With “Campaign Furniture” shipping out of the warehouse (we should be current on orders by Monday), one would think I am sick of the style. Or that at least I would take a break.
Quite the opposite. When I finished my first book on workbenches in 2007, I plowed forward with research into other forms, which continues to this day. When I finished “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest” in 2011, I built smaller chests, experimented with different tool-holding doo-dads and explored two Dutch versions.
So right now I’m building another folding bookcase, measuring my Douro chair and playing with a folding stool that I’ll be posting a video of soon. The stool is small enough to fit into a purse. Or my man-bag.
The folding bookcase (detail shown above), will be featured in a future issue of Popular Woodworking Magazine and is different than the one in my book. The new one is mahogany, has glass doors and has cool sawtooth shelf standards.
I hadn’t made this style of shelf standard before, and so I fretted about the angles, but they turned out to be so easy that a mouth-breather could do it, and they work very well. I’ll detail the process in the article and will be using these in future projects.
Sorry for the lame blog topic today – I was expecting an important package and I missed the mailman. So until tomorrow…. Or Saturday after Jeff’s posts.
Mark Firley of The Furniture Record blog has written up a piece on campaign furniture that is 100 percent false. Except the pictures. Go for the photos.
If you don’t subscribe to The Furniture Record, remedy that now. Firley travels the world with the obsessive goal of photographing every piece of furniture and every dovetail ever made. He collects his photos into sets on Flickr (120 sets as of today) that are a furniture-maker’s delight.
If I want to make a piece of furniture that looks nice, I look at 100 examples of that piece first – at a minimum. Only then will I see the bell curve of ugly, average and extraordinary. And only then will I know where my design falls on that curve.
The Furniture Record is a completely free jumpstart of your furniture education.
Several readers have asked us this considerate question: Does the author of a Lost Art Press book make more money when someone buys a physical book or a downloaded book?
The answer is: With Lost Art Press books, the author makes the same amount.
Outside of our little publishing terrarium, many electronic books are just about the same price as the physical book. This usually translates into more money for the publisher because of the lower cost of creating and delivering an electronic book. It’s a complicated equation, but that is the greatly simplified version.
We use a different formula to determine the cost of an electronic book. We remove the cost of pre-press, printing, transporting and storing the physical book. So the cost of our electronic books is the intellectual cost of the book (writing, editing, designing and eating), plus storing it and transmitting it to customers.
And that is why our electronic books cost less than the physical book. We think it’s the fair way to go for readers and authors. Others disagree. We give not a crap.
Here are links to the books we offer electronically:
One last thing: All of our electronic books are free of Digital Rights Management (DRM). That means the files have no passwords and can be transported easily from device to device.
The first words of “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest” are “disobey me,” a paradoxical expression that underlies much of my favorite absurdist Russian literature. You can take the expression at face value, or you can think about it for a minute and consider that perhaps Gregor Samsa has not really turned into a cockroach.
When I finished writing “Campaign Furniture,” I wanted to begin the book with Alfred Korzybski’s dictum, “The map is not the territory.” But I decided to just play it straight and not include any discussion of semantics. The book itself is a straightforward discussion of the furniture and how to build it. I don’t think this book will get me in trouble like my last one did. So I didn’t include the Korzybski quote.
That doesn’t stop me, however, from talking about my unspoken motives for the book here on the blog. While the book (the map) is about campaign furniture, the uncharted territory it describes is far different.
After 15 years at Popular Woodworking, I concluded that our craft is strapped into a stylistic straightjacket (Shaker and Arts & Crafts) that does more harm than good. Now before you get your panties in a bundle, let me be clear about a couple things: There’s nothing wrong with either of those styles. I love them both. I also love Oreos, but an exclusive diet of them is a bad idea. Also, I was part of the problem. I wrote, approved and encouraged the publication of hundreds of pieces dealing with Shaker and Arts & Crafts.
So I also want to be part of the solution. “Campaign Furniture” is part of that. “Furniture of Necessity,” my next book, is the next step in that direction.
I want readers to explore other styles, even if it isn’t campaign style or vernacular furniture. There is a world of furniture styles out there that are begging to be built. And it’s furniture that beginners can handle. Danish modern, Bauhaus, Japanese Tansu, Chinese furniture (a fricking world of Chinese furniture) are just a few of the styles out there that don’t require an 18th-century apprenticeship to build and are beautiful.
And I’m willing to take a personal hit to my income to try to open your eyes.
If I were smart, I’d write a book on birdhouses, which usually sell twice as many units as any traditional woodworking book. Or I’d do another book on workbenches, Shaker furniture or Arts & Crafts.
Writing a book on an obscure furniture style is economic stupidity. If people don’t like the style, they won’t buy the book, no matter how good it is. Books on a furniture style (even Shaker) will always sell worse than books on skills, tools or workshops. Books on an obscure furniture style usually go from the printer right to the bargain bin. (Ever seen the fascinating book on Mormon furniture? That’s exactly my point.)
Today I received my copy of “Campaign Furniture,” and it doesn’t completely disappoint me. The printing job is nice. I like the end sheets. The binding looks good – not too much glue and the stitching is solid. So I’m drinking a Stone “Old Guardian” right now to celebrate the release of what could be a monumentally unsuccessful book.
I also take a sip to hope – that some of you are willing to step outside the narrow confines of our craft and start to explore the immense uncharted territory ahead of us.
I would hazard to say that 99.5 percent of our customers are people I get along with, enjoy hanging out with and would trust to watch my kids. But during my 20 years in the woodworking publishing business, I have encountered tens of thousands of woodworkers with questions and suggestions. So you do get some nutjobs.
Here are the craziest questions I’ve been asked while an editor at Popular Woodworking and Lost Art Press. Every one of these is 100-percent true.
I want to build this secretary but I need full-size plans. I want to be able to stick the paper to the wood and cut out every part.
Can you recommend a table saw fence that is adjustable to thousandths, or better yet, ten-thousandths?
Could you give me a list of every tool I need to start woodworking? In addition to that could you recommend your top three favorite brands for each tool and give me a little bit of your reasoning on each brand? Oh, and links to the best price for each tool would be appreciated.
I don’t have internet access, but I would like to read your blog. Could you print out all the articles you’ve written so far and mail them to me?
Could you tell me where to buy Lie-Nielsen planes at a deep discount – something like 50 percent off?
I’d like to build the project from the latest issue, but I don’t have a table saw. If I send you the wood, could you cut all the parts and mail them back to me?
I’d like a bibliography of all the woodworking books in your library.
If I send you the floor plan of my shop, could design the optimal arrangement of electrical outlets, lighting, dust collection ducts and machinery?
I’d like to start woodworking. Don’t you think it would be a great column if I came to your shop, you taught me the craft and I wrote a column about the process in every issue?
Won’t that interfere with finishing?
If I send you my tools will you grind and sharpen them?
I think your magazine should be peer reviewed like an academic journal by a panel of experts like myself. We could critique each article to produce the absolute best way to achieve each operation.
I can’t believe the terrible tricks in your Tricks of the Trade column. You should be traveling to shops all over the country to seek out the very best tips hoarded by woodworkers.
I really need a table saw. If you get extras for testing, could you send one to me?
Your cutting list has an error. I cut out all the parts to the sizes you specified, and the stiles are too short. I want you to reimburse me for the wood I wasted.
I love the project on the cover. Could you give me a list of woodworkers in my area who could build it for me?
