Lost Art Press

Author: Lost Art Press

Publisher of woodworking books and videos specializing in hand tool techniques.

Register for Classes Tomorrow

Posted on by Lost Art Press

Registration for 2021 classes at our storefront opens at 10 a.m. (Eastern) tomorrow, May 17. We have only a few classes scheduled as we are trying to ease back into the new world. As you can imagine, a lot has changed both in Covington and with our business.

Some of our favorite restaurants have closed, but new ones have opened. We’re working on some new kitchen and bathroom facilities for visitors. And Brendan Gaffney has left us for Upstate New York.

One of the biggest changes has been the strange new barrier that has emerged between Ohio and Kentucky because of bridge construction. The old Roebling Suspension Bridge is closed entirely for repairs. The main bridge, the Brent Spence, is being fixed and repainted, so getting across the river is more difficult than ever because of continual lane closures and the giant condom that has enveloped the structure. As I write this, even our pedestrian bridge across the Ohio River is closed because a large stone fell from one of its piers.

It’s enough to make you consider taking the Anderson Ferry. Or swim.

So if you do plan to take a class, I recommend you stay on the Kentucky side of the border (no, you don’t need a passport, just bring a jug of corn liquor). There are lots of great hotels and Airbnbs in Covington that are walking distance from the storefront.

Here are the three classes we’re offering this year:

July 30-31: Build a Cricket Table with Derek Jones

Aug. 2-6: Build an “Anarchist’s Tool Chest” with Megan Fitzpatrick

Nov. 8-12: Make a Carved Oak Box with Peter Follansbee

Dec. 3-5: Build a Dutch Tool Chest with Megan Fitzpatrick

We hope to offer a few more classes before the end of 2021, but we are waiting to see if instructors will be able to travel. And if students are willing to sign up.

I’m not going to teach here or anywhere – at least for now. One of the after-effects of the pandemic has been how our publishing business has grown (almost four-fold). Keeping Lost Art Press running smoothly is more than a full-time job for me and John. 

Like it or not, however, I’ll still be helping the instructors out during the classes. That means making sure there’s enough toilet paper, helping students who need assistance and occasionally brandishing the “encouragement whip” when the dovetailing slows down too much.

If you haven’t taken a class here, it’s important to remember that we are not a school. We don’t have an ice cream machine or a masseuse. But we do offer high-quality instruction, tiny classes with only six students, excellent workbenches and a walkable historic neighborhood to explore. 

Plus Bean, the three-legged shop cat.

So if you are ready to travel and to attempt talking to strangers, I hope you’ll consider joining us. All we ask is that you be vaccinated against COVID-19. You can read more about that decision here.

— Christopher Schwarz

Fearsome Dimensions

Posted on by Lost Art Press

Shopmate Megan Fitzpatrick has watched me build 40 or 50 chairs during the last five years I’ve been working in my Covington workshop. As a result, she often jokes that she could probably teach chairmaking – even though she’s never finished building a stick chair.

So when she started checking over the construction drawings for “The Stick Chair Book,” she said something a bit alarming.

“Watching you build a chair makes it look easy,” she said. “These drawings make it look difficult.”

At first, I thought that perhaps my construction drawings were too detailed, too overwhelming or too… I don’t know. I looked them over and concluded that they were about right. They showed every important dimension and angle – no more. Plus, they communicated how the pieces fit together.

So what was the problem?

I think there’s a disconnect between how I build chairs in the shop and how I communicate that information to others.

Put another way: I could describe how to create an impressionist painting with information on brushes and paint mixing and approaching the canvas. Or I could give you a canvas with a paint-by-numbers scheme all set up for you – green here in area No. 12. And light blue in area No. 35.

Both approaches result in an impressionist painting. But which is better?

The answers is: I don’t know. For the last 25 years of my life, I have described to others how to build furniture using pictures and words – plus 15 years of teaching woodworking classes. And I have found that people learn differently. Some woodworkers need a detailed drawing that shows every relevant dimension and angle. Others need a rough sketch on a napkin with a few overall numbers.

In the end, both woodworkers can arrive at the same destination: A well-built piece with grace and beauty.

This book is an attempt to explore both approaches. The first 400 pages describe the operations involved in making stick chairs. For some woodworkers, this is all that is needed. Other woodworkers need to start with the mechanical drawings and then figure out the operations – the next 200 pages of the book. Neither approach is superior.

If you are bewildered by the mechanical drawings, skip them. If you are frustrated by the “that’s close enough” disclaimers, ignore them. Stick chairs can be built by engineers, potheads and pothead engineers.

So how does my brain work? When you take on the job of a translator, as I have, you have to embrace both sides. Accuracy and spontaneity are the angel and devil that sit on each shoulder. It’s a familiar fight in publishing. On one shoulder is the sober editor. The other has the drunken writer.

When I make tools, I can fuss over .0005”. When I design chairs, I wonder “does this rake and splay look like a jumping spider or a squashed squirrel?”

But I don’t expect (or encourage) you to become a human corpus callosum. Instead, take what you can from any book and leave the rest behind. Most of all, don’t get discouraged by the detailed measurements in the drawings or the vagaries in the text.

Or, as John Brown put it: “By all means read what the experts have to say. Just don’t let it get in the way of your woodworking.”

— Christopher Schwarz

‘The Anarchist’s Workbench’ Still a Bargain

Posted on by Lost Art Press

Last week we made a short (14 seconds!) promotional video about “The Anarchist’s Workbench” for Facebook and Instagram. In the video we mentioned the bench required only about $430 in construction lumber.

When we posted the video this morning, the first comment out of the gate was about how our price was wrong because the price of lumber has skyrocketed.

No, the $430 price is correct – using Home Depot prices from May 2021.

The bench requires:

  • Nine 2 x 12 x 8’s for the benchtop. Each 2×12 is $25.12. That’s $226.08
  • For the undercarriage, you need three 2 x 12 x 12’s and three 2 x 10 x 10’s. The 2 x 12s are $41.45 each ($124.35). The 2 x 10s are $19.13 each ($57.39).

Add up the subtotals, and you get $407.82. I then threw in another $20 for good measure.

Yes, lumber prices have gone up. Those 2 x 12 x 8’s were $8.81 each when I built the bench in 2020. But the bench is still a bargain to build, especially when you compare yellow pine to maple.

And the book itself is still a bargain. The pdf is still 100 percent free. Go here, and you’ll find a link to download the pdf. You don’t have to register, give up your email or anything. Just click and download.

The snarky comment on the video didn’t ruin my day. It had already been ruined by the bird that crapped on my shoulder when I went outside to fetch the morning paper.

— Christopher Schwarz

Classes & Vaccinations

Posted on by Lost Art Press

We have received several questions (and a threat of a lawsuit) about why we are requiring students in our classes to be vaccinated for COVID.

This decision was entirely mine, and I wanted to explain it here (and give Megan a place to send future questions).

In simple terms, COVID-19 is a deadly and highly transmissible disease, vaccines are not perfect and this building is my home, where I live with my wife and one of our kids. 

Our workshop is a tight interior space, and students are almost on top of one another, huffing and puffing as they cut, plane, chop and carve wood. In other words, this is an ideal place for COVID to spread.

And though the vaccines work well, they are not perfect. And so I ask that if you come into my home that you be vaccinated to keep everyone as safe as possible. The vaccine is free and widely available, so there is no economic or class discrimination at play.

Finally, we are not asking for your medical information. No one will ask to see your vaccination record. It’s the honor system. If you are happy to deceive us, that’s on your conscience.

My hope is that by 2022, infection rates will be so low that we won’t have to worry about COVID much. But for this year, I’m asking: Please, get vaccinated before you visit my home and shop.

— Christopher Schwarz

Restoring 2 Classic Woodworking Books

Posted on by Lost Art Press

Republishing out-of-print books is one of the most technically challenging things we do at Lost Art Press. In a perfect world, it should be easy: Take the old files, send them to the new printer and start the presses.

In my entire career in publishing, however, that hasn’t happened once.

With every older book that we have republished, the original publisher has lost or destroyed the original files. While I’m sure this happens sometimes out of malice or laziness, most of the time it occurs because of a change in technology or ownership.

Quick example: When F+W Media acquired American Woodworker magazine, it inherited a tractor-trailer load of original files – photos, manuscripts, drawings, contracts etc. I saw these files when I stopped by the office about four years ago. What did F+W do with them? They are now in the landfill.

So when we set out to bring back Scott Landis’s two classic woodworking texts, “The Workbench Book” and “The Workshop Book,” I knew we would be in for a technical slog. There was, however, some good news. Landis had many original photos, which allowed us to create new dust jackets with crisp, high-resolution photos.

Also, the last publisher had a press-resolution pdf of “The Workbench Book.” That book was published in the early days of desktop publishing. So the book existed on film – one layer of film for each color. That film was digitized and reassembled into a pdf. Getting it on a modern press with modern aluminum color plates, however, was no small feat. 

For “The Workshop Book,” on the other hand, there was nothing. No digital or physical files whatsoever. The only good news here was that Landis had a pristine first edition of the book that we could attempt to use to make a new edition.

I won’t dive too much into the technical details, but you can’t simply scan a printed color book with photos and republish it. Well, you can, but it will look like garbage.

Luckily, I’ve been working with a company that has developed a proprietary scanning process that can take apart printed color photos (called halftones) and separate them into digital color plates – one for each color, cyan, magenta, yellow and black. These digital plates can be processed and reassembled into something that looks damn good on press.

We hadn’t tried this process, however. So it was a gamble with tens of thousands of dollars.

Thankfully, the printed result looks great. Better than I could have ever hoped, really.

The interior of “The Workshop Book,” which looks indistinguishable from a book produced with traditional files.

Everyone on this project, from Landis down to the press operators, did everything they did to get these books right. Landis and his son even created some nice new diestamps for the cloth below the dust jackets. When these dust jackets wear out, the books will still look like a cohesive set. 

And if these books ever go out of print again, it’s my hope that we have made it easier for some future publisher. All our contracts guarantee the author will receive all the publishing files we’ve created, which are stored digitally at multiple locations. 

We hope you’ll consider adding “The Workbench Book” and “The Workshop Book” to your woodworking library. We definitely think they were worth the effort and expense to republish and offer information that is useful to this generation and future ones.

— Christopher Schwarz