When I finished up writing “The Anarchist’s Design Book” in January 2016, there were two projects that I wish I’d included: a staked armchair and a staked settee.
At the time, my designs for these two pieces were still juvenile. Well maybe that’s not correct. They were too complex to be presented in a book aimed at simple forms. So I set them aside. During the last 12 months, I’ve completed these two designs and began building the staked armchair this week.
For the armchair, I finally got the arm shape to my satisfaction while drinking a beer in a Cleveland restaurant (that’s the 45-second sketch above). While the arm is dead simple, it has an interior curve that echoes the curve at the back of the seat and a bevel on the front that repeats the bevel on the underside of the seat.
I’m going to photograph the construction process and share it here on the blog. After I get this armchair built and I also finish the settee we might add them to the next printing of “The Anarchist’s Design Book.” (If we do that, we will offer free downloads of the new chapters to all previous purchasers, no matter where you bought the book.)
This armchair will be made with sycamore and hickory left over from the last chair.
After reading hundreds (thousands?) of historical woodworking texts I have noticed a mantra for making furniture: Use wood that is well-seasoned.
It’s fantastic advice. Perhaps it’s even the starting point for all fine furniture making. But does it apply to building your workbench? If we follow the historical texts, then yes. I have yet to find any old book that says: The stock for your bench can be a little (or a lot) wet.
And yet, here’s the problem that I have discovered after years of building benches. Thick stock (6”, for example) can take way more than a decade to dry. I’ve cut into 6”-thick slabs that had been air-dried for 13 years that were more than 60 percent moisture content (MC). That’s way above the 6 percent recommended by many books.
Should one wait 50 more years with these slabs? Use MDF instead?
After working with massive wet slabs for the last seven years or so, I offer this recommendation based on personal experience – not on historical research or anything I’ve gleaned from my library:
Use wet wood for your benchtop. Even if it has been seasoned less than a year, you’ll be OK. Just be prepared to flatten the thing. And don’t be an idiot about your undercarriage (that sounds like advice to my teenage self).
Here’s my strategy with wet slabs: Use a species for the benchtop that dries readily, such as red oak. For the undercarriage, use wood that is at equilibrium moisture content. Because these components are rarely more than 3” thick they can be kiln-dried.
This combination works well in my experience. The undercarriage is dry. It won’t shrink. But it acts like a frame for drying the top, which shrinks around the joints on the tops of the legs.
Yes, the top will distort a bit as it dries. But you’re a woodworker – flatten the sucker.
But when the benchtop finishes drying after a few years, you will find it to be glorious. Slab tops don’t move much (if at all) after a few years in the shop. They just sit there like a machinist’s reference surface.
I think it’s worth the effort to find a slab. And I think it’s worth the effort to work with a wet one.
The last few wet slabs I’ve worked with came from North Carolina sawyer Lesley Caudle. He sells kits for workbenches that are inexpensive and ready to go – you just have to pick them up or work with Lesley to get them trucked to you. (You can email Lesley at lesley27011@yahoo.com.) Don’t be alarmed if the benchtop was cut less than 12 months ago. Embrace it.
During the last few months we’ve all been working on a lot of projects behind the scenes that haven’t gotten much attention here on the blog. Here’s a quick update on all of our active projects.
‘Carve the Acanthus Leaf’ by Mary May Meghan, the page designer, and I have been working on finalizing the design for Mary’s book. It’s a complex piece of work – there are so many art and text elements that we are having to rethink how we design our books to get it right. Expect this book in the late spring.
Copperplate Engravings from ‘The Anarchist’s Design Book’ Last year we promised we would sell handmade copperplate engraving prints from “The Anarchist’s Design Book” that were made by Briony Morrow-Cribbs. But then my calendar went to crap and I got bogged down in revising “Handplane Essentials” for F+W Media. On Feb. 1 we will offer all of the plates from “The Anarchist’s Design Book” for sale. And if you order the complete set you’ll receive a handmade book box from Ohio Book to hold them.
New Titles in the Works In addition to the books coming about John Brown and by Jögge Sundqvist and Bill Rainford, we have some other titles in the works that we haven’t talked much about. Megan Fitzpatrick is finishing work on Peter Follansbee’s new book (tentatively titled “Joiner’s Work”), and I am thrilled to announce we will be publishing a boundary-pushing book by David Savage titled “The Intelligent Hand.” I’ll be writing more about all these titles in the coming weeks.
Letterpress Posters from ‘The Anarchist’s Tool Chest’ I’ve found a significant cache of these posters in a box high on a shelf at our storefront. We’ll try to get there in the web store in the coming weeks.
Letterpress Book on ‘Roman Workbenches’ We are closing in on getting this book to press. We hope that it will be $77 for the letterpress version. The pdf version will be much less. And the standard offset version (due later this year) will be expanded and reasonably priced.
Lie-Nielsen Hand Tool Event March 10-11 If you attended the Lie-Nielsen event in Covington last year, then you know it was one of the best hand-tool events of 2016. This year we are participating in the event again at Braxton Brewing. We’re also arranging an event at Rhinegeist Brewing that will involve barbecue, beer and (wait for it) Hammerschlager. Details to come.
As always, we don’t have updates on books that aren’t in our hands. So you’ll have to wait longer on Andrew Lunn’s book.
— Christopher Schwarz
P.S. Sorry for all the product updates lately. Tomorrow I hope to post an entry on workbenches that will infuriate a lot of people.
Here locally, I get asked the following question a lot: How do you stay in business?
It’s a good question. When I explain Lost Art Press to Covington, Ky., city and business officials, they look at me like John and I must have some sort of trust fund that supports our chicanery. But nothing could be further from the truth.
The translation of “l’art du Menuisier” is a good case in point. The project began entirely outside of our grasp. In 2005, I was building French workbenches and trying to translate sections of A.-J. Roubo’s “l’art du Menuisier” for my own use or to publish on my blog.
Then the phone rang. It was Don Williams. He said that he and some friends were working on a translation, too. He asked me how far along we were. The answer: About 10 pages out of 1,200 or so. He said they were further along. So I said: Fine. You win.
During that phone call we agreed to work together to translate the 18th-century books that we were both obsessed with. We thought it would take a few years of work. We were incredibly wrong. It’s now 2017. We are much older and finally on the cusp of publishing “With All the Precision Possible: Roubo on Furniture,” the book I’ve dreamed about for years.
Unfortunately, it’s an expensive book – $57 is a lot of money.
When you set the price for a book you need to accommodate the price of printing the physical book. (And when you print it in the United States instead of China, that price is about four times the China price.) Then you have to sum up the hours that everyone spent on the book and assign some cost to that work.
For this book, I refused to calculate the price of the writing, translating and editing labor. Why? Simple. We would have done it even if we hadn’t been paid.
Everyone in this translation project, from Don Williams down to the editor, designer and copy editors believe that this is something that should be available to anyone who wants to become a woodworker. It’s not some piece of obscura – this book is the foundation of the legal aspects of what is quality woodwork in most countries.
And there has never been an English translation published.
So when I calculated the price of “Roubo on Furniture,” I discarded the cost of our labor. I flushed it, really. So the price is based solely on our costs to print it and bring it to market.
I know that $57 is a lot of money for some wood pulp bound in cotton cloth, fiber tape and glue. But know that if you buy “Roubo on Furniture,” you are buying hundreds – maybe thousands – of hours of unpaid work for the love of the craft.
Or don’t.
In the end, we really don’t care. Everyone involved in this project – Don, Michele, Philippe, Wesley, John, Megan, Suzo, Kara and many others – are happy either way. We’ve done what we set out to do many years ago. We have all absorbed the incredible woodworking knowledge Roubo recorded. We’ve packaged it in a gorgeous book we can refer to whenever we please.
With the impending release of the standard edition of “With All the Precision Possible: Roubo on Furniture,” we have received lots of questions about the deluxe edition of this book. We don’t know many details at this moment, but here’s everything I know.
The design process for the deluxe edition of “Roubo on Furniture” will begin shortly. Designer Wesley Tanner created both the standard and deluxe editions of “Roubo on Marquetry” – and he designed the standard edition of “Roubo on Furniture.”
The deluxe “Roubo on Furniture” will look and feel the same as the deluxe “Roubo on Marquetry.” Same paper, same binding, same slipcase. We likely will use the same printing press and bindery. So it will be as stunning as the deluxe “Roubo on Marquetry,” which was named one of the 50 “Books of the Year” in 2013 by the Design Observer.
Here’s what’s going to be different: the thickness of the book (it’s almost twice as long as “Roubo on Marquetry”) and the way we will handle pre-publication orders.
Once we get a feel for how many pages the deluxe edition will be, we will be able to set a price – I’m going to guess that it’s going to be be about $475. Then we will open up pre-publication ordering for both domestic and international customers. Everyone who orders a book will get a book (and will get their name listed in the book as a “subscriber.”) After taking pre-publication orders for a month or so, we will close down ordering and go to press. We might print a few dozen extras for ourselves and family, but we are not going to stock this book in our online store after the pre-ordering period.
Then, when the book is done, we’ll mail them out in a custom cardboard (repeat: cardboard) box to protect the book during shipment.
The books will not be numbered or autographed. In 2013 we had many people request that we have all the authors sign the marquetry book. We simply cannot do that. We are not in the business of creating collectibles. Apologies.
So now you know everything I know. We’ll get to work on the deluxe edition and update you when we have more information.
Unfortunately, it’s an expensive book – $57 is a lot of money.
With the impending release of the standard edition of “