Hey kids: Don’t eat soft wax. But you can buy it for your woodworking here.
Katy and her boyfriend, Michael (at right), are taking time off from their busy spring break to make some soft wax for you. As always, it’s available in 4 oz. tins. Every tin is handmade by Katy (and with Michael the very polite trainee), packaged in a tin and shipped out entirely by teenagers.
It’s awesome stuff for the insides of your casework. It is great for leatherwork and renewing finishes that look dried out (our real estate agent uses it on old trimwork in houses). You can make it yourself – we’ve published the recipe for everyone to use. But it’s not made with the same sass and panache that come from the Katy Schwarz.
Also, she uses primo ingredients. Cosmetic-grade beeswax. Domestic turpentine. And teen sass. Get some here before it’s gone.
You might look at the photo above and say: “Schwarz is a slob. Look at the mess of tools piled in his tills.” I don’t see things that way – open tills allow you great flexibility. The only problem is if you’re someone who doesn’t like their gravy to touch their peas.
Public service announcement: Gravy is good food.
When I look at the photo above I see something different that makes me crazy. Look at the soiled and oily area in the middle of the tills. Here’s a closer look.
Yup, those darkened bronze pulls on the tills are like lederhosen on a lizard – totally useless. When you work in a chest with tills you grab them by the middle to move them. Why? Because after a few months of use, your tightly fit tills begin to rack. It’s almost impossible to prevent. Each till is 8” wide x 36” long, so it doesn’t take much for them to jam if you grab them by one pull or by a corner.
(Duncan Phyfe had a novel solution to this problem, which I’ll discuss some day.)
Go you grab the till with one hand to move it in place and use your other hand to grab the tool you need. The pulls are for show.
But that doesn’t mean you should do a crap job of fitting your tills in the chest.
I fit the till bottoms first, then I build the dovetailed tills a smidge smaller than the perfectly fit bottoms so I don’t have to plane anything to fit.
Today I fit the six till bottoms for these two chests. It’s fussy shooting-plane work. A shaving too far results in a rattling, trembling bottom. Strive to get the bottoms moving forward and back with just a finger and without the aid of wax. That’s when you can call it done.
And here ends the worse SEO’d article I’ve written in a long time. Sorry in particular to the people who were referred here from termblingbottom.com.
The book is $39, which includes free domestic shipping and the instant pdf download. After Thursday, the pdf will cost $19.50 extra if ordered with the printed book.
The No. 1 question about this book has been: What the heck is it about? Basically, I took my short book on Roman workbenches that we published last year and expanded it greatly with lots of new research done on the ground in Italy and Germany.
And, in the process of expanding it, the book became more about the ingenious early workholding that Suzanne Ellison and I dug up than the benches themselves.
If you’d like to read a free preview of the book, check out this entry.
Soon we’ll have a complete list of our retailers that will carry the book.
During the last five years, I’ve made considerable changes to the innards of the tool chests I build for customers. Most of these changes are details, really, but they are informed by the fact that I work out of a tool chest every day.
The most significant of the changes is in the runners for the three tills. On the original chest, the runners for the lower till didn’t extend all the way from front to back. They stopped at the saw till (see above).
The reason for this was to imitate several historical chests that also had a door to the lower parts of the chest. After building the chest with the door, I found it silly. So I removed it. But I was stuck with the runners.
Now when I build a chest, I make all three runners run from the front to the back.
The other change to the runners is that I now bead the top edge of each runner. It looks nice, and the rounded edge prevents the runners from splintering in service.
This is quick work with a 3/16” beading plane.
Next up: The sawtill. It’s smaller and has less room for your weed stash.
After a good deal of wrangling and evaluating a lot of brands, we are happy to announce that five different designs of Lost Art Press T-Shirts are available again in our store.
The good news is that we have found a good supplier of shirts. The quality and the price is excellent. As a result, we have lowered the price of the shirts to $25 (and that price includes free domestic shipping). Also good news: This 100-percent ring-spun cotton shirt is available in a range of sizes from small to 3X.
These shirts ship to the U.S. and Canada. Shipping to the U.S. is free. Canadians pay an extra $8. (Sorry: We earlier thought we could ship these to Europe but were mistaken.)
Here’s the not-so-good news. We couldn’t find a domestic shirt supplier we were happy with. So these Gildan shirts are made in Nicaragua and printed in the United States. Also, this shirt is available only in two colors: navy blue and black.
Here are the five designs currently available:
Lost Art Press logo shirt: This shirt features our current logo (the one at the top of the screen) that was hand-drawn by designer Tom Lane.
Lost Art Press “Badge” logo shirt: This shirt features a hand-drawn logo by Joshua Minnich with our dividers shown in a badge.
Lost Art Press Beehive logo shirt: One of our favorite logos (also from Joshua Minnich), this logo features a skep and bees.
Lost Art Press Bandito shirt: Dovetail saws and skulls. Need we say more? Drawn by Shelby Kelley.
Anarchist’s Design Book logo shirt: Featuring the “marriage mark” from the cover of the book. Whenever I wear this shirt I get lots of questions about it.
Before you order, please check this size chart so you don’t end up looking like an overstuffed bratwurst or a jawa.
Chest sizes:
S 34-36
M 38-40
L 42-44
XL 46-48
2XL 48-50
3XL 52-54
Please note that all apparel is made to order and is not returnable unless defective.
Finally, we know there will be complaint and calls for different designs, different colors, long sleeves, pockets and shirts with the nipples cut out with fur around the holes. Please know that this is the best we can do right now.
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