Lost Art Press

Author: john

Lost Art Press: Beginning to Middle

Posted on by john
From left: Christopher Schwarz, Thomas Lie-Nielsen and John Hoffman (the author) at Lie-Nielsen Toolworks’ 25th-anniversary celebration in Warren, Maine, 2006.

The picture above of three young friends was taken in 2006 at Lie-Nielsen’s 25th anniversary celebration in Warren, Maine. I was in awe of meeting Thomas Lie-Nielsen, and listened to everything he said about business and life. Also at the event was Christian Becksvoort who was a wealth of information. He is one of the few woodworkers who created and runs a successful woodworking business. As he said, “failure was not an option.”  One thing he expressed that resonated deeply with me was he would never write another book because the publishing companies don’t play fair. As a kid in the 1970s who loved rock music, I saw documentaries about bands such as Grand Funk Railroad that had been taken advantage of by greedy management; right before a tour was supposed to start, management took all the equipment preventing the band’s tour from happening. I was hearing a similar story from Chris Becksvoort, a successful author.

On the long drive home from Maine I talked to Chris Schwarz about starting our own publishing company that would treat authors right. I thought that with current technology (this was 2006, mind you) we could enter the text into a system and hit the print button. I once heard Tom Lie-Nielsen say during a class, “I now know why tools cost so much to make.” I now understand there is a bit more to publishing than hitting a print button.

We started Lost Art Press in 2007 with “The Art of Joinery” by Joseph Moxon. Chris was still at Popular Woodworking magazine, and I had my full-time job. I had to get written permission to create a business that was not in conflict with my job and Chris had to get the OK from his employer to print the book.  We published the book by offering pre-sales so that we had enough money to cover the print run. Tom let us come to his shows and sell it, and he remains a huge supporter of LAP.  We are ever-grateful to him.

As business continued, I remember hitting $50K in sales and was over-the-moon happy.  We created T-shirts and Chris created a thing called a “blog.” Now we use a lot of technology, and our blog continues to be the most important way to reach customers. Chris is a natural writer who actually wears out keyboards.

Our business is split between content and everything else. Guess which side I am on? I have only had two creative ideas in my life. The first was a block plane made from a concrete that would be covered in a slick poly material. Chris just looked at me. The second idea was steak-flavored soda. (Feel free to steal those ideas as LAP isn’t going down those paths.)

Chris, Tom and John in Amana, Iowa, 2023.

The second picture is from Handworks 2023, just a few days ago. what I am calling the “Middle” for LAP.  As the picture shows I have become a model of style. My appreciation for others and this wonderful life continues to grow. It is amazing to me to see people wearing our T-shirts and buying our creations. As Chris said, “What a country where two drunks with laptops can create a business that works!”

On the drive home from Handworks 2023 I reflected on my life and how we got to where we are. I first and foremost thank you, our customers for your support. You are the best, and I think the other woodworking companies would agree; creators and makers have a wonderful quality that is sometimes lacking in “normal” society.

Special mention goes to Lucy May, Chris’s beloved wife who has held Chris up and helped me and helped LAP succeed. Thank you Madam President.

Thank you to our LAP staff: Megan Fitzpatrick, our first employee without whom we could not publish as many books; Meghan Bates my dear friend who takes care of our customers and provides a voice of reason when work and life have me needing advice; Kara Uhl for keeping contracts and other important items in line so I don’t go insane. Thanks to our newest employees, Mark Gilsdorf and Gabe Gavre, who have signed on to run the new warehouse. And thanks to Chris for being Chris, and bringing me along on this wonderful ride. He has become my other brother.

Thank you also to:

Tom Lie-Nielsen, a kindred soul, and his wife Karyn for their wonderful friendship and support when we were nothing.

Robin Lee, who is one of the kindest, visionary leaders I have met.

Chris Becksvoort for sparking us to create LAP.

All of our authors and our LAP family: Narayan Nayar, Dr. Timmy Henriksen, Dr. Sean Thomas, Justin Leib, Deneb Puchalski, FJ and Jameel Abraham and Raney Nelson.

Stay tuned. I promise to post every 10 years or so!

Much Love.

– John Hoffman

Moonlighting with the Screen Printer (Sweatshirts are in the Store)

Posted on by john

So guess what I did today?

Today I was in the shop of Kelly Robbins who does screen printing and embroidery. Kelly, his wife and parents have been running Robbins Apparel since 1997, with Kelly working full-time for the last five years. As you can see, it is a small shop that requires a good amount of hand work. Today I was “catching” the garments after they were heated to cure the ink, which was a hot job!

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Kelly starts with a poly material that he puts into a machine that places the art image onto it. I’m not really sure how it happens, but after spraying it with water the image becomes visible. This “screen” is now ready to be inserted into the print machine, which squeegees ink onto the garment.

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In order to get the art to line up exactly with the zipper, Kelly thought like a woodworker. He put the image onto the carrier and then when he placed the hoodie onto the carrier he only had to unzip it a bit to see where the image was going to be placed.

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And for the final very hot product…

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Hooded sweatshirts are now live on the site. Get yours here.

— John

‘I Don’t See that Going Anywhere’

Posted on by john

Roger-hero-shot
Roger and his partner Dan Richfield.

If you frequent Lie-Nielsen Toolworks events you may have run into Roger Benton. He is one of the show crew that demonstrates Lie-Nielsen tools and lifts large crates of tools at the end of the show. When we travel to do shows we get to catch up with people like Roger whom we haven’t seen since the last show. It’s sort of a Carney thing. One of the many things Roger does to make ends meet is roam the borough’s of New York City harvesting lumber from trees. As you can imagine, dealing with large tress is like dealing with large animals. The “fun” is in direct proportion to size. Roger has lots of stories, like the one involving his uncle getting an injured hand permanently mended into a half closed position so he could work the clutch on his Harley.  Sadly this story doesn’t involve uncles and Harleys….

— John Hoffman

‘I Don’t See that Going Anywhere.’

“Nah, that’s probably fine,” I said.

Kyle had just brought up the possibility of adding another ratchet strap to the load of mulberry slabs that were causing the truck’s bumper to hang so close to the ground.

“There’s another strap behind the seat,” he offered, hopefully.

I made a show of vigorously attempting to rock the stack of slabs side to side, demonstrating the absolute soundness of the load. Then I confidently dropped the clincher: “I don’t see that going anywhere.”

Kyle managed to emote the phrase “It’s your funeral” without actually speaking as he went for the rest of the gear.

The preceding batch of hours had been spent doing the work of many men so we were pretty shot. The mulberry tree was massive, the biggest I’ve seen, and working quarters were tight. The tiny Brooklyn backyard this beast lived in was barely 25 feet square with tall brick buildings on three sides. Chainsaws are loud, and I’ll tell you that you haven’t really heard a ported Husqvarna 395xp sing until you’ve run it wide open for a few hours within such tight concrete confines. Running this saw in that space is to your sterocilia as Mt. Saint Helens’ explosion was to the surrounding fir forest: utter devastation. I love that saw, I have feelings for that saw that would scare people, but I have to admit that on this occasion I’d had quite enough of it, thanks much. The mulberry cut really well when we found the rare stretch of metal-free wood, but stretches of metal-free wood would prove to be in short supply that day. We hit an even dozen nails on the first cut. Ten mangled chains later we had ringing ears and nine slabs to show for it, the slabs around 2-3/4” thick, 10 feet long and 20″-34” wide.

Mulberry nails

The slabs were gorgeous and heavy, and had to go through a “small alley,” then up a short flight of stairs and into the truck. The homeowner had warned us about the “small alley,” and we thought we were prepared. We were not, for at some point in the past someone had seen fit to erect a small storage shed in the alley. This looked to have been around 800 years ago. The dilapidated shed was crumbing into the building on one side and left a gap around 20″ wide on the other. So the “small alley” was further condensed into a dirty gap one could squeeze through if one wanted to abrade oneself against a filthy brick-and-stucco building on one side while contracting tetanus from the jagged tin ruin on the other. We each gave it a dry run before committing to the feat with slabs in hand. This was when we confirmed that the small alley doubled as a urinal for the homeless.

Mulberry slabs

A few scrapes and bruises later and we had all the slabs in the truck with no signs of lockjaw.

That’s when Kyle tried to be reasonable, I uttered what is now a fun phrase for my friends to throw back at me and we hopped in the truck and drove off.

We made it about six blocks.

Kyle said, while looking through the rear window, “Um, dude….”

Before he could finish, the truck bed bounced up sharply as if suddenly relieved of its burden. That was because the truck bed had been suddenly relieved of its burden. The slabs, splayed across Kingston Avenue, quickly grew smaller in the rear-view mirror. I could hear tires screeching as the cars behind us slammed on their brakes. It was like in a spy movie where you press a button on the steering wheel to deploy the road block. “They’ll never catch us now!”

Kyle: “We lost the….”

Me: “Yes, I see.”

While the street kids from the bodega on the corner laughed and made insensitive remarks, we loaded the truck a second time. We  blocked the street for about 15 minutes, 20 at the most, the car horn crescendo drawing heads from upper-story windows. I smiled and waved cheerfully. Kyle, bless him, quietly fetched two extra ratchet straps from behind the seat.

We were on our way again in short order. Back at the shop the story was told, embellishments were made. Laughter was had at my expense. “Let the troops have a laugh,” I’ve heard. It’s good for morale.

“I don’t see that going anywhere” is now one of my standard catch phrases for exceedingly precarious situations, and it gets used with scary frequency.

 — Roger Benton

For more information on Roger, his furniture and wood business see

BENTON CUSTOM INC.
RE-CO BKLYN
718.909.9722
Bentoncustom.com
Recobklyn.com

 

 

 

No More Crack!

Posted on by john

What’s wrong with this picture?

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I have found a number of ways to crack the stuff I am working on. Namely half-blind tail sockets in the drawer fronts. I have been chopping them out and been cracking the board. The first way I achieved this was chopping over a dog hole. So to fix that I decided to use a scrap piece of sugar pine placed under the board. The next crack came from the scrap board being out of flat, thereby causing a lack of support at certain places. The third way I cracked the board was from hammering the chisel too far into the socket. (Please see the picture above.)

This is the angle that the chisel went to. As we all know the bevel of the chisel causes it to drift in the direction of the flat part of the chisel. Knowing this I held the chisel firmly to avoid its back from crossing the nice baseline I had. Because I was over-eager in applying force to the chisel via Dave Jeske’s awesome mallets, the chisel canted to the angle shown, and I cracked the board again. Three drawers fronts done and three cracks.

To fix one crack I used dental floss to spread the glue. I learned this trick from David (Guitar Dave) Fleming the world-class chair maker in scenic Cobden, Ontario. Chris and I spent a week building Welsh Stick Chairs with him and on the flight back I dropped the arm bow for my chair. During the next leg of the flight, the crack opened up a lot. It may have had something to do with the cabin pressure, but when I got home I called Dave for a fix. He calmly instructed me to put some glue on the crack and use dental floss to work the glue into the crack. Brilliant!

This brings up Chris’s statement a while back that good woodworkers aren’t good because they know how to fix mistakes, they are good because they avoid mistakes. We know which category I am in but now I know three things to avoid when using my chisel.

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Best,

— John Hoffman