A large number of Crucible Lump Hammers will go up for sale in our store at noon Eastern time on Thursday, Nov. 15. This likely will be the last batch of lump hammers we will sell before Christmas.
This is our largest batch so far – Raney has been toiling for weeks in the Crucible Lab to get the heads milled and the hammers assembled and finished. We hope this batch will last a good long time so that everyone who wants one can get one, but we simply don’t know if we’ve made enough this time. So mark your calendars and set an alarm to avoid disappointment.
And Sweatshirts! We now offer high-quality Champion sweatshirts that feature the Crucible logo – an ancient symbol used by alchemists in recipes to depict a crucible. These sweatshirts are the best we can get our hands on – hence the price. (We’re taking very little profit on these.)
One last note: If you have a question about Crucible, please send it to help@crucibletool.com. Sending questions about Crucible to Lost Art Press will only delay you getting your answer. Crucible is a separate company with different people handling different chores. Thanks.
Blue Spruce Toolworks is known mostly for tools that cut – knives and chisels – and not tools that lay out. That’s a shame because the Blue Spruce bevel gauge and try square are excellent tools with some special features.
We’ve had the try square in our shop for more than two years now, and it is the tool we all use in the machine room to check things for square. I chose the Blue Spruce for this difficult task for a couple reasons. One, if it gets dropped on the concrete floor and is knocked out of square (this has happened twice) it is easily returned to perfection in moments thanks to its internal mechanism.
And two, the ceramic coating on the tool stops rust. Our machine room is climate controlled, but it is a much harsher environment than the bench room.
In use, I quite like the ceramic coating on the tool. I wasn’t sure I would. I have an aversion to anodized aluminum for some reason. The ceramic doesn’t look like fancy aluminum foil around a Christmas package. It’s matte and smooth.
You can customize the look of the square – there are currently nine color options (including an anodized finish). You can choose the finish on the blade, the wood infilled into the handle and the hardware. Chances are that no one you know will choose the same combination as you do, making your square easy to spot in a class or bench room. At $150, this square is a steal. The quality and engineering are outstanding.
Bevel Gauge The bevel gauge is the latest addition to my tool kit. As I delve into teaching chairmaking and other staked pieces, I have students asking for my recommendations for bevel gauges (also called sliding bevels and siding T-bevels).
Of course, I love the bevels from Chris Vesper. Always have. But the waiting list for those can be months at times. Lately, I’ve been recommending vintage Stanley No. 18s, which are great but can be difficult to find, depending on the weather.
The Blue Spruce bevel is as outstanding as its fixed-blade brother discussed above. You get to pick all your colors and stuff (it’s like your wedding!). The bevel locks crazy well. Better than the Stanley No. 18. I haven’t compared it to the Vesper bevel, but it’s fair to say both lock plenty hard for tough workshop use.
The bevel is $175. That might seem steep compared to the cheap bevels at the home center or the woodworking store, but those don’t lock for crap. And they have several fundamental design flaws that make them suitable for melting or burning. The Blue Spruce is one of those tools that you’ll fall in love with the first time you use it.
Both tools are highly recommended.
— Christopher Schwarz
Standard disclaimer. I buy all my tools at full retail with my own money. I’ve never been sponsored or accept free tools for review. I’m not an affiliate of any website. I hate that stuff.
We get asked on an almost-daily basis why we don’t ship things overseas. The answer is: We do. We ship our books to our international vendors so they can sell them to customers with a reasonable shipping cost.
But what about T-shirts, bandanas, chore coats and the like? That’s where it gets complicated.
Shipping directly to Europe is a tax nightmare for us (thank you, EU). And on advice of our attorney and accountant, we have decided to sell only through our international vendors so that we don’t end up doing a lot of paperwork.
Shipping to Canada, Australia and other countries is a different kind of problem. It’s insanely expensive. Even with a fully automated, high-tech warehouse with accounts with all the international carriers, we can’t get shipping rates that are even close to reasonable. The cost of shipping a book is usually more than the retail price of the book or bandana or sweatshirt.
We have tried many schemes (too many to list here) to sell shirts and the like outside of the U.S., but they all failed or were too complicated to maintain.
Lost Art Press might look like a big company at times, but are only two guys who run the thing. There are physical limits to what we can do – and publishing books will always be at the top of the list.
I offer a couple solutions for those outside the U.S. who want some of our specialty products:
Use a parcel forwarding service. Many LAP customers have had great success with these services. Here is a list of five recommended by Huffington Post. I wish we could get rates as reasonable as they get. It must be magic.
Print your own shirts and sweatshirts. You can download our logo file here. There are thousands of services all over the world that will let you print your own shirt, jacket or (shudder) thong with the logo.
I wish at times we were a big company that could have a person dedicated to shipping. And that we shipped a million parcels a year so we could qualify for the dirt-cheap rates. And that I had to attend marketing meetings three times a week to get harangued to sell more of the things that suck. And then I had to meet with the executive types above me to explain why we needed a $500 digital camera to continue making books. And that I had to fill out performance reviews and attend classes on how to harass your employees legally. And then I wake up from the bad dream.
Today I had to return to IKEA to buy some sheepskins to outfit the stick chairs I’m building, and I was stopped cold by one of the company’s displays.
It was a bunch of 36” plastic flexible tapes, offered for free like the ubiquitous IKEA pencils. These tapes were plastic, marked in both inches and centimeters and were dispensed like you remove a page from a desk calendar.
I grabbed two (by accident). They are exactly what you need for measuring along unusual curves in the workshop. When I make chairs, I’m constantly trying to determine the length of a curve without resorting to math. Bending a metal tape measure around a curve is a crap idea. And so I usually steal a flexible cloth tape from Lucy’s sewing kit to do the job.
Now I don’t have to.
These silly free tapes are an absolute boon if you work in curves. And the price (free) is beyond fantastic. To thank IKEA, be sure to buy one of its $1 cinnamon rolls (and feed it to the birds outside) or sample the free cookies (they are made from the same material as the furniture, I suspect).
Charles Brock and Stephen Price from “The Highland Woodworker” stopped by recently to film a segment on Lost Art Press and our storefront. That day, Brendan Gaffney was teaching a class on building a sector, and Megan Fitzpatrick was editing Christian Becksvoort’s new book, so it was quite a circus.
Personal note about my performance: I know that I am likely somewhere on the spectrum when it comes to autism. I have difficulty looking people in the eye (always have). Feel free to make fun of me on this (Megan does). Also, I attended a special school when I was 5 for some of these developmental problems, so I’m easily mocked for that as well (Brendan does).
Suffice to say, I’m not sensitive about it.
Aside from the fact that I look and act like a freak, the episode is excellent! We tour the Covington, Ky., neighborhood where the storefront is located and show Charles the bench room, the research library, the biergarten and the Electric Horse Garage (the machine room). And we chat about three of our newest titles: “Hands Employed Aright,” “Welsh Stick Chairs” and “The Intelligent Hand.”
Thanks to Charles, Steve and Highland Woodworking, which sponsors the show. I am now crawling back into my spider hole so I can build a couple more chairs in peace.
