Tools should be used. And when I have some that are doing more sitting than cutting, I give them to friends or sell them.
After 15 years at Popular Woodworking and purchasing tools for review, I still have more tools than I want. Today I’m getting rid of five of them. Here are the terms. Please read them before sending me a message.
The first to say, “I’ll take it,” gets it.
I only ship to addresses in the United States.
No, you cannot come to my house and dig through my basement.
After I receive your payment (PayPal or personal check), I’ll ship your item.
If you want an item, send an e-mail to chris@lostartpress.com and be sure to say which item you want.
So here’s what I’m selling:
Lie-Nielsen No. 4-1/2 in bronze anniversary edition. Made in 2006. Price: SOLD.
This plane is virtually unused. Sharpened once. Signed. And stamped with my mark. I’ll need to grind and sharpen it again for you before shipping it. I do not have the box or the papers – sorry collectors.
Lie-Nielsen No. 62 Low-angle jack plane. SOLD.
No apologies on this tool, other than the fact that it is stamped with my owner’s mark. The iron is O1 – I bought this before the A2 craze.
Gramercy Hammer, 9 oz. head. Price: SOLD.
It’s a great hammer. I just have too damn many hammers. No apologies, other than it has my owner’s stamp on it.
Gramercy Hammer, 4 oz., Price: SOLD
Again, too many hammers. This one is great for adjusting plane irons and driving sprigs.
Wood Joy Razor Shave. Price: SOLD
I bought this shave for a review that never materialized. It’s in new, unused condition.
These four huge chapters from A.J. Roubo’s “L’Art du Menuisier” in our forthcoming book are about much more. And I can already feel the lessons in the book seeping into my work – and I’m not big into marquetry.
The book opens with a discussion of the different woods used by cabinetmakers – both for casework and for veneering/marquetry. If you read a lot of old books, this is a section you can usually skip – most of the writers just copied one another and so the text is rather boilerplate.
Not Roubo. He collected a bunch of these woods from the Tropics and tried to make careful observations about the species based on visits he made to the Office of Natural History of the King’s Garden to observe woods there.
The text is fascinating because it is the foundation for Roubo’s discussion on color – how to combine the five different colors of woods in marquetry, veneer and solid casework. And that leads into Roubo’s discussion of how to color different woods using dyes.
If you have any interest in historical finishing techniques, this is a fun section of the book. It opens with Roubo visiting a scientist to see if they can figure out how to dye wood all the way through the material – not just on the surface.
Roubo laments that other woodworkers have this knowledge and won’t share it. And that much of the information is lost. Roubo then details how to make many dyes from scratch – including a, ahem, “water-based” one made from horse dung and horse urine. (And you need a bucket with holes in the bottom.)
From there, Roubo discusses sawing logs into veneer. How to build a bench and a saw that are suitable for the work. And he goes into great detail on his “German” workbench, which he says is well suited for high-end work.
This is actually the first time I’d ever read the section on the German workbench. Roubo details its then-controversial details – a tail vise, drawers below the stretchers, square dogs. It’s very cool stuff.
Oh and there’s a whole section on planes with iron soles (author Don Williams makes one a la Roubo for the book). And a whole section on – wait for it – the advantages and disadvantages of bevel-up and bevel-down planes. Oh, there’s also a whole discussion of variable-pitch planes. And what we call a “Moxon” vise.
And all that’s just the first chapter.
The sections on marquetry will likely change they way you build and use a shooting board and introduce you to a whole world of jigs and devices that will dispel the idea that marquetry or inlay is a skill outside of your reach. Plus there is even more information on finishing later on in the book, including information on the polissoir, a tool I now use thanks to Williams’s research.
I’m telling you all this because several of our customers have told me that they are going to skip this first book because it’s about marquetry and wait for the next book on furniture. Well this book is about furniture, too.
We are publishing two versions of this first volume – a very special 12” x 17” edition with full-size plates, color photos and a gorgeous binding that will cost about $400. I think we are going to print 500 of these special books. Everyone who places a deposit before Dec. 31, 2012, will get one of these books. Visit our store here to read more details on that.
We’ll also be publishing a nice trade edition of the first volume that will be 8-1/2” x 11”, hardback and black-and-white. It should cost about $60. This edition will stay in print (we hope) for as long as we are in business. We will have more details on this edition later. Right now, this is all we know.
OK, that’s enough yakking on my part. I have about 60,000 more words to edit today.
You can now download Roy Underhill’s reading of “The Joiner & Cabinet Maker,” the almost-lost 1839 text that tells the fictional story of young Thomas West’s apprenticeship in a rural English workshop.
It is $22 and available in our store now via this link.
“The Joiner and Cabinet Maker” is a book that has opened up the world of hand-tool woodworking for thousands of people. The book’s anonymous author detailed the day-to-day workings of a hand-tool workshop in the early days of the 19th century as a way to guide children who were thinking about entering the woodworking trade.
The book begins with instructions on how to sweep the shop, tend the shop’s fire and help the other journeymen. It ends with the hero, Thomas, building a full-blown chest of drawers as a journeyman.
The original text is extremely rare and was unearthed by Joel Moskowitz, the owner of Tools for Working Wood. He brought it to the attention of Lost Art Press, and that partnership resulted in the publication of print version of “The Joiner and Cabinet Maker.”
The Lost Art Press version of this book includes the original 1839 text, a historical commentary on the trade by Moskowitz and a detailed explanation of how to build the three projects featured in “The Joiner and Cabinet Maker.”
The audiobook version of the book consists of the original text only, read by Roy Underhill. Lost Art Press was particularly pleased to get Roy to read the book for us. Not only is he a student of early trades, but Roy is also a long-time thespian, and he brought his many voice talents to the project.
You can download a snippet of the book – a short section on making chisel handles – using the link below.
As a result, the 215-minute audiobook version of “The Joiner and Cabinet Maker” is a joy to listen to once you become accustomed to the early 19th-century way of explaining things.
Downloading Details
The download will play on all computers and devices, including iPods, Androids, generic smartphones and Kindles. As always, these files will not have any copy protection on them. The audiobook is delivered in a single compressed .zip file. After downloading it, simply double-click on the .zip file and it will decompress into a folder containing all the .mp3 files for the book – 22 in all. You can drag these onto your device or onto iTunes to add them to your listening library. Also, simply double-clicking on the file will start playing it on your computer.
If you have never manually added content to iTunes, it’s easy. Here’s a quick tutorial from Apple.
The audiobook was edited by John Hoffman of Lost Art Press. The final mastering was performed by Ben Strano, a Nashville-based engineer, producer and woodworker.
— Christopher Schwarz
P.S. We are working on a three-CD set of the audiobook, which will be available for sale shortly.
In ruder and more simple times, before labor is much subdivided, the whole stock of knowledge existing in a country will be scanty, but it will be more equally diffused over the different ranks, and each individual of the lower orders will have nearly the same opportunities and motives with his superiors, for exerting the different powers of his mind.
The rude mechanic, residing in a small town, is forced to bestow his attention, successively, on many objects different from each other. Not finding constant employment in one branch of manufacture, he exercises several, and furnishes himself with many of the tools requisite for each; he probably makes part of his own clothes, assists in building his own house and those of his neighbors, and cultivates, or directs his wife and children in cultivating, a small patch of ground, on which he raises part of his provisions.
As he must buy the materials, and sell or barter the produce of his labour, he is also, in some respects, a merchant; and, in this capacity, he is led to the observation of character, as well as to some speculation respecting the most advantageous times and places, for making his little bargains.
When we add, that he is likewise trained to arms, for the purpose of assisting in defending the town of which he is a citizen, we must see that his situation, and consequently, his character, will be very different from that of a mechanic, in a more advanced society.
In this manner, all the members of a rude nation, being forced to exercise a great number of unconnected professions and individually to provide for themselves, what each stands in need of, their attention is directed to a variety of objects: and their knowledge is extended in proportion. No man relies upon the exertions of his neighbor; but each employs, for the relief of his wants, or in defence of what belongs to him, either the strength of his body or the ingenuity of his mind, all the talents which he has been able to acquire, all the faculties with which nature has endowed him….
Unlike the mechanics of a commercial nation, who have each permitted all of their talents… to lie dormant and useless; but who combine, like the wheels of a machine, in producing a complicated system of operations, the inhabitants of a rude country have separately preserved, and kept in action, all the original powers of man….
— John Millar, “An Historical View of the English Government: From the Settlement of the Saxons in Britain to the Revolution in 1688” (1803). Thanks to Jeff Burks for exhuming this one.
