Lost Art Press

Author: Lost Art Press

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

Coming Soon: Peter Follansbee’s ‘Joiner’s Work’

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This week I’m performing the final edit on Peter Follansbee’s forthcoming book, “Joiner’s Work.” If all goes to plan, it should be released in April.

Peter started work on this book eight years ago as a way to expand on the work from his book with Jennie Alexander, “Make a Joint Stool from a Tree.” The new book covers the construction of carved boxes, numerous chests, a bookstand and the fantastic geometric carving that blankets almost all of his woodwork – including his kitchen cabinets.

Because “Joiner’s Work” is firmly rooted in 17th-century American technique, it contains an outstanding guide to processing green wood from the log to the finished part. I don’t know anyone living who has done more of this sort of work, and so Follansbee offers no theories, ideas or concepts about green woodwork. Just hard-won experience: what works, what doesn’t and what to do when things go wrong.

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The projects are similarly no-nonsense, and Peter declines to offer 21st-century precision – such as CAD-perfect construction drawings – as a way to build 17th-century work. Why? If you’ve seen 17th-century chests where the builder used a router to help carve the panels, then you probably already know the answer in your heart. It looks wrong and silly. Instead, Peter offers a flexible way of approaching the projects that allows you to use what you have on hand to create boxes, chests and other work.

My favorite section in the book is on the carving. Peter unlocks the simple geometry behind the patterns he uses and shows – step-by-step – how he lays out and executes each cut. He insists that the tools and techniques are simple. After reading it, I believe him. It is simple. It’s just amazing to me how the end result is greater than the sum of its parts.

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Finally, I have to say something about Peter’s voice throughout the book. If you’ve ever taken a class from him or attended one of his lectures, you know he has a sharp wit. And he uses it to cut things apart. This book has the Full Follansbee. Reading it is like listening to the guy. It’s a delight to read.

We’ll post more details about the book, and when it will be available, shortly. “Joiner’s Work” was a long time in the making, but I promise it will be worth it.

— Christopher Schwarz

Updates to our PDFs are Not Nefarious

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When we make small corrections to our books with each printing, we also update the pdfs in our store so that everything matches. We also send out a link to the new pdf to all the customers who have purchased the pdf, even if the purchase was five years ago.

We do this so that everyone who bought the pdf has the most current version. The changes to these pdfs are minor – typos, small production issues, fixed photo credits etc. If there is a substantive error, we issue an errata on the blog.

This week we sent out pdf updates to both “Shaker Inspiration” and “The Intelligent Hand.” And we have received a ton of emails asking if these are spam, a virus, a spoof or something else evil and false.

They’re not. Clicking on the link will simply download the newest version of the pdf to your device. If you don’t want the newest version, don’t click the link.

Apologies if this is causing distress.

— Christopher Schwarz

The $175 Workbench Comes Home

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I wasn’t the first person to use Southern yellow pine to build a workbench in 2000. But it sure felt like it when I built the above workbench for Popular Woodworking Magazine.

At that time, almost all of the workbenches I’d read about and saw in workshops were made from European beech or white maple. And most were what we call a European bench, German bench or Ulmia-style bench.

I was making $23,000 a year at the time, and we had a 3-year-old girl, so I couldn’t afford a commercial bench or even the wood and vises (about $800 to $1,000) to build one in beech or maple.

I was desperate to make a bench. I was working on a pair of sawhorses topped with a door I had scavenged from the Coca-Cola plant where our shop was located.

One day I went to the home center to price out some plywood and spotted a gleaming pile of clear 12’ 2x8s – the same stuff we used for joists and rafters to build our houses in Hackett, Ark. My normal Pavlovian response to yellow pine was my arms turning rubber – yellow pine can be incredibly heavy, especially when it’s packed with resin.

But instead of that rubber feeling, something clicked in my head. I could make workbench out of yellow pine. Then I did some quick math: Eight 2×8 x 12’ boards would cost only $76.56. Add the hardware, a face vise (later replaced) and the Veritas Wonder Dog, and I could make the bench for $175.

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The bench ended up on the cover of the February 2001 issue, and we showed it off to readers during an open house one evening. Their reaction was split down the middle. Someone called it a redneck bench. Someone else said that at least it was better than my sawhorses. But a few people asked a lot about the mechanical properties of yellow pine.

It’s amazing stuff. It’s stiff, hard (after the resin sets up) and stable. In fact it’s way more stable than beech or oak.

As a result, I’ve continued to build benches from yellow pine since 2000 with no complaint. My first Roubo (2005) and Nicholson (2006) workbenches were made from yellow pine. And I’ve built at least 25 or 30 benches from the stuff during classes or at woodworking shows. (That actually was our gimmick for a few years – we built a bench during the show and gave it away at the end of the show.)

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Today, the $175 Workbench came back home to me. John has had it for the last 10 years in Indianapolis. He’s moving house and won’t have room for it. So Megan Fitzpatrick and I rented a truck and brought it to the storefront.

It’s now a bench for students when they take classes here. We scooted my father’s workbench under a window, and it fits perfectly – like it was made for the spot. We now have eight workbenches in the front room of the shop, but we’re not going to expand the number of students we serve above our normal six.

Instead, the extra bench is going to be used by Brendan, Megan or me while classes are going on. We all have commissions that have to get out the door, and delaying projects by two, three or five days while a class goes on can be stressful.

So once again, the $175 Workbench saves the day.

— Christopher Schwarz

Rowden Atelier: Still one of the Best Woodwork Schools

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I’ve taught a lot of woodworking students of all different skill levels – from beginners to professionals – all over the world. Despite that, I was shocked and delighted by the full-time students at Rowden Atelier in Devon when I taught a tool chest class there in 2014.

Most of the Rowden students had less than a year of coursework under their belts when we ran the course, and David Savage instructed me to push them to work at a professional pace through the week.

David thought they would be accurate but a bit slow. I had no idea what to expect. When I teach a tool chest class, I usually have time to instruct, time to build the project, time to work with each student one-on-one and time for many cups of coffee or tea.

Not so at Rowden. The full-time students were monsters and nipped at my heels all week.

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It turns out the training there is even more impressive than David suspected. And after watching the students for more than two weeks, I remained deeply impressed. Not only did they have a firm grasp of joinery, machine work and hand work, they also knew how to draw, paint and do a bunch of tricky veneer and inlay stuff that’s frankly beyond me.

They had been schooled in the realities of business – all of the instructors there are hard-bitten professionals. And they had been given the opportunity to work at an extremely high level on some of David’s own designs for clients.

Had I been in my 20s, I would have dropped everything in my life and enrolled myself.

When David Savage died on Jan. 18, he had already stepped away from day-to-day management of the school and put it in the good hands of instructors he hand-picked and trained. Many of them – David admitted – were even better woodworkers than he. Daren Milman, Ed Wild and Jon Greenwood are all world-class woodworkers and instructors.

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“Despite (or even fuelled by) David’s recent death, his vision for teaching the next generation of cabinetmakers at Rowden continues to surge onwards,” according to Matthew Lacey at Rowden. “We knew this was coming, of course, and his presence is greatly missed by all of us. But, because of the work he did over the last 15 years setting up the group there today, day to day nothing has changed.

“The same goes for the students at Rowden, learning the craft of cabinetmaking, pushing themselves as they move through this part of their furniture-making adventure. The next generation of students are now coming through Rowden to start their cabinetmaking story, lead by David’s philosophy and guided by the team he put together to achieve this.”

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If you are considering a woodworking education, you’d be hard-pressed to find a better school than Rowden. Its roots stretch back to the English Arts & Crafts Movement, but the design aesthetic is entirely contemporary. The shop is located deep in Devon where you are surrounded by nature, high-quality machinery, beautiful bench rooms and drawing/painting studios.

Though I miss my friend, David, I am glad he left Rowden in the hands of these capable instructors. And I look forward to meeting the future generations of capable and confident  woodworkers that will come from Rowden.

— Christopher Schwarz

P.S. We’ve never published a single sponsored post here at Lost Art Press, and we’re not starting now. The above opinions are my own.

Experimental Chair No. 46

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Whenever I can manage it, I try to build an experimental chair alongside one of my trusted designs. It gives me a chance to use less-than-perfect wood and see how things that have germinated in my sketchbook look in real life.

This week I started two stick armchairs in walnut – one that will be for sale and a second that might be for fire.

I’m building the experimental chair using the sappier parts of a walnut slab I bought in Lexington, Ky., last month. The board was cut from a street tree, so it’s not like lumberyard walnut. My tree grew fast, out in the open and has some odd coloring and grain, which is typical for a street tree.

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The experiment with this chair is the armbow. With a traditional three-piece armbow, the “doubler” – the piece that joins the two arms – has always been a magnet for my eyes. I like the look – it’s traditional – but I’m always looking for ways to make the doubler recede into the overall design of the arm.

After chatting with Narayan Nayar about my efforts to minimize the doubler, he suggested repeating its design elsewhere on the chair. It could be added to the underside of the arm. Or the top of the chair seat. Repetition would make the doubler look more like part of a pattern than an “eye catcher.”

So after some sketching, I decided to use a “double doubler” that has 30° bevels on all edges – one on top of the arms and one on the bottom of the arms. I think I like the way it looks. But I’m going to have to finish the chair to know for sure.

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Earlier Experiments
Some experiments work so well they get adopted immediately. A couple years ago I started making my stretchers into double-tapered octagons. Making this shape is a fair amount of work with a plane and a couple cradle blocks on my workbench.

But I loved the double-tapered octagons immediately.

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Before embracing the double-taper octagon, I would turn or plane my stretchers into a round shape, usually cigar-ish or with a bulge in the middle. These rounded forms are traditional shapes, but I always thought they conflicted with the facets on the six- or eight-sided legs.

Other design ideas survive on the bench for minutes or even seconds before being chucked into the scrap pile. I try to forget about those ideas before I’m even tempted to write about them on the blog.

— Christopher Schwarz