We have replenished our stock of “The Woodworker’s Pocket Book” in our online store, and it is available for immediate shipment. The price is $13 plus shipping. This little book is so popular that we sold out of the first press run before it even hit our warehouse.
If you are on the fence about this book, you might want to make your decision before May. We will be raising prices slightly on many of our titles and tools that month.
If you live outside the United States, you can find the book at one of our retailers.
In other “Pocket Book” news, Texas Heritage Woodworks has opened up ordering on a big batch of slipcases. The slipcases are handsome, easy to install and fit the book perfectly.
The chair we built for the step photos in this book, on display at Jennie Alexander’s celebration of life in 2018.
When I drove away from Jennie Alexander’s Baltimore home in 2014, I had her somewhat-reluctant agreement that together we would publish “Make a Chair From a Tree, Third Edition.”
Her reluctance wasn’t due to a lack of passion for the book’s subject – the simple but gorgeous object that we now call a Jennie Chair had been an obsession of hers for decades.
Instead, she didn’t know if she was physically and mentally up to the task. You see, she didn’t want to simply revise the two previous editions of this book. She had learned too much since they were published. She wanted to start from scratch.
So I enlisted Larry Barrett, a chairmaking student of Jennie’s, to help her write and re-write the text. And I can honestly say that if it weren’t for Larry, the book you are holding would never have existed. For four years, he patiently helped Jennie explore her chairmaking process in almost-molecular detail.
When Jennie died in July of 2018, I wondered if the book was going to the grave with her. We didn’t have a finished manuscript. We didn’t have step photos or even a plan for illustrations.
But what we had was a long list of people who had been touched deeply by Jennie and her work and who volunteered to throw themselves at this project.
Larry polished the latest version of the manuscript. One of Jennie’s daughters, Harper Burke, arranged for us to build a Jennie chair and photograph the process in Jennie’s Baltimore workshop. Brendan Gaffney dropped everything to help with photos and illustrations. Nathaniel Krause, one of Jennie’s students, wove the hickory seat for the book.
And Peter Follansbee, one of Jennie’s most devoted students, volunteered to edit the whole thing into this intensely technical (but easy to understand) and personal (but not maudlin) document.
Suddenly, all the barriers to the publication of this book were swept away. Tom McKenna at Taunton Press graciously allowed us to use drawings from the first edition. Anatol Polillo made any copyright problems disappear.
Basically, we got anything we needed to ensure “Make a Chair From a Tree, Third Edition” made it to press. There’s no room to list everyone who helped. You know who you are. Thank you.
I sometimes wonder what Jennie would think of the finished third edition. I know she’d be delighted by the contributions from the people she taught and who, in turn, inspired her.
But I also know that she’d say the book isn’t finished. There are still some loose strings, especially in the section on “bound water.” And perhaps we should just start again at the beginning….
Thank you Jennie, but the burden of refining your gorgeous chair and its elegant construction process is now firmly on our shoulders.
A rough mock-up of the cover and its diestamp.
Off to Press
This week we sent “Make a Chair from a Tree: Third Edition” to press. With any luck, the finished result will be in our hands in late June or July. When it arrives, we will begin selling it immediately. We will sell both a hardbound edition and a pdf version. For the first 30 days, customers who buy the hardback book from us will also receive the pdf for free at checkout (sorry, this offer is not available to people who buy the book from our retailers). The book will be $37 plus domestic shipping.
Like all Lost Art Press books, “Make a Chair from a Tree: Third Edition” is produced and printed in the United States. The book is 184 pages and measures 9″ square – the original trim size of the 1978 edition. Unlike the original edition, our version is in full color and the book is hardback.
Except for a few drawings, the book is completely revised and almost 60 pages longer.
As always, I don’t have any information on which of our retailers will carry the book. We hope that all of them will, but it is entirely their decision. The best way to find out is to ask the retailer directly.
This is a short update on “The Stick Chair Book” and, if you stick with me, I’ll even throw in something useful at the end of the blog entry. No peeking, John Cashman.
When I started writing this book, my goal was a massive brain dump on everything I knew about stick chairs that was righteous and good. All the techniques that work. All the stuff about wood that would be helpful. All the little tricks, finishes, shapes, patterns, sharpening methods etc. etc.
I have concluded that instead there needs to be a “Chair-clopedia.” There should be one entire volume on processing wood. A second on legs. Separate volumes on steambending, arms, sticks, crests, saddling seats, tools, finishing, assembly, patterns and on and on. Written by a host of experts. All bound in hardbacks with the look and feel of hand-tooled leather.
I’m being serious. I’m also serious when I say a project like that could never happen.
As I began to drown in my own outline and circle around the toilet bowl of my own making, I found a bright string – something that could pull me out of the watery grave. It was a new outline for the book.
I’m now more than halfway finished with the book. Half the chapters are designed and are being edited by Megan Fitzpatrick, Narayan Nayar and the Chair Chat Twins (Klaus Skrudland and Rudy Everts). It’s going to be a monster of a book, likely more than 600 pages. But so far it’s a quick read thanks to my love of simple sentence structure and ample doodle space.
I am on track to get it to press by June. It should be released in August, just in time for chair season.
Two good brushes and two brushes that need a haircut.
And now for something completely useful. We use acid flux brushes to spread glue in mortises, which is pretty common. But we trim them to a certain size and shape that makes them far more effective.
When acid flux brushes are born, their bristles are 3/4” long and spread out about 1/2” to 5/8”. If you’ve ever used a stock acid flux brush, you know what happens. The bristles get sopping wet and flop around like a wet mop.
It’s almost impossible to get glue to go where you want it.
I like to trim the bristles so they are 3/8” long. Then trim the width of the bristles so they are 3/8” wide. If there are any errant bristles, snip them off.
A brush with this shape is ideal for grabbing a decent amount of glue and putting it exactly where you want it. The bristles will be stiff, but flexible enough so you can press glue into corners and crevices.
When the glue-up is over, clean the brush (I’ve had brushes last five years or more). When it’s time for another glue-up, first inspect the brush. If there are stray bristles, snip them off.
What’s your favorite useless trick from a woodworking magazine?
— Christopher Schwarz
Read other posts from the “Making Book” series here.
James Mursell at The Windsor Workshop has always made tools that work very well but look different than traditional tools. His travisher, for example, is a great worker, but it looks far more organic than a traditional travisher. Mursell’s travisher is all about rounded edges.
Mursell’s new Traviscraper, is in the same vein. Or is it? What the heck is a “traviscraper?”
Here in the States, most Windsor (aka Forest) chairs are made with seats in soft white pine and tulip poplar. Americans have little need to scrape their seats much at all. But in the U.K., seats are typically elm, ash or oak. So finishing a seat in these woods can be a lot of work with a travisher alone.
I build stick chairs, which have hardwood seats. So I struggle at times to finish them with only a travisher and a curved card scraper. The Traviscraper is the answer to a lot of my problems. It is like a scraper plane for concave hardwood seats. Like any scraping tool, it can work in almost any direction on the seat’s saddle. And the curved sole of the Traviscraper lets you make clean cuts in places that a travisher would struggle.
In fact, I wonder why this tool didn’t already exist. (Perhaps it did and I’ve never encountered it.)
In any case, the Traviscraper is a thoroughly modern tool. It’s made from Delrin and brass, so it has a real heft to it. Every surface of the tool is curved, except for two sharp corners of the blade (ease these over with a file or sander as they are sharp).
If you’ve used a travisher, you already know how to use the Traviscraper. You pinch it between your index fingers and thumbs and push it forward. I needed to use a bit more downward pressure with the Traviscraper than a travisher to keep it in the cut – you’ll figure it out. It’s pretty intuitive.
All in all, I really like the Traviscraper. It cleaned up the tear-out left by my travisher, but the tool’s sole continued to refine the seat’s saddle. After scraping my seat with the tool, it needed only some minor sanding to be ready for finish.
The tool is easy to set and resharpen – Mursell’s website has videos that demonstrate the process.
If you make chairs with hardwood seats, the Traviscraper will make your life much easier. If you make chairs with soft seats, I don’t think you’ll find it very useful.
We began production of our Type 2 Dividers this week, and we hope to begin selling them in June or July.
As long-time customers know, we struggled to produce the first version of these dividers. They were beautiful. They functioned very well. But they were difficult to manufacture in great volume. While we were charging $185 per pair, we probably should have charged $285 or more because of all the hand-fitting and hand-polishing.
So we took the dividers out of production and have been tinkering with them for some time.
OK, so the next part of this story is what you don’t ever get to read when it comes to tool production. Many toolmakers are loath to credit the designers and machinists who figure out the nitty-gritty stuff. I want to give them their due.
Last year, we began working with Josh Cook, a mechanical designer and woodworker who was really interested in our original dividers. He sent me a pair that he’d made based on photos from our website. And we went from there.
Enter machinist Craig Jackson of Machine Time. You might know Craig as the creator of the EasyWood turning tools, which I love. After the EasyWood business was sold to another party and things went south, Craig went back to high-tolerance part production. But he loves making woodworking tools. So he took pity on me and now works with Crucible on some of our tools.
Together the three of us worked through a bunch of variables to come up with a design for these dividers that is:
Functionally perfect from the user’s point of view
Easy to make with minimal setups on the mill
Relatively inexpensive
The Crucible Type 2 dividers are new from the ground up. I can promise you that they have the same feel in the hand – like a heavy and smooth stone you found on a riverbank. Ever since we finished the first pre-production versions, I have kept a pair at arm’s length.
The hinge is completely redesigned and astonishingly smooth in use. While the pointy legs of the dividers are the most visible aspect of the tool, the hinge might be the most difficult part to design and manufacture. After I-don’t-know-how-many iterations, the current hinge is (here’s a technical term) sweet. Its tension is adjusted with a No. 8 screwdriver – something every woodworker has. You can set the dividers to move stiffly and hold a setting. Or you can lock them down to rabidly maintain the position of the points.
We also wanted to make these as affordable as possible while still making them functionally and aesthetically great. And make them in the U.S. with U.S. materials. The goal was a $100 retail – a little less than you would pay for a Starrett compass.
On Tuesday, Craig called me to let me know that they were cranking out legs for the dividers. In a few weeks, hinges will begin production at another shop. If we have any luck, assembly will begin in June and we will start selling them shortly after.
Thank you for all your patience. It won’t be long now.
— Christopher Schwarz
P.S. I know that some of you are asking: Where is Raney Nelson in this? We parted ways amicably more than two years ago. Raney has evolved the design for the dividers to match his aesthetic. We have promoted his version many times on our blog this year and fully support his efforts at Daed Toolworks. If you are looking for ill will or grudges, you won’t find them here.