After 18-plus months of building campaign furniture for this upcoming book, I’ve experimented with several different techniques for insetting the ubiquitous brass hardware that adorns every piece.
I’ve used electric routers and templates, routers freehand, drills, firmer gouges, chisels and carving tools. Sometimes I combined several of these tools.
All of the methods work just fine, and so I don’t have any particular recommendation as to the tool set you use. I’m going to show all the different ways in the book.
What was surprising to me is that the 100-percent hand-tool methods (chisel, gouge, router plane and mallet) weren’t slow at all. Yesterday I inlaid 25 pieces of brass into a trunk that I’ll be finishing tomorrow, and I did the whole job in four hours.
That’s on par with the time it takes me to do it with a router and a template.
In other “Campaign Furniture” book news: I can’t draw for possum poo. Yet, I want all the drawings in this book to be hand-drawn by my hand. The solution: Photoshop, a light table and tracing paper. All week I’ve been experimenting with taking my SketchUp drawings, combining them with bits from photos and then tracing the results.
I am not where I want to be. But it looks better (to me) than a CAD drawing in a book that discusses pre-Industrial furniture and has a “manual” feel to its design.
— Christopher Schwarz
Being a tad old fashioned in many respects, I need a physical piece of paper to read and write on when editing, revising and annotating “To Make As Perfectly As Possible: Roubo On Furniture Making,” or as we call it here, R2 (as opposed to a local luminary, RG3). I am nearing the three-quarter mark of working my way through the raw transliterations for the first time as a serious venture, as opposed to the merely voyeuristic jaunts as they would arrive from translator Michele Pagan.
Today I printed out the final chapter of R2, titled whimsically (?) by Roubo as “Of Whole Cabinetry or Assembly in General,” which is another way of saying, “All the stuff about furniture making that I could not figure out where else to put.” To suggest that this single chapter is eclectic and substantial is to damn it with faint praise.
I generally format these working manuscripts to approximate the finished size of the printed book; not exactly, but it does give me a sense of the immensity of the tome. I will probably avoid contact with John Hoffman when the day arrives for him to start mailing a mountain of books twice as hefty as the 4-1/2 pound R1.
Among my 258 pages (!) of working manuscript for this chapter alone are included the odd mix of discussions on tools necessary for accurate assembly, making and using spring-pole lathes, screw-thread cutting, fluting of columns, drilling, making and using a ripple molding cutter, locksmithing, filing, hinge-making, tilt-top tables, building a printing press, the renowned folding book stand, and the design and construction (but not use) of a fancy French “necessary.” And those are just the topics I can recall off the top of my head.
After the intense run-up to the release of TMAPAP:ROM I had little opportunity to revel in the grandeur of the project. By the time I arrived in Cincinnati for the premier, to paraphrase BB King, the thrill was gone. Chris’ comments of wanting to light it on fire did not miss the mark by much.
Now that R1 is no longer resting on my neck, and believe me it was heavy, I am finding a bit more spring in my literary step.
Yes folks, the thrill is back!
— Don Williams
After sending out all of the copies of “To Make as Perfectly as Possible: Roubo on Marquetry” to customers, we have 85 copies remaining to sell.
We will sell these on a first-come, first-served basis beginning at noon EST Monday, Nov. 11, 2013. For U.S. customers, we will post an item in the store allowing you to purchase the book for $400 (domestic shipping is included in the price).
For international customers, please send an e-mail to John Hoffman at john@lostartpress.com after noon EST Monday. The cost will be $400, plus actual shipping costs. Please be advised that shipping this book overseas is quite expensive when it is properly insured and accompanied by a tracking number (as much as $70). E-mails ordering the book before noon EST on Monday will not be acknowledged or fulfilled.
We do not like to brag, but this is a fine, fine book. If you would like a second opinion, please read Jameel Abraham’s blog about the book at the Benchcrafted.com blog.
— Christopher Schwarz
“The Art of Joinery, Revised Edition” by Joseph Moxon has arrived in our Indianapolis warehouse and pre-publication orders will begin shipping this weekend. All of our domestic and international retailers have agreed to carry the title, so if that’s where you shop, watch their web sites for information.
“The Art of Joinery” was the first book that Lost Art Press published in 2008, and original copies have been fetching $200, so we are relieved to have this book back in print.
For details on the editorial changes, updates and additions we made to this edition, read the description in our store here.
I received my advance copies of the new book this morning and am really amazed at how much our manufacturing has changed since 2008. This new book has the same basic configuration as the original, but the details are what I like.
We used colored endsheets and a rough edge on the signatures (sometimes called a deckle edge) to pay homage to early books. I know some customers have stated they don’t like the deckle edge, but I do. Feel free to trim your signatures.
Other small changes include the fact that we now round the back/spine of the book and have dialed in the “fore edge” with our manufacturer to where we like it. The fore edge is the amount the hardbound covers overhang the signatures.
And we have been able to purchase additional fonts that are appropriate to the time period of the original book and have added an index by Suzanne “the saucy indexer” Ellison.
In any case, if you haven’t ordered your copy yet, we have plenty now in our store.
— Christopher Schwarz
