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

With all the super-tuned, high-angle planes on the market today, you might think that scraper planes are a vestigial organ of the pre-bevel-up-plane era.

After all, once you get a handplane's pitch up above 60°, tear-out tends to be a non-issue, right?

Well, not in my experience. I've found that high-pitch planes are indeed a great weapon against tearing, but there are still times when nothing but a scraper will fix what ails you.

This weekend I'm finishing up construction of the first reproduction of a walnut Shaker sitting bench from the White Water community in Ohio. The bench is simple in form, but difficult in size. The original is more than 13' long and 12" wide. The seat itself is one solid piece of 1" walnut.

Thanks to the kindness of others, we managed to score enough walnut for two copies of the bench, which we'll be donating to the Friends of White Water Shaker Village, the caretakers of this historical treasure.

The walnut for this first bench came from a farm about 10 miles away from the Shaker village, which is a nice codicil to the project. While the wood itself dropped into our lap, working with it has been a challenge. This walnut tree must have had a difficult life. Along the 13' length, the grain reverses dramatically at least six times. There are knots to deal with, and I would guess that the tree must have grown at an angle – there is some definite tension stored up in the grain.

So getting the components roughed out to size has been arduous. The wood wanted to crook something fierce. The wider pieces also cupped. Today I started surfacing all the parts and found that the grain was too wild for even a freshly sharpened 62°-pitch plane with a tight mouth. And things got worse after I glued the aprons to the seat – leveling the seam between the aprons and the seat gave every handplane I own fits.

So I picked up my small scraper plane, which is based on the Stanley No. 212. I love this little bugger. I have no idea why the original Stanley plane is so rare. I have found the plane to be robust, easy to adjust, comfortable to use and ultimately effective against tearing.

And, true to form, the little scraper cleaned up all the messes that my handplanes had made. One of its biggest assets is its small size – it's like a smallish block plane. That means it will get into small hollows and scrape them with ease. But unlike a card scraper, it won't leave a dished surface that will look ugly once you put a film finish on it.

And, most importantly, the little scraper plane kept me from having to grab the pneumatic sander, which someone in our shop had left lying out in plain view. I felt the yellow DA sander mocking me while I was cursing the tear-out scattered like buckshot all over my work. But who's laughing now, windbag tool?

— Christopher Schwarz

We're just received the laser proofs from our Maryland-based printing company for "The Joiner and Cabinet Maker," and so we're still shooting for a late October or early November release date for the book.

Though I need to look closely at the proofs this evening for typos and the like, overall I'm pleased with the way the proofs look. All of the scans we made of original source materials (such as Peter Nicholson's "Mechanic's Companion," "Spons' Mechanics' Own Book" and early 19th-century price guides) look great. Whew. I was afraid my $99 scanner wasn't up to the job.

The other news to report is that we have just finished mastering a companion data DVD to the "The Joiner and Cabinet Maker." This DVD will contain slideshows and highly detailed 3D construction drawings, and it will work in both PC and Mac computers. Here are more details:

Narrated Slideshows

There are three narrated slideshows on this DVD that you can play on your personal computer (not on a standard television). Each slideshow is a QuickTime movie (a .mov file) that you can play with a wide variety of free media players available on the Web.

Each of the slideshows walks you through the construction of a project in “The Joiner and Cabinet Maker” – the Packing Box, the Schoolbox and the Chest of Drawers. The slideshows include color photos that were not included in the book (for space reasons). I think these are great for visual learners, plus they will give you a good overview of the whole process of building each project, and they help amplify the text in the book.

SketchUp Drawings

Also included on this disc are complete SketchUp drawings for each of the projects. These detailed drawings reflect how I built each project and should prove helpful to anyone who wants to become familiar with traditional construction or want to modify the existing drawings to suit their taste.

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.

All the people who pre-ordered the book will be given the option to add the DVD to their order (at the bundled price) when the book is in stock.

I guess I should go fetch my dictionary and red pen and get this job done.

— 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

One of the best things about working on this new book, "The Joiner and Cabinet Maker," has been the opportunity to poke through some 19th-century books on the trades. I always disliked history class in high school and college, but this stuff fascinates me to no end.

Recently I dug up some descriptions of the 19th-century trades in a huge book that was intended to be a guide for parents and children who were trying to choose a profession. Most of the entries from this 1842 book describe each job in a somewhat glamorous fashion. How you have to be strong and ingenious to be a carpenter or joiner. Or how you have to be excellent at drawing to become a cabinet maker.

But the description of the profession of "Sawyer" cracked me up. Perhaps I've just been buried too long in this sort of material, but I found this one a real knee-slapper. The author begins by saying that many sawyers would tend to work for many masters.

"(T)hey either find 'nothing stirring,' and literally starve awhile, or make such astonishing sums at piece work, as to set their heads a madding with the fumes of the stomach; they become broilsome, drink unaccountably, fight any body or thing, pawn their tools by scores, and, when Tuesday comes round, find themselves under the necessity of kicking the master for an advance."

"Who would be a Sawyer? Or, being one, would not work out his own reformation in time?"

— from "The Complete Book of Trades" by Nathaniel Whittock (1842 edition), page 398

Sounds like fun. Sign me up.

— Christopher Schwarz

On Friday afternoons, I always try to end the week with some work in the shop that improves my working condition. I do a lot of sharpening, fix a hammer or just put tools away.

This Friday was a day I have been looking forward to for seven years now.

My long-awaited-for hollows and rounds came from Clark & Williams. I'd ordered the half-set nearly two years ago, and had been saving up the money for them for many years before that. And 10 years ago, I'd built the tool chest to hold them.

My tool chest is a somewhat-crappy Kentucky copy of Benjamin Seaton's 18th-century chest. I'd built it in 1999 for publication in the magazine, but I needed to build it in a certain way to make it buildable for the power-tool woodworker. That meant finger joints instead of dovetails. And no interior plane tills.

But I did get to add a little bit of English flair. I veneered the main toolbox till and the saw till. And I used curly maple drawer fronts (though I really wanted to do the banded drawer fronts in the original). I always vowed to re-do the toolbox like David Nelson did.

But the toolbox works fine, and I already have a list of things to build that exceeds my 8-year-old's Christmas list.

So on Friday I fitted the interior with a rack for all my moulding planes, including the new hollows and rounds. It is the simplest sort of till I could manage that would allow me to see each plane's profile and keep them handy.

Essentially, it's just a piece of cherry that's 3/4" x 4-1/2" x 34" and is screwed to the sides of my toolbox and is wedged below the runners that my tool till slides on. I dressed the cherry by hand and put a 3/16" bead on the top edge.

The way it works is simple. The cherry board makes a compartment that is about 1/8" bigger than the toe section of the hollows and rounds. They simply drop between the toolbox's front wall and the cherry. And you can see the profile of the sole.

And because moulding planes are all about the same dimensions, the single board fits all the moulding planes (though not the joinery planes that have knobs and nickers that ram into this board).

After screwing the board in place, I felt better about the toolbox. Perhaps I've not totally redeemed myself, but installing this little rack ended my week on a nice note. When I return on Monday, all my hollows and round will be waiting patiently to get started on the next project at hand.

— 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

Lost Art Press now has 300 copies of my new book "Handplane Essentials" in stock, signed and ready to ship. This 312-page book is a compilation of many of the things I've written about these fantastic tools during the last decade for Popular Woodworking, Woodworking Magazine, The Fine Tool Journal, Lee Valley Tools's newsletter, my blog at Woodworking Magazine and my blog at Lost Art Press.

To be honest, if you have followed my work closely for the last 10 years you won't find anything shockingly new in this book (not that there's anything "new" in woodworking anyway). But I have tidied up the text, organized it so it makes sense, added a bit here and snipped out a bit there. And it's collected all in one nice volume: hardbound, printed on nice paper with a full-color dust jacket. The book was produced entirely in the United States. All production occurred in our offices in Cincinnati. The book was printed at a plant in Ohio.

You can also purchase this book from my employer, F+W Media, and even get it for a discount from Lee Valley Tools starting in September. So why should you buy it from me?

A cool drawing of a sock monkey.

I have signed all of these 300 copies of "Handplane Essentials," and my 8-year-old daughter, Katy, helped. Katy is learning woodworking and helps me on many projects. She signed most of the books, each with a unique little drawing. There are chickens, some smiley faces, a couple turkeys and even one very nice rendition of her beloved sock monkey.

If for some reason you don't want a copy signed by Katy, just let us know on the order form. We have a box of books that are signed by me alone.

The book costs $35, plus $4 shipping anywhere in the United States. You can read more about the book or place an order by clicking here.

As always, thank you for your support. Lost Art Press wouldn't exist without you.

— Christopher Schwarz

Unsolicited Testimonials for 'Handplane Essentials'

"I have several books on hand tools, and the hand planes, written over the last 50 years. My woodworking library is bigger than any Barnes and Noble, Woodcraft, etc. I love books. I consider your book on Handplanes to be the definitive book on the topic."

— David Ragan

"I read your book for the second time this weekend and it was better that the first reading! You not only hone the tools, you hone the woodworker as well."
— Greg Barringer

"Sometimes woodworking books are just LAME and really repetitive. I am an advanced woodworker and I can't get enough info on handtools (planes), they are just so much fun. Since having my kids I have really appreciated hand tools because they can be in the shop with me without a respirator and earplugs! Your writings and videos are excellent because you have a great way of not expressing the common, 'experienced condescending arrogance,' that is sooo annoying in woodworking. Great work."
— Mike Berkshire