You can now download an excerpt of all of the Lost Art Press titles in our online store. At the top of the description for each book, you’ll see a link to download an excerpt. Click the link and the pdf will download immediately. No need to register or engage in any silly marketing legerdemain.
Thanks to Kara Gebhart Uhl, our new editorial helper, who made this happen.
— Christopher Schwarz
With the upcoming release of the new volume on joinery of “The Woodworker: The Charles H. Hayward Years,” several customers have asked if we are going to offer a discount on the complete set of books after we publish the final volume in 2017.
The short answer: no. And the explanation: As a rule we don’t discount our books. In fact, the price of our books can only go up in the future. We price our books fairly from the get-go. We don’t jack up the retail price so we can fleece the early adopters (our best customers) and then discount the book later on to snag the cheapskates.
The reason the price can go up in the future is because the price of raw materials and shipping can go up in the future. So the price you see now in our store is the best price now – it will only go up.
So why don’t we accept advertising on our site, which could lower the cost of books for the customers? The truth is we are approached all the time by companies who want to place ads on our site (we have healthy traffic), and we always refuse. Simply put: We don’t believe in advertising. We find it annoying. We find it ethically compromising. And if we’re annoyed by it, why should we annoy our customers with it?
So sorry, no ads.
I apologize for using this bandwidth to explain something we have discussed before. But not every new reader goes back and studies the last nine years of content.
— Christopher Schwarz
Joshua Klein and company are working hard on the second issue of Mortise & Tenon magazine, and from all accounts it looks like it’s going to be another fine issue.
They’ll start taking pre-publication orders on Nov. 1 here, which is also where you can read about the articles that are planned for the issue.
Joshua had asked me to write an article for the issue, and had I proposed a piece on Kentucky-style furniture, a backwoods style that I’ve admired for many years and is on display at the Speed Museum in Louisville, Ky. (If you’d like a woodworker’s view of the museum, check out Mark Firley’s photo collection here and here.)
My summer went to crap, however, and so I wasn’t able to do the research and interviews that would make my article worth publishing. Luckily, Joshua was also interested in my Roman workbenches and let me write up an article on the interesting workholding on the low one that I built from Pompeii.
My understanding of the bench has increased greatly since Woodworking in America, and after working on it every day this fall. You might not think that it’s easy to work while sitting down, but you might give it another thought after you read the article. Roy Underhill helped me decode a couple of the important details for the article, and I hope to have a short book on the bench (and a 1505 workbench with a Roman undercarriage) ready for the printer by the end of the year.
— Christopher Schwarz
This week I’m assembling two Welsh stick chairs that are based on examples from several sources, including John Brown and Don Weber. I’ve made this sort of chair about a dozen times, and every time I build it I stray a little further from the originals.
About five years ago I started using a different arrangements of back sticks and a different crest rail. Now I’m changing the seat and undercarriage. First I made a new seat template. It’s still a D-shaped seat, but I started fresh with trammels and a compass to make it slightly larger.
I increased the rake of the rear legs to make the chair more lively. And I also changed the front legs to make them look appropriate with the new rear legs (wire models like those shown in “The Anarchist’s Design Book” guided these changes).
But the biggest change is to the stretcher turnings. I’ve been using 1-3/8”-diameter turnings with a bulbous center, much like what I first learned from Don Weber about 13 years ago.
After looking at a lot of English Windsors and Welsh stick chairs, I decided to simplify my turnings and thin them down to 1-1/8” in diameter. After getting both undercarriages together this afternoon, I was pleased with the result.
Tomorrow I start steam-bending the arm bows and am considering one more design change for this generation of chairs.
— Christopher Schwarz
P.S. Peter Galbert’s book “Chairmaker’s Notebook” is invaluable for making all sorts of stick chairs, including Windsors and Welsh stick.
Note: This is a codicil to the entries I wrote called “Cut the Cord.” Part one is here. Part two is here. The entry below will make more sense if you read those first.
After more than five years of freelancing and making furniture to feed my pie hole, here is the most difficult part of being free of corporate America: getting paid.
This isn’t some screed about how vendors don’t pay me. Everyone I deal with (furniture customers, publishers, etc. ) is quite nice and honest. And no one has tried to stiff me on an invoice or avoid paying me.
But paperwork is paperwork. There are times when I build, film or write something and I don’t get paid for a year. But that’s just part of the deal. I might have to pay for materials for something that could take six months to build before a check comes through. That’s part of the deal. And there are times where people have owed me as much as $12,000 when I’ve had a $10,000 college tuition bill due. But that’s just part of the deal.
Being free from the daily commute means that I also have to be able to weather almost any financial crisis without whining, selling plasma or borrowing. For me, that means I have to have $20,000 in the bank at all times. My wife and I call it (and I’m so sorry for the implied swear word): “F-you money.”
As long as that money is there, I can pay almost any bill that comes up. I can wait out any vendor that has me on 45 days. I can hold out if I need to wait for something to clear there and something to process there. It takes much of the stress out of the accounting.
As I’ve found during the last 65 months, everything works out just fine in the end. You just have to be able to hold your breath for a much longer time than when you were paid every other Friday.
— Christopher Schwarz
