The first loads of “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest” are in the mail stream now, and we are all ready for a beer. Or even a roofie.
We got a few hundred orders boxed up Friday night after work (and barbecue) and spent all day boxing up the rest. Now it’s time for some tater-tot casserole and crispy pork belly. And a roofie.
If you are looking to buy this book from one of our retailers – Lee Valley Tools, Lie-Nielsen Toolworks or Tools for Working Wood – those books are on their way to their warehouses. We can’t say when the book will show up in the catalogs, but it should be soon.
We also had one walk-in customer. A local woodworker who had pre-ordered the book asked if he could pick it up.
And after promising that he wasn’t going to skin me and wear the dried flesh like a mask, we said OK.
Thanks to everyone who placed an order before we shipped. Your faith in us is heartening. And I’m glad we shipped before June, which is what we promised.
One special thanks from everyone goes out to Phil Hirz, who cleaned up the entire data base of pre-orders, and allowed us to push out these orders this weekend instead of next week.
“The Anarchist’s Tool Chest” arrived via truck this afternoon. The book looks great. I, however, look like a boiled hobo and am on my second set of clothes this afternoon. Here’s the story:
The books left the Michigan printing plant on Tuesday – one-third of the press run went directly to wholesale customers. The other two-thirds came to my house.
Getting a semi-trailer – even a small one – into a dead-end street in a residential neighborhood is always a game of chicken. Literally. But I’ve unloaded more trucks than I care to remember, starting with my days in a liquor warehouse and up to my current job at Popular Woodworking Magazine. I can’t drive a forklift, but I can do everything else.
Today, my truck driver was having a bad day. I was the last delivery, and someone had pooped in his All Bran (not that you can tell the difference when someone voids in that stuff). He drove down the street and he didn’t like what he saw. Cursed a blue streak. Drove away.
He called me from a nearby grocery store and told me to come pick the books up there.
I told him he would be the first driver in 15 years who failed me. He hung up.
About 15 minutes later he pulled up and we made nice. We pulled the three pallets off his truck and deposited them on my driveway.
“I hope you have a lot of tarps,” he said as he walked back to his cab.
The sky was suddenly dark. I grabbed a knife, ripped through the plastic around the pallets and began humping boxes into my sunroom. Ten minutes later, the sky opened up. Stupid rain.
I covered what I could with tarps and then brought what I could inside – more than 140 boxes. After getting two pallets in the house, the rain was too strong to fight. I covered the third pallet as best I could and peeled off my clothes. While I waited, I cut the wet cardboard off the books and surveyed the damage.
So far, it looks like none of the moisture got into the books. Only one book and one box was damaged in transit. That’s not bad.
Tomorrow we’ll set up a shipping station in my sunroom and start signing and signing and mailing the books. Right now, I’m going to drink a beer (Pliny the Elder – thanks Nate!) and take a close look at the printing job.
It took only two sentences to convince me to resign my position as editor of Popular Woodworking Magazine, forsaking a stable salary and a company that appreciated my efforts.
I was teaching a class on handplanes with Thomas Lie-Nielsen at the Marc Adams School of Woodworking a couple years ago. On the second day of the class, Thomas narrated a film of how he makes tools at his factory in Warren, Me. At the end of his presentation, one of the students asked the following question:
“Aren’t you afraid that the inexpensive Wood River planes are going to put you out of business?”
“They can’t put me out of business,” Thomas replied. “Even if I had to let go of every single one of my employees, I’d still be there making planes until I died.”
At that moment, my world turned upside down.
I had started Lost Art Press in part as a way to insulate myself. Editors of magazines get fired – a lot. My goal was to grow Lost Art Press slowly using pet projects, such as “The Art of Joinery.” Then, when some day I got called into the Glass Woodshed by the People Upstairs, I would have something to fall back on. But after listening to Thomas, I knew that I had the equation reversed.
My undying and consuming passion for the craft was what would insulate me from failure, not some little business.
So starting June 15, I will be full time here at Lost Art Press. I’ll be blogging here almost every day about my work in the shop. I have about two or three years of work and books lined up for us to publish. And – I hope – I’ll also be blogging and writing for Popular Woodworking Magazine, which I have only the deepest affection for.
What’s going to change? Good question. I probably won’t be able to do many tool reviews. At Popular Woodworking Magazine, I personally purchased (or borrowed) all the tools I wrote about to avoid a conflict of interest. And I’m not about to become a hand-tool harlot, complaining about my irritable bowel syndrome and whining about how toolmakers won’t send me free stuff.
That’s not me. I buy my own tools.
And with a four-figure income (the other half of the headline on this blog post), my tool purchases are going to be more carefully made. I don’t want to go out of business.
Oh yeah, I forgot. That’s not possible. Thanks Tom.
Fig. 95aFig 95a and 95b. Mortice and tenon joint. In a basic stool or table, two rails are joined into the top of each leg by means of a mortice and tenon joint. Either the legs or rails may be marked out first. In this construction, the rails are marked out.
In a table or stool construction either the legs or the rails may be marked out first. This example starts with the rails. Cramp together the long and short pairs, with true faces out and true edges down. Mark each end with a knife and square (Fig 96). Then uncramp the pairs, square round the lines (Fig 97), and carefully saw off the waste. It is important to saw this cleanly in order to be able to gauge nicely on the end later. First gauge the set-in, at about 3mm (1/8in.), and then the haunch (Fig 98). The set-in is purely cosmetic, to conceal any irregularity in the joint.
Fig. 96
Fig. 98
The haunch provides a bridge at the top of the leg, helping to prevent the mortice splitting and at the same time, by its added width to the tenon, reducing the possibility of the rail twisting in the leg. The haunch should be about a quarter of the tenon width. Some writers will say a third but this seems to reduce the tenon too much.
To mark out the legs, put them together with the faces and edges as shown (Fig 99) then turn them over and mark them on a blank face. Mark the total length, leaving some waste (which should be shaded) at each end. The waste must be about 20mm (3/4in.) at the top or jointed end.
Fig. 99Figs. 100-101
Offer up the rail, and from it mark the haunch, set-in and rail width (Fig 100), square these across and uncramp. Square these lines onto the other blank face. The total length lines are squared right round (Fig 101).
The thickness of a tenon is normally about one third of the rail thickness. It is not taken from measurement but is the size of the nearest available chisel to this size. The traditional hand mortice chisels vary considerably from the nominal size. Machine chisels are quite accurate and are now becoming metric. Hand mortice chisels are much thicker than the common firmer or bench chisel (Fig 102), which is very liable to break when levering. The extra thickness of the mortice chisel is also a help in preventing it from twisting.
Set the mortice gauge carefully to the chisel (Fig 103) then set to its position on the rail, commonly central. Without changing the setting, mark out the mortices on the legs (Fig 104), gauging from the true face and the true edge. Mark the tenons similarly, gauging from the true face.
Beginners will find it helpful later on, when sawing the tenons, if a thick, soft pencil is run in the gauge marks. This produces a double pencil mark (Fig 105). The waste should be very clearly marked with pencil, generally by diagonal shading. (The method adopted in the illustrations is to avoid confusion with the end grain, and is not typical.)
Note: It is a good idea to number the joints to avoid confusion. This should be done on parts not involved in the cleaning-up process.
