We changed our blog’s theme yesterday to make the site run properly on a phone or a tablet. It now loads faster, too. We are trying to get it functioning like the old blog, but I have run into a couple snags.
The worst one is that when you are scrolling through all the blog posts, it doesn’t show you the “comment link” – or a link that says “there are 13 comments” with a quick link to the comments.
To see the comments (and to comment) you must click the headline of the story. The comments are at the bottom of that page. We are trying to get the comment link restored to make your life (and Suzanne Ellison’s) easier.
One of the “print on demand” books I’ve made through the years.
If you are writing a woodworking book, you have a lot of company. During the last six months, we have seen an alarming spike in the number of people who have sent us book proposals or even finished manuscripts.
To be clear, we don’t even accept unsolicited manuscripts at Lost Art Press. And still, I’ve rejected at least 20 book proposals so far for 2020, which is a record. John and I have no interest in becoming a bigger publishing company. We don’t want employees, overhead, debt or potentially watered-down content. So we can’t take on these projects.
Luckily, if you are writing a book you have options. So whether you are writing “Alf” fan fiction or the next “Tage Frid Teaches Woodworking” here are some paths to consider.
Traditional offset printing. If you think you can sell 500 copies of your book, then you should investigate traditional offset printing. This is the same process we use at Lost Art Press. It is the cheapest way to print a book – by far. And you have the most options for binding, paper and other manufacturing details. The downside is you have to come up with the money for the press run at the get-go. And you have to produce “press-ready” pdf files. And you have to find an audience. And sell them. And pack all the books. Deal with customer service and returns. But if you can sell 500, you’ll probably do OK. We use several printers and press brokers, including Signature Book Printing.
Print on demand (POD). This is a fancy photocopier or digital laser printer that prints and binds your book. It prints them one at a time, which is great because you will never have 1,000 copies of your novel mouldering in the attic. But it is at least twice as expensive as offset printing (in my experience). And you have fewer choices as to paper, cover and binding. The printing quality gets crisper every year, but the bindings have yet to equal traditional sewn signatures in my experience. I’ve seen some sewn POD books, and I wouldn’t let an enraged baby or dog alone with them. A good place to start investigating this option is Ingram’s Lightning Source service. Companies such as this can handle everything, from sales to distribution. But it costs.
POD marries DIY. You don’t have to go through a big company like Ingram to use POD. Many libraries and “makerspaces” have POD machines. One brand is the Espresso machine, which is what we have at the Cincinnati library. I’ve made many small-run books on these machines and sold them to students and given them away to customers and friends. If you can find a non-profit entity, such as a library, the books are pretty reasonable per copy. But you are very limited on the size, shape, paper and cover. For example, our library only does black-and-white interiors and a color softcover. But the price is right and you have to start somewhere.
Give it to Amazon. Amazon has self-publishing services that allow you to upload your book to them and sell it all over the world – both electronically and in print. The quality I’ve seen so far has been in the middle range of POD. It’s not the best but it’s not the worst. But you do get to tell your relatives at Thanksgiving that your book is on Amazon. That’s something, right? (No.)
A final option is to work with a traditional publisher. There are fewer of these every year, and I can almost guarantee you will have a frustrating experience. Almost all first-time authors do.
Publishing is a tough business, kind of like woodworking. I tell my family that I combined two terrible professions into something that almost works. But if you really want it, it can happen. John and I are proof of that.
This week I’m finishing up a set of Roorkhee-style ottomans for a customer, and today I applied Liberon Black Bison Wax (dark oak shade) over the two coats of garnet shellac.
This is one of my favorite finishes for campaign furniture. The garnet shellac warms up the mahogany; the dark wax fills in the pores and tints any pink left in the wood.
My youngest daughter, Katherine Schwarz, is working for Lost Art Press this summer, doing a lot of photography and website maintenance. So I asked her to shoot this quick phone video to show the before and the after.
Katherine and I will make a few professional videos this summer, including the long-promised video on sharpening scrapers and a video on our Crucible Pinch Rods. The phone video above is not indicative of the quality she can produce (she’s in art school).
The sideboard Nancy made for her book about English Arts and Crafts furniture for Popular Woodworking’s book’s division. Photo by Al Parrish. 2017.
Author Nancy Hiller will discuss her forthcoming book “Kitchen Think” on a new video discussion group called Bench.Talk.101. The free event takes place at 8:30 p.m.-9:30 p.m. (U.K. time) on Thursday, July 16. If you are in the United States, the event takes place at 3:30 p.m. Eastern time.
There are multiple ways to enjoy the event. About 5 minutes before the event begins on Thursday, you can go to Bench.Talk.101’s Instagram bio and there will be a link to join the discussion. Or if you have Zoom installed on a device, you can join the discussion via this link.
If you miss the discussion with Nancy, it will be posted afterward here on YouTube. If you click on that link now you can view the previous Bench.Talk.101s to get a feel for the format.
Bench.Talk.101 is a freewheeling and informative chat, and Nancy is always a sharp and interesting person to interview.
Fresh-mixed shellac is an excellent film finish, and we go through a lot of it in our shop. Here is how I mix it up for general use as a furniture finish (i.e. not as a barrier for urine, smoke or sap).
We use Tiger Flakes from Tools for Working Wood. There are lots of good shellac suppliers out there. But once I settled on Tiger Flakes, I stuck with Tiger Flakes. I like consistency and predictability with my finishes.
I use pure-grain alcohol: Everclear from the liquor store. Hardware store alcohols (which have water, methanol and/or other chemicals) don’t dissolve shellac as well. And they can be poisonous. If you can’t buy Everclear, I recommend you visit Kentucky! (Other woodworkers I know buy ethanol through medical supply catalogs and report that it’s not too much of a pain.)
I mix up shellac in a “one-pound cut” or even a little weaker. That is one pound of shellac per 1 gallon of Everclear. There’s a handy chart here that helps you through the math for smaller portions. While many prefer a “two-pound cut,” I prefer to apply more thin coats than a few thick coats. You can, of course, easily thin down a thick shellac.
I use a magnetic stirring gizmo. This $30 gadget allows me to pour the ingredients in a plastic beaker, drop in a magnetic stirbar and walk away. In about an hour it mixes the shellac completely. Some people prefer to pulverize their shellac with a grinder used for coffee beans. That works, too. I prefer the magnetic stirrer because I can pour an entire pound of shellac into an entire gallon of alcohol and walk away. No pulverizing small batches of shellac. But that’s just personal preference.
Then I filter the shellac through a paint filter or cheesecloth. Amazingly, the Tiger Flakes never contain any bug parts, so there’s nothing really to filter out. But I do it anyway just to be sure.
Then I label and date each glass jar of shellac. We use it so quickly, however, I’ve never had any expire.
