Graphic designer and woodworker Tom Buhl reproduced an illustration of “Grandpa’s Workshop” for the Santa Barbara I Madonnari Italian Street Painting Festival, and it is quite cool.
You can see more photos of the painting being made here. See more of Tom’s work here.
— Christopher Schwarz
Today I made the feet for my teak campaign chest. From the outside, this looks like a one-hour job: Turn the feet and their tenons. Glue the tenons into holes in the four square base blocks.
But many campaign chests have removable feet that unscrew from the base blocks. So if you want to do it right, it’s a bit more complex.
I tapped the base blocks with a 1-1/2” tap – the largest I have. Then I screwed the base blocks to the underside of the base.
I turned the teak feet – the quickest part of the day – and bored out their centers with a 1-3/8” x 1-1/2”-deep mortise. To join the feet to the case, I made maple tenons that fit snug into their feet and threaded the tops so they would screw into their base blocks.
Finally, I threaded the tenons into the base blocks and glued the feet onto the tenons – rotating them so they would show the nice cathedral grain facing front.
I turned the chest on its feet and stepped back to look at my day’s work.
Very unimpressive for six hours of futzing around.
— Christopher Schwarz
Our H.O. Studley T-shirts are now for sale in our store for $20 plus domestic shipping. The front of the shirt features the engraved nameplate fastened to Henry O. Studley’s famous tool chest. The back of the shirts have the name of the forthcoming book by Don Williams: “Virtuoso: The Toolbox of Henry O. Studley.”
These T-shirts are made from 90-percent cotton/10 percent polyester by American Apparel in California. The screen printing is done in Indiana. Sizes available are medium, large, x-large and XXL.
To order a shirt, visit our store here.
— Christopher Schwarz
“By Hand & Eye” by George R. Walker and Jim Tolpin is now available for immediate shipment from Lost Art Press. Our retailers – Lee Valley Tools, Lie-Nielsen Toolworks and Tools for Working Wood – have received their shipments and will have the book in their stores shortly.
If you wish to order the book from our store, click here. It is $34 plus shipping.
This is our most ambitious book to date, especially in the manufacturing. This book is full color and printed on a heavy #80-pound matte stock that is very white and took the ink beautifully. As with all our books, “By Hand & Eye” is Smythe sewn, casebound and produced entirely in the United States.
Here are some details on the other editions of “By Hand & Eye.”
Leather-bound books. I am taking 26 blocks to Ohio Book tomorrow for them to bind them in leather. We will use the brown leather with an aged finish, like we did with “Mouldings in Practice.” When those are finished – I hope in six weeks – we will put them in the store. They will be $185 – domestic shipping is included.
Electronic editions. Because of the complex layouts in “By Hand & Eye,” we will not be able to offer it in ePub or Kindle formats. We simply are not happy with the way the book looks in these formats. So we will instead offer it in pdf format, which will work on both iPad and Kindles. I should have that available in the store within a week.
One last thing: We are still building a webpage that we discuss in the book and are having some trouble with the url. Until I get that sorted out, you can download the animations referred to in the book (with complete instructions) using the link below.
The file is zipped. Simply double-click it to decompress the file. Inside the folder you will find instructions (read them, please!). The animations will work with every browser we have tried.
I hope you enjoy reading the book as much as I enjoyed editing and working on it with George, Jim and the main editor, Megan Fitzpatrick.
— Christopher Schwarz
We just wrapped up two days at the Handworks show in Amana, Iowa, and loaded almost nothing back into the van for the return trip – except for some T-shirts and one box of books.
Dang it was a good show.
With about 31 minutes left until my bedtime, here is a quick rundown of some of our current projects and their status.
‘To Make as Perfectly as Possible: Roubo on Marquetry’
The layout and editing is complete, with us just cleaning up some typographical errors. Our goal: To get the deluxe book to the printer by the end of June. If we succeed, it will ship out at the end of July.
We are planning on printing 600 and we have sold more than 400 already. If you would like to place a $100 deposit on one, there is still time. Send an e-mail to john@lostartpress.com to get on the list. We hope to have a final price in early June.
The trade edition (which will cost about $60) will follow shortly behind to the press. More details on that as we know them.
‘Virtuoso: The Toolbox of H.O. Studley’
At Handworks, we made our first presentation that discussed this project in detail with an entire hour of photos, commentary and details on the tools in the chest and the life of H.O. Studley. If you weren’t there, I’m afraid you will have to wait until we publish the book for full details.
When will that be? Don’t hold your breath. Author Don Williams needs to complete the two Roubo volumes before the Studley book will come out. It will be at least two years before this book is in print. So save your pennies (it will be worth it).
Other updates on books:
‘By Hand & Eye’ by George R Walker and Jim Tolpin has arrived. It looks great and is entering the mail stream now.
‘Art of the Saw: Making Sharpening & Use’ by Andrew Lunn will be released in 2014 – Andrew is scheduled to turn the book over to us at the end of 2013.
‘Campaign Furniture’ by Christopher Schwarz will also be complete at the end of 2013 and released in early 2014.
‘Art of Joinery’ by Joseph Moxon. Megan Fitzpatrick is smoothing over the text a bit to make sure we have all the long “s” characters correct. I really want to get this out before Christmas.
Joiner’s Hats: Yup. We are making these and will have some more details in the coming weeks. If you don’t like baseball hats, you might like these. Or not.
That is the news on the latest products. I’ll post more about our new corporate sign and upcoming projects in the coming weeks.
— Christopher Schwarz
