Our second book at Lost Art Press was “The Joiner & Cabinet Maker,” a rare and early 19th-century fictional account of an apprenticeship in a rural England shop.
It’s a fantastic little book, written by someone who obviously served an apprenticeship in the 18th century.
In addition to us reprinting the original, Joel Moskowitz (who found the book) wrote an excellent account of what woodworking was like in early 19th-century England. And I contributed several chapters on constructing the three projects that young Thomas made – a packing box, a schoolbox and a nice chest of drawers.
All in all, it’s an interesting introduction to hand-tool woodworking from an historical perspective. (And this might be the only book where I keep my sometimes-troubling tongue in check.)
We sometimes get asked if we have SketchUp drawings of the three projects in the book. And while the construction drawings in the book are all you really need, we make these files available free here.
Using the below link you can download a compressed folder with the three files in them.
While I work every day in SketchUp, I’m no expert on the compatibility of all the different versions out there. You should be able to open them with any version of SketchUp, but I can’t guarantee it.
— Christopher Schwarz
I have tried sketchup many years ago. found it to time consuming. I bet it is better now but I have found it much easier( for me) to just right down some measurement and a rough sketch and build from that. but I have been doing it for 30 years.
I feel the same as you.
However, the power of Sketchup is in showing your ideas to the world, not to yourself.
Sketchup has become a design lingua franca because it is powerful and mostly free.
And I still suck at using it. I lived in CAD 2 decades ago, so you’d think I’d be more on board with using Sketchup. The simple truth is, I don’t share my ‘designs’ with anybody.
I think it might be harder for people trained in traditional cad. I’m constantly frustrated trying to do tasks that were very simple in AutoCAD but require creativity in sketchup
I’ve had to learn three or four CAD programs since college. SketchUp’s strength is as a communication tool – both for clients and to transmit ideas across the Internet.
As a drafting program, it’s clunky in places but overall an excellent value. It’s easy to learn the basics by taking the tutorials. After 15 or 20 minutes you’ll be able to use a SketchUp drawing to confirm measurements and generate cutlists.
Well the cost to goodness ratio (patter pending) is high but I still get frustrated after using it for any extended period. Though its possible I’m just dense 🙂
Almost finished with Chris’s build write-ups in the book. Both informative and amusing, they have made me really want to build the final piece.
The day I can doodle on a screen and have it snap into a 3D drawing is the day I’ll use CAD tools with any regularity. More power to anybody that can do a drawing on the screen without wanting to throw the monitor out the window.
I’ve only listened to the audio book with St. Roy, it’s nice to have a visual and compare that to what I had envisioned. I had smaller case side boards in my head for some reason.
On an unrelated note, does anyone know what’s hanging above the dresser? Lighted mirror? Framed LCD picture screen? I’ve seen it in several shots.
Any way to view JACM files outside of sketchup? I’ve tried a number of cad programs, including sketchup and never felt like devoting enough time to get comfortable. Learned technical drawing with drafting tools and still find it more intuitive.
Cool stuff! I have made the two boxes and am working on the chest now, so a little late for the drawings to be useful for me, but I love this book. Making the projects really has been like a mini apprenticeship. Thanks, Chris!