Nothing drives a trained journalist crazier than an unanswered question.

As you probably know, the book "The Joiner and Cabinet Maker" doesn't name the original author. He (and it almost certainly was a "he") didn't put his name on the book for a variety of reasons:

1. Perhaps the work was too "lowbrow" for someone of high station.
2. The original publisher, Charles Knight, didn't want the author known for some reason, or Knight simply didn't think it would help sales of the book.
3. The work was written by someone with zero credibility.

Now, before you cast your lot in with one of these three theories, here are a couple other data points. For starters, many of these "Guide to Trade" series of books from Charles Knight were written anonymously. "The Printer," one of the other truly notable books in the series, has a fictional point of view much like "The Joiner and Cabinet Maker," but it has no author listed. As do many other books in the series.

So "The Joiner and Cabinet Maker" wasn't an anomaly in the "Guide to Trade" series.

Could the author have been someone who didn't know jack-crap about woodworking? I think the evidence is mixed here. Though the language and the book's "trade practices" match up with many other accounts, there is some evidence that some things are awry.

Point 1: Which comes first: The groove or the mortise?
When Thomas the young apprentice is building the "Chest of Drawers," he builds an elaborate frame-and-panel chest back. It's a lot of work. Maybe too much work. As I noted in the book, I haven't seen any chests from this era built like this. And, as Don McConnell from Clark & Williams,  pointed out: The order of operations in building the back is odd.

Thomas plows a groove to hold the panels. Then he cuts the mortises. Trade practice was (and still is) to cut the mortises first and then plow the groove second. This procedure has a lot more forgiveness built in than the way Thomas built the back.

In other words, the process didn't ring entirely true.

Second point: The book's discussion of dovetailing the "Chest of Drawers" is odd in a few points. Though the book insists that pins are cut first, the book then explains an operation where cutting pins first is just silly: Dovetailing three rails into the top edge of the carcase sides. It's foolish to cut the pins first here.

And while we are on the topic of dovetails, the language used by the author was a bit odd to me at one point. Though "The Joiner and Cabinet Maker" calls the joint a "dovetail," the joint is separated into "pins" and "the holes that the pins fit into." Other accounts from the period separate the joint into "pins" and "tails," just like we do today. It's just odd.

I don't know what all this adds up to. Honestly, most of the language and techniques line up with what we know of trade practice in early 19th-century England. But the exceptions do stick in my craw.

I have some ideas about how to track down the author and am working on it now. None of them are easy or fast. So does who wrote the book really matter?

— Christopher Schwarz

To thank everyone who has ordered a copy of "The Joiner and Cabinet Maker," we'd like to offer you this free deluxe SketchUp file of "The Schoolbox" – the second project in the book.

This file was made by Randall Wilkins, a set designer in the film industry who uses SketchUp in his job and in his woodworking hobby. This file is extremely cool. Here are some details.

Wilkins has added additional scenes (click on the tabs at the top of the file) that will create shop drawings for you in a variety of views, including some helpful section views. All the surfaces have a nice wood grain pattern on them. And the box's lid is now a dynamic component – which means it will open and shut with a mouse click. Here's how to do that:

In Sketchup, go to View/Tool Palettes/Dynamic Components, a new tool palette will open. Click on the little hand and then touch the box lid. It will open and close again on the next click. This will work from any view. Wilkins created these drawings because he is planning on making a copy of the schoolbox for each of his daughters. But he also graciously allowed us to share it with you.

Don't have SketchUp? You should. It's a free download from Google. To download the file, click on the the link below. You might need to unzip it before you can use it.

DLSchoolbox.zip (481.03 KB)

Thanks for all your help in making this book a success, ensuring we can make more new books like it.

All the best,

Christopher Schwarz

This is our first and only sale for 2009. Between now and Saturday, Dec. 5, we will offer free shipping on all items on the Lost Art Press web site.

This means free shipping on everything, from "The Joiner and Cabinet Maker" to our new (and quite nice) hats. No hidden charges, minimum purchases or handling fees. Heck, you don't even need a special coupon code or magic words.

Just go to LostArtPress.com and buy what you want. We've turned off the shipping charges for these seven days.

This is a good way to get a gift for a woodworker you know, or pick up a hat, T-shirt of one of the few remaining copies of "The Art of Joinery."

Sorry we cannot give free shipping internationally. In many cases international shipping exceeds the price of the item -- an impossible situation for us.

One of the interesting things about the "Joiner and Cabinet Maker" are the construction details you can find in almost every sentence. I've read the book at least six times now, and every time I dip into the text I unearth something I hadn't seen before.

It's not because the book is Pynchon-esque in its density. It was, after all, written for the crafty 19th-century adolescent. Instead, it's because I'm a little different every time I read it.

For example, I'm quite enamored with the feet on the Chest of Drawers in the book. The author is open-ended about the method for creating the ogee curves on the feet, saying only that you should take your time to get them looking nice.

Then the feet are mitered at the corners and we'll pick up the story from there:

"To strengthen the mitre, which is glued and sprigged together, a strip of wood an inch square is glued all down in the inside corner, and sprigged also to the sides. It is better to leave this corner piece a little longer than the sides, to pro­ject perhaps a quarter of an inch below them, so that if the floor on which the chest is to stand be a little uneven, a small piece may be cut off one leg or other, as may be required. They are fastened by glue and sprigs; or, which is better, by screws through the thinnest part of the sides into the chest bottom, and by a couple of sprigs driven in slanting through the upper part of the corner piece. The legs should be placed with the two faces flush with the faces of the chest at the corner. They may be farther strength­ened by two blocks of wood to each; an inch square, and as long as there is room for, glued into the corner, and sprigged both to the leg and the chest. These blocks are shewn in fig. 9. It is not usual to put in so many sprigs in making and fastening on the legs; but then they soon come off, and have to be glued and sprigged at last, with the chance of having been broken first. So Thomas thinks it best to make a good strong job of them at once."

For me, this is interesting stuff. The people who taught me about antique furniture and the like always insisted that these glue blocks were held in only with a hide-glue rub joint. If there were nails or screws in the glue blocks, then they were added later by the owner or a ham-handed "restorer."

Yet here we have evidence that some of the nailed glue blocks might be original. So thanks Thomas. This is another lesson I've learned from a 14-year old. And it's a bit more useful than the last lesson I got from a young teen-ager (which was that my blue jeans legs should drag the floor if I wanted to be "cool").

— Christopher Schwarz

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

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