Lost Art Press hooded sweatshirts are now available for international customers with a reasonable shipping fee.
The mid-weight sweatshirts are made in the United States by American Apparel and the fit is a bit slim. So you might consider ordering one size larger than normal. The sweatshirts are available in sizes small to 2XL. We wish this product were made in larger and smaller sizes, but it is not.
All of our shirts are printed in California and shipped from there by a service that specializes in custom apparel. Because of the company’s volume, the shipping charge for international customers is reasonable – $10 to Canada and $11 anywhere else in the world.
Orders received before May 13, 2015, will receive free domestic shipping. The first 1,000 orders will receive a nice commemorative postcard featuring a beautiful shot of the open tool cabinet shot by Narayan Nayar.
When you order, you will have the option to pick up your copy at Handworks in Amana, Iowa., on May 15-16, or have the book shipped to you. All shipping will occur after Handworks.
Retailers for ‘Virtuoso’ While we are certain that many of our retailers will stock “Virtuoso,” we do not know which ones yet will opt to carry it. When we have that information in the next couple weeks, I will definitely post it here.
Why No Digital Version? There will not be a digital version of “Virtuoso” at this time. We have experienced a significant amount of pirate distribution of our titles, so we have decided that for this book, the pirates will have to manually scan and assemble the book if they want to rip us off. Our apologies to our law-abiding customers for this difficult decision.
Other Studley Products We will have more news on other Studley-related products in the coming weeks, including posters, a feature-length DVD and toilet-seat covers (oh wait, no, those are for “The History of Wood”).
Thanks for all your patience during the last four years since we announced this project at Woodworking in America. A team of people has poured thousands of hours and tens of thousands of dollars into the research and production of this book. I think that effort will show in the book, and I hope you will be pleased.
At 5 p.m. EST on Wednesday, April 1, we will begin taking pre-publication orders for the long-awaited book “Virtuoso: The Tool Cabinet and Workbench of Henry O. Studley” by Don Williams with photographs by Narayan Nayar.
The book will be $49 with free shipping for domestic customers if ordered before May 13, 2015. That is the day the book will be released and shipped.
Also, the first 1,000 orders will receive a commemorative full-color postcard that’s perfect for pinning up in your shop. The front of the postcard will show the tool chest in all its glory; the rear face will have a short biography of Studley and note that you were one of the first 1,000 people to purchase “Virtuoso.”
The book is being released at the same time as the opening of the exhibit of the Studley tool cabinet and workbench in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, on May 15-17. Information and tickets are available here.
Those who order the book before its release date will have the option of either getting it shipped to them (arriving after Handworks) or picking it up at Handworks, which runs May 15-16 in Amana, Iowa. If you plan to pick up your book at Handworks, please read the following paragraph with care. It is important.
You will need to pick up your book at the Lost Art Press booth in the Festhalle Barn in Amana, Iowa. While we will be selling copies of “Virtuoso” at the exhibit, the sales staff there will not have access to the list of people who pre-ordered the book. So to repeat (using slightly different words): You will pick up your pre-ordered book at Handworks.
So we recommend you come to Handworks first, pick up your book and then take it to the exhibit where you can get it signed by the people involved in the project.
Pre-ordering the book and picking it up in Amana will guarantee that you get your book there. We can bring only so many books to Handworks.
So spread the word to your woodworking friends: Studley is coming.
About 10 pallets of Peter Galbert’s “Chairmaker’s Notebook” arrived in our Indiana warehouse this afternoon and will ship out tomorrow.
If you ordered the book from us, you probably received an e-mail notification today that the book shipped. Our store software automatically sends that e-mail when we print your shipping label. Once the book hits the mail stream (probably tomorrow), it should take three to seven business days to arrive, depending where you live (Hawaii and Alaska might take longer).
I drove to our warehouse today and picked up some copies of the book for me, Peter and the other people involved in the project, including copy editor Megan Fitzpatrick, designer Linda Watts and indexer Suzanne Ellison.
The printer did an outstanding job on all aspects of this book, from the binding to the dust jacket. I think you will be pleased.
One of my goals of the “Furniture of Necessity” is to encourage people to build things that look complex but are actually simple once you know the trick. Think: compound joinery without a single numeral or calculation. Or, in today’s case, make curved parts using raw materials from the grocery store.
Steam-bending wood is fun and easy. And I own a steambox, a steam generator and all the clamps and forms that make it a snap. But that’s a lot of money and effort if you want to make one steamed part, such as a simple crest rail for a chair or backstool.
When I first learned to make Shaker boxes from John Wilson more than a decade ago, we boiled the parts in a steel planter box that was heated by a hot plate. That works pretty well, though you have to monitor the temperature to keep it boiling.
Another way to bend wood without fussing over the temperature is to use my mother’s recipe for beef brisket.
She would seal the brisket in a roasting pan covered in foil and cook it in the oven until the meat fell apart on your fork.
So I went to the grocery on Friday and picked up a bundle of firewood ($3.99) and a roasting pan ($2). The firewood is all split stuff that is 14” to 16” long and air-dried. My bundle of wood had oak, ash, poplar and sappy walnut. All the stock was about 30 percent moisture content – plenty dry enough to use for this operation.
I managed to get three crest rails from a split of oak and planed them all four-square. I preheated the oven to 450° F. Then I filled my aluminum roasting pan with hot water, put the oak in and sealed the pan with two layers of aluminum foil. I cut a small 1/2” slit in the top and roasted the oak in the oven for 75 minutes. Then I took it to my bending form.
My bending form is made from a stack of 3/4” MDF that’s glued together. The easiest way to bend a 3/4” crest rail is using the help of a bench vise. I clamped half the form to the jaw of my vise and the other half to the bench.
I dropped the oak between the two parts of the form and cranked the vise closed. Simple. I then put two bar clamps across the form and removed it from the vise. In two days I’ll take the clamps off and I’ll have another crest rail for my next chair.
