After a long dry spell – the last book we sent to press was in December – we now have four books on press. (Actually, we have five books if you count the somewhat-cursed edition of Moxon’s “Mechanick Exercises” that has been on press for six months. More on that below.)
Today we finished our work on two books and won’t see them again until a semi backs up to the warehouse in 11 weeks. You can sign up to be notified when any of these books arrive in the warehouse on this page.
“The Belligerent Finisher” by John Porritt. This is our first book devoted to finishing, and it is a doozie. Porritt, a furniture restorer and chairmaker, shows many of the tricks he uses to add subtle (and beautiful) wear and age to a new piece. Porritt is not attempting to show you how to make fakes. He is trying to show you something deeper – how to add color and texture to a piece so its form matches its finish. Most of his processes use simple and common tools (a chainmail pot scrubber, a deer antler, a handheld propane torch, washing powder). The book walks you through all the steps for two backstools. Then there’s a gallery that shows how you can mix and match these techniques on other pieces. The book should arrive in our warehouse in September.
“Sharpen This” by Christopher Schwarz. I think of this book as a piece of historical fiction. What if someone wrote a book about how to sharpen, and that person wasn’t making sharpening equipment. And the internet didn’t exist. This is a pocket-book-sized treatise that boils down everything I know about sharpening media, steel and technique to give the reader a clear understanding of sharpening. The book embraces all the sharpening systems. But it focuses on how to work with a minimum amount of expensive gear. And how to work fast. This is a book I never wanted to write. But after teaching so many beginners who were so horribly confused, I decided to just lay it all out there. The book should arrive in our warehouse in September.
“Euclid’s Door” by George Walker and Jim Tolpin. Geometry lovers rejoice. Jim and George are back with a new book about how to make your own insanely accurate woodworking layout tools using simple hand tools and geometry that blew our minds. Honestly, both Megan and I had to step into the shop to confirm some of the geometric constructions really worked (they do). If you have been resisting geometry and whole-number ratios, this book will show you how to apply it directly to tools that you will use for the rest of your life. Really good stuff – and the book is entirely hand-illustrated by Barb Walker and Keith Mitchell. The book should arrive in our warehouse in late August.
The Stick Chair Journal No. 1. A crazy experiment. Can we make a beautiful journal about vernacular chairs and have it be slightly more successful than our money-losing posters? The first issue has techniques you can use, a tool review, folklore about a cursed chair and complete plans for a new vernacular chair design, which you are free to build and sell if you like. When you buy the journal you will also receive a download of the full-size patterns for the chair. The Journal should arrive in our warehouse in late August.
You can sign up to be notified when these books arrive in our store. It’s a simple process, and it is 100 percent not marketing. We are not trying to trick you into signing up for ads or some worthless newsletter. It’s a notification service that costs a lot of money to use. But we encourage you to please use it to make your life easier.
Oh, and about that cursed edition of Moxon’s “Mechanick Exercises.” That has been at the printer since December. Then the plant shut down because of COVID. Then it shut down because of ransomware. Then they printed one of the signatures with a missing page and had to redo the signature. The whole situation is almost laughable.
The plant told me they would ship those books on June 24. I’m not holding my breath.
— Christopher Schwarz
Mostly unrelated printing story: In one copy of my first (or was it second?) book, the printer managed to substitute one signature from a totally different book. It seems like it was just that one copy; I’d expected it to be a larger goof-up, but somehow wasn’t.
When you see how they assemble signatures, it’s easy to see how this mistake could happen with one book. Each signature has a black bar on its spine in a particular location. When the signatures are arranged in the right order, the black bars make an easily recognizable pattern.
So if a bunch of books were messed up, it would be immediately obvious. But if one book has one signature that’s off, that can slip through.
We see this happen on occasion. And stupider stuff.
My brother was missing a page in his thesis. Thankfully nobody really reads that stuff…
I’m surprised that he noticed. I’ve never paged through the bound copy of my thesis.
LOL, on the page that the faculty signed that says “This dissertation is approved” I misspelled dissertation. This was back when memory was small. As such, it was a single page document and I simply forgot to spell check as it was one of the last things I did. I find it very funny.
So does that make the book more collectable like a double stamped coin? 🙂
Wait. Was this one of our books? If so, let us send you a replacement.
Not one of yours–it was a book I wrote when I was in grad school. If I recall correctly, a co-worker bought it and showed it to me. I reported it to my publisher and replaced it with one of my comped copies. Faster customer service that way, I reckoned.
Thanks. I thought that was the case. But I wanted to check.
At first I thought it said that “Sharpen This” was a piece of historical friction… I am going to continue believing that is what it says.
What is a signature?
A gathering of pages that gets sewn together with other gatherings to make a book (that has a sewn binding). They are typically 8-, 16-, or 32-page signatures.
Thanks Miss Fitz
A signature is also colloquially referred to as a “John Hancock”
I was hoping for the image of the skeleton hand on “Sharpen This”.
OK, you talked me into a couple of the books – and it’s not to help your sales figures for the quarter… :^)
Oh miss Fitz, if nothing else in your world existed except getting DTC to print, what would be your very next physical action to get it there? Great! Do that now please….. pretty please!
Does Sharpen This have info on the elusive card scraper sharpening? I am still like 1:4 with that
According to the Table of Contents on the product page, Appendix 4 is “Sharpening Scrapers”.
That looks great. Does the sharpening book also cover kitchen knives?
Nope. Just woodworking tools.
once i learned what sharp truly is and how to appropriately use coarse, medium, and fine, getting a kitchen knife sharp was simple. now i cringe thinking about the youtube videos chronicling “artisans” spending 2 hours to get a single chef’s knife sharp. they’re wasting at least 1 hr 57 minutes. unless they used that knife to chop teaspoons. then, they’re only wasting 1 hr 51 minutes.
I’ve been a math(s)-ophile since my grade school days. I was the weird kid in Geometry class that always aced the tests. I devoured Jim and George’s other books and I can’t wait to get my hands on their new one. The sharpening book is also on my must have list, along with Moxon’s book.
I generally buy PDF versions of your books, and then decide whether I want to send cash to Sweden or Germany for a hard copy. Will there be a PDF version of some/all of the books?
Yes. We couldn’t sell a pdf of “The Woodworker’s Pocket Book” because the owner of the rights would not allow it. But these two new books will have PDF versions.
I must admit of all the books in today’s list, I’m most happy to see “Sharpen This” coming.
Over a decade ago (argh: age!) I did a class with Chris, and within 5 minutes Chris undid years of sharpening BS. (the cheap side-hold jig, the simple wooden “blade projection” jig, a couple of stones, and “its more fun to make shavings than metal filings” and “what matters more, the resulting finish on the board, or the quality of the shaving going into the garbage can” )
Once Chris had ‘enlightened me’ and I was still teaching woodworking classes, I attempted to undo some of the damage I’ve seen various “experts” on sharpening spew.
Things like people spending hundreds of dollars in jigs or on over-doing it in stones (the most egregious examples lately, the Lee Valley/Veritas “side hold” jig that doesn’t actually hold worth a damn, or 30,000 grit stones. Seriously? )
I must admit I’ve got a bit of an axe to grind (sharpen?) here. Recently in an LVT store and I was quietly watching from a distance as a LVT employee was trying to encourage someone to spend a fortune on jigs and stones when all the person needed to get started was the $19.95 side-hold jig and a piece of glass and a few grits of fine sandpaper for their hobby need. Not everyone needs a set of Shapton stones from 600 to 16,000 grit.
Hopefully we can all together help Sharpen This become mandatory reading and we can finally try to put a wooden stake through the heart of the “lets spend an hour sharpening a blade” madness.
And now I’m going to go stand on the lawn and shake my fist at a cloud.
I can see that cloud from my house, Jonathan, and I am also giving it “what for.”
Thank you!
it was a hell of a cloud…
Dutch tool chest by Fritz ?
There are inexpensive diamond stones out there that have a better value (amt of sharpening / $) than sandpaper. They don’t cost more much more than the papers.