this stamp is the tool that determines if my work is up to snuff. If I won’t sign the piece with this permanent stamp, then I probably need to throw the project on the burn pile (which I’ve done – right after a satisfying hatchet session). Or perhaps I need to go back and remake some assembly or part of the project, try to bring the finish up to a higher level or find some better hardware.

As an added bonus, the project has to be sturdy enough to receive the beating necessary to leave my name in crisp letters. That beating is necessary because the name stamp has the letters incised in the steel block. As a result, you have to hit the stamp very hard with a hammer into the end grain of your project to make it work.

When done correctly, the letters stand proud of a recessed background that is surrounded by a decorative border. Very nice.

I usually pick someplace inconspicuous to apply the stamp, such as the lower edge of a door stile or the bottom of a leg. Then I place the project on the concrete floor of my shop and pinch the stamp between the thumb and forefinger of my left hand. I rest my hammer head on the end of the stamp (which is now mushroomed over from the beatings from my 16 oz. hammer).

I pause for a few moments to make sure I am ready to bring the hammer down in one fell stroke. You get only one change to do it right. It's just like building a piece of furniture for someone else; there are no do-overs.

I’m just about ready to sign the blanket chest I finished for the next issue of Woodworking Magazine’s summer 2009 issue. But there’s just one little bit of roughness on the chest's lid. Maybe it needs a little wetsanding first.

If you’d like more information about the stamps from Mazzaglia Tools, write for a brochure: 12 Palmer St., Salem, NH 03079. There are several other companies out there that make fancier stamps as well, such as Engraving Arts and Microstamp.

And if you don’t have the coin for a stamp, you can always use a Sharpie marker to do the same job.

— Christopher Schwarz

If the trees or the squirrels ever get their act together, I’m certain that I will be one of the first people on the planet to wake up with a horse’s head in my bed – courtesy of the maple mafia.

Not only do I work for a magazine that encourages 220,000 other people to slaughter spruces, but I personally have a lot of sap on my hands. Since we moved into our house 11 years ago, I have ordered the killing of three trees (a fourth died at the hands of a wind storm, I swear). And I’ve also taught a few trees “a lesson” by having a few branches here and there snapped by arborists-for-hire.

Last week, I ordered the ash tree in our front yard be taken out. This was a hard call to make. For the tulip poplar in the back yard that I had dismembered seven years ago, I had no love. That deciduous demon chucked a branch through the windshield of my beloved Honda Civic.

But the ash tree was a loyal shade-giver that had gone bad. Recently, it started chucking loose limbs – first at dogs that soiled its trunk, later on at neighborhood kids walking up the sidewalk. So I made a call (actually, I had Lucy do it). I had them do the job while I was at work.

After the body was removed, I volunteered to clean up the piles of sawdust with a rake and shovel. It was no small task, and I scurried around the stump scratching furiously at the dirt and weeds.

After a few minutes I started laughing. Not because I was dancing around like a ground squirrel on Bugger Sugar, but because I wouldn’t (or couldn’t) step on the stump itself as I worked.

There’s a lesson in here, somewhere, really.

Here it is: Senior Editor Glen Huey and I were talking this week about all the stupid things we’d done when learning woodworking. We agreed that the single-most idiotic thing we had both done was avoiding making cabriole legs for years and years too long.

Cabriole legs – the Queen Anne equivalent of a hitchhiking cartoon fox sticking out her shapely leg to stop a car – seem hard. They are, however, quite simple to make. And once you make one, your reaction is: Huh, that’s it? That’s what I was afraid of all those years?

It’s not just cabriole legs that woodworkers fear, it almost everything new. We recoil at anything with curves, inlay or angles other than 90°. (Ever wonder why Art & Crafts and Shaker are the two most popular furniture styles in woodworking magazines?)

With this thought, I dropped the rake. I stepped up on the stump. I looked around.

The neighborhood looked different from that slightly elevated point. In fact, I almost could see the trees forming a lynch mob at the end of my street.

— Christopher Schwarz

When the first copy of “Workbenches: From Design & Theory to Construction and Use” arrived on my desk from China via airmail, I couldn’t stand to even look at it. I stuck it in my satchel (which my wife fondly calls the “manpurse”) and took it home.

Before dinner that evening, I took the book out and showed it to the kids. Maddy, 11, took the book and started paging through it.

“Wow. This is great dad,” she said. “Will you autograph it?”

My heart swelled a bit. I had impressed my daughter that I was an author. But something didn’t quite seem right in her tone of voice.

“Why do you want me to sign it?” I asked.

“So I can sell it on eBay,” she said. “Someone might pay me extra if you sign it.”

Ah, Maddy, my little bourgeois capitalist. Since then a few other people have weighed in on the new book. A few people have said the book is a bit of a rehash of principles I’ve discussed on my blog and in print. That’s fair to a degree. My blog has been a place where I explore ideas in rough-draft form. The book is the summation of more than a decade of ideas and experiences, polished and complete. Well, that was the plan.

This week I got my first review on Amazon, which sells the book at a very competitive price, I might add. I don’t know the reviewer personally, but he read the entire book and grasped the message I was trying to transmit. Below is that review in its entirety, reprinted with the permission of the author.

By the way, we now have plenty of the books in stock (after struggling to keep up with demand). If you’d like to order one that is signed and comes with a deluxe CD, you can visit our store.

— Christopher Schwarz

5.0 out of 5 stars 
A truly remarkable woodworking book
November 17, 2007
By Landscape W. Shipwreck (Island J, Brigstocke Township, N. Ontario)

As an avid reader of Christopher Schwarz's various articles and columns in woodworking magazines, I've been awaiting the publication of this book with anticipation. Now that I've read it I have to say that it's better than I expected, and my expectations were very high.

I've read a number of books and articles on workbenches (notably the ones by Lon Schleining and Scott Landis, which are valuable for what they are: surveys of various styles of workbenches, with info on how to build a few of them). This book is different. Not just a little different. Radically different.

Schwarz is not just a good writer. He is an extremely good writer, vastly better than the majority of writers about woodworking; better than most writers, period. He is not merely capable of explaining things clearly, or of organizing his text coherently. His writing is actually enjoyable to read. He has the ability to combine highly technical information with a kind of narrative structure, within which personal experience, historical research and theoretical conceptualization come together almost seamlessly. One could describe the book as almost an essay in the classical, Montaignesque sense: a personal, spiraling account of a particular subject, whose compelling structure takes the reader along on a wide-ranging voyage of discovery, and makes the reader a companion of the author as he works out his own thinking. However, this should not be understood as saying that the book is in any way vague, for it isn't. I mean to underline its powerfully engaging quality. I believe somebody who wasn't a woodworker, who had no plans whatsoever to construct a workbench, would enjoy reading it.

Schwarz is also a gifted scholar and theoretician, a trait not typical of woodworkers, of writers about woodworking. The evidence of his thorough research and profound thought on his subject abounds in the book. His conceptualization of the workbench as a tool for holding lumber so that its 3 different surfaces (edges, faces, and ends) can be worked is a recognition that you won't find anywhere else, and one that animates the entire book. It may sound simple, even obvious, but so does the second law of thermodynamics.

The book provides designs and construction overviews of 2 very different benches, which may seem a paltry number of options. It is not. Schwarz has distilled years of research and bench-building into these 2 designs, and offers plenty of options along the way as to how one might alter them to suit one's own purposes. The illustrations are abundant, clear and useful. Numerous sidebars provide detailed and helpful insight into a variety of sub- or side-topics (eg. Find a source for yellow pine; Pattern-maker's vises: friend or foe?; The Stanley No. 203 - better than a peg). The index is extensive.

Anybody familiar with Schwarz from his hand-tool courses and DVDs knows that he is a formidable woodworker and teacher. Those qualities resound through this book, as does his engaging ability to be personal, as does his earnestness, as does his good humor. I've always learned easily from him, and this book continues that trend.

The first bench I ever built was from an article of Schwarz's called "The $175 Workbench," published in Popular Woodworking in 2000. I still have it, and use it every day. I will be building another one soon, using an adaptation of one of the designs outlined in this book; this book which will accompany me along the way, like a friend. Perhaps this sounds a bit loopy, but read the book and tell me you don't share the feeling.

When I open the book “With Hammer in Hand” about the Dominy workshop, it opens up to one of two places every time. Sometimes it opens up to the first page describing the anvils in the Dominy shop. This particular crease in the book’s binding must be the work of William Munsell Roberts, the previous owner of this somewhat rare tome. I don’t give two toots for anvils (unless they’re dropped on things).

The other place my book falls open is page 55 – the page that describes one of the Dominy’s magnificent workbenches that was in their workshop in East Hampton, N.Y., until the contents of the shop were relocated to the Henry Francis du Pont Winterthur Museum in Delaware.

This massive 18th-century workbench – 148-1/4” long by 29-1/2” high by 28-1/4” deep – looks nothing like the modern workbenches in woodworking schools, workshops and catalogs. There is no tail vise. There is no trestle base. No quick-release, shoulder or metal vises. Instead the workholding is dead-nuts simple. There is a huge twin-screw vise in the face-vise position. There is a sliding deadman used to support long boards on edge. And there’s a single-point planing stop.

This bench is – for me – the link between the Old World workbenches of Andre J. Roubo, Peter Nicholson and Joseph Moxon and the workbenches of today. The bench has a Roubo-style skeleton. The top is a massive 5-1/2”-thick slab of red oak supported on legs that look like they are small tree trunks. The legs are flush to the front edge of the benchtop, just like in Roubo’s illustrations. The planing stop is right out of Roubo. It’s big and wooden and adjusted with mallet taps.

The twin-screw vise and sliding deadman look like the workholding arrangement shown in Charles Holtzapffel’s book, published in England, on woodworking and cutting tools (I own a reprint of the 1875 edition).

In other words, the Dominy workbench was one of the most inspiring forms as I launched into my research for “Workbenches: From Design & Theory to Construction & Use.” I had considered building a Dominy-style workbench, but I never could get enough details to answer all my questions. And, until earlier this month, I’d never even seen the thing in person.

Last Sunday after the Lie-Nielsen Toolworks Hand Tool Event in Philadelphia, I took off with a couple willing souls to the Winterthur museum. For me, this was a lot like my first visit to Graceland, but without a pair of bickering friends and a Mazda 626 with a dogmeat camshaft (I’ll save that for another blog entry on “Craftsmanship of the Jungle Room.”)

We got to the museum on a Sunday afternoon, took a tour of the furniture and then climbed the steps (I took them two at a time) to the museum’s gallery where the Dominy workshop is located.

I almost walked right by it.

The Dominy workshop, the most complete and preserved workshop for our country’s early history, is consigned to two behind-the-glass displays. What you could see behind the glass – peering through the simulated shop windows of the display – was intoxicating. But it was dimly lit and so far away that I began to despair. The photos in Charles F. Hummel’s book got me closer to the object of my intense desire.

I thought about trying to flash my press credentials to favor a closer look (perhaps a peek at the undercarriage of the bench), but it was late on a Sunday and the museum staff had their hands full with the regulars. So I took some photos to study and took consolation in one small fact.

My family sure will be pleased to hear that I won’t be building a 12’-long Dominy workbench – yet.

— Christopher Schwarz