Randy Wilkins – the blogger behind The Designer’s Assistant – is giving away four Lost Art Press titles as he culls his collection of duplicates. Read this blog entry on how to enter the contest. And be sure to check out the rest of Randy’s blog. He’s a set designer for films and has built some very cool stuff.
— Christopher Schwarz
“To Make as Perfectly as Possible: Roubo on Marquetry” is now available for download in the Lost Art Press store. The cost is $19 and the file is in PDF format. Click here to order.
International customers can order the download by sending $19 to john@lostartpress.com via PayPal; a download link will be sent to you.
We chose to use the PDF file format because of the graphics-heavy nature of this book. So far, we have yet to find an ebook conversion service that can provide a file that we think is acceptable. We will keep looking.
As always, all of our files are completely free of “digital rights management” hoo-ha. No passwords. No keys. You can even extract pages from this PDF. The reason we can do this is we have an honest customer base; fraud has been almost insignificant.
I hope you enjoy Roubo on the go in your portable device.
— Christopher Schwarz
This week I’m building a version of these folding campaign bookshelves for the “Campaign Furniture” book. I made slight changes to the original Victorian design – incorporating some features that I spied in some other folding units.
The result is – I hope – a more stable set of shelves.
I’ve built several sets of backless shelves such as this – they were common during the Arts & Crafts period – and there are lots of little things you can do to make things start stiff and stay stiff. (No blue pill required.)
These shelves are surprisingly small: 24” high, 22-3/8” wide and 9-1/2” deep. So even if my first unit is a failure, It won’t take much wood to build another one.
— Christopher Schwarz
While you can place orders on our web site 365 days a year, we will not be shipping orders between Wednesday, Nov. 27, and Sunday, Dec. 1. Any orders received during that time will be mailed on Monday, Dec. 2.
So if you need something lickety split, I recommend you order it today or tomorrow.
— Christopher Schwarz
If you’ve attended classes at Roy Underhill’s The Woodwright’s School, you might have noticed a printout of a book cover that’s tacked to the back wall – behind the coffeemaker and next to the poster of the Barnes foot-powered machines.
“That,” Roy tells students, “is the cover to my novel.”
Most people don’t know if Roy is joking about the novel or not. He is, after all, apt to sprinkle his live routines with tales of his “uncle,” who was a “radio woodworker.”
But the novel is real. And I’ve read it many times.
Roy spent several years of his life carefully crafting a 1930s-era novel titled “Calvin Cobb: Radio Woodworker!” – a novel with measured drawings – that combines his love of history, woodworking, Washington, D.C., and a good story. But like many first-time novels, it has remained on a shelf gathering dust.
After twisting his arm, Roy passed me (and Megan Fitzpatrick) the manuscript several years ago. We both loved the story. It is a screwball comedy about a government bureaucrat who studies manure spreaders who then lands the unlikely job as a radio woodworker. While “Calvin Cobb” makes me laugh on almost every page, it also raises troubling questions about the fraudulent way some of us interpret history. And it has some great woodworking parts.
Unlike a traditional novel, this one has measured drawings that play an important role in the plot. I know you’ll want to build some of these projects – I do – and you’ll thoroughly enjoy reading “Calvin Cobb – Radio Woodworker!” – a novel with measured drawings.
That’s because Lost Art Press is thrilled to announce that we’ll be publishing this novel in late 2014. It will be illustrated – like a Hardy Boys book – and will indeed feature measured drawings and have the look and feel of a high-quality 1930s novel (but on acid-free paper).
I’ll be blogging about this book (it’s impossible not to). But Megan Fitzpatrick will also be blogging about it here. That’s because she is the primary editor on this book and will be lending her literary talents to the books as she polishes it for publication.
One final note: Yes, we know this is a bit crazy to publish a woodworking novel. With measured drawings. And high-quality domestic manufacturing. Absolutely nothing about that equation makes economic sense. But we love this book – and that sort of gut feeling hasn’t failed us a single time in our five years.
— Christopher Schwarz