After a long dry spell of new books, I am pleased to announce that we are now shipping our reprint of Joseph Moxon’s “Mechanick Exercises: Or the Doctrine of Handy-Works” – the first English language book on woodworking.
If you are a hand-tool enthusiast, Moxon is basically where it all begins. His clear descriptions of tools and processes point out a fundamental truth of our craft: Not too much has changed in the last 300 years in woodworking.
Yet, even though I’ve been working with hand tools my entire career, there is always something new to learn from reading Moxon. His nuanced description of using the fore plane is a ray of bright light in a modern world that is obsessed with smoothing planes. And even his description of sharpening will give you something to think about.
Our reprint is based on the 1703 edition of Moxon’s book. And it includes all the original chapters and plates, including the sections on carpentry, blacksmith work, turning and making sundials. We made our reprint using a copy from the Early American Industries Association. And proceeds from every copy sold will go to benefit this important organization.
Creating this reprint has long been a goal of mine because I wanted to help preserve this knowledge in a high-quality, durable book. We have designed this book to last many lifetimes. The acid-free pages are gathered into signatures, which are then sewn and glued together, with the book block reinforced with a fiber-based tape and then wrapped in cloth-covered boards. The book was produced and printed entirely in the U.S.
This book will endure many, many readings without the pages falling out. And like all of our books, it will resist floods, dogs and even babies.
We also worked hard to keep the price reasonable: $24. We did this by carefully selecting the paper and the press, which is one reason this book took six months to print. We hope you’ll consider adding “Mechanick Exercises: Or the Doctrine of Handy-Works” to your collection (it is one of the backbones of our mechanical library). Or perhaps order it for a budding hand-tool woodworker to give them a firm grounding in traditional practice.
— Christopher Schwarz
P.S. Several people have asked what is the difference between this book and “Art of Joinery.” Our new book, “Mechanick Exercises: Or the Doctrine of Handy-Works” is the complete and original text, with chapters on blacksmithing, carpentry and turning. “Art of Joinery” is merely the chapters on joinery and includes commentary from me, exploring the practices described by Moxon.
Dr. Jeffery Hill and Harper Haynes, our summer intern, during a photo shoot in our offices. The new book will show how to apply dressings for a wide variety of wounds and situations.
I’m almost always an open book when it comes to talking about the books we are working on at Lost Art Press. But when we began working on “Workshop Wound Care” by Dr. Jeffery Hill, I decided to keep my mouth shut.
I did this because I was surprised that no one had published a book like this before. Sure, there are some magazine articles out there. Plus some general “first aid” books that cover everything from drowning to being trampled by livestock (both are rare injuries in the woodshop).
But a book that covers workshop-specific injuries? If it exists I haven’t found it.
I was worried that if I announced the book too soon, another publisher would beat us to press by pulling together a bunch of internet drivel and plopping it onto a print-on-demand service.
After many months of work, we are now in the final stages of working on this book. And with any luck it will be out in October or November. So now I feel comfortable talking about this new title.
“Workshop Wound Care” will be in our pocket-book series. It will cost about $20. And it will delve right into the heart of what you need to know when faced with a laceration, a blood blister under the fingernail or a puncture wound from a nail.
Dr. Hill is the perfect author for this book. He is an emergency room physician and an active woodworker (you can follow him here on Instagram – or if you are an ER nerd, here’s his blog). So he knows exactly what sort of information a woodworker needs to know when it comes to injuries. And he presents information in a way that a non-medical professional can understand it.
As Megan and I edited this book, we were surprised by how much we learned about wound care. We set aside our coagulant dressings and hydrogen peroxide and have instead been using Dr. Hill’s instructions for dressing wounds so they heal faster.
A double-bag system for dealing with amputated parts. (That’s a stunt finger.)
Also surprising: the first aid stuff you need is not exotic. Dr. Hill recommends items you can get easily at a good pharmacist or online. We are now building out our shop’s first aid kit to match his recommendations. And this process has brought a sense of relief. Off-the-shelf first aid kits are hit or miss when it comes to having what you need for the workshop. After reading the book, I feel we will be prepared for *almost* everything.
I know that “sex” sells better than “safety.” But I hope you’ll consider adding this important book to your library so that when (not “if”) you hurt yourself, you’ll be back at the workbench in the minimum amount of time, and with as little agony as possible.
— Christopher Schwarz
Table of Content
Chapter 1: Introduction
This will be a practical guide for triaging and managing wounds in a wood shop. Along the way you’ll learn a bit about anatomy, wound healing and the pathophysiology of certain types of wounds, in addition to learning how to stop bleeding, dress wounds, and, heaven forbid, store and transport an amputated finger tip for possible re-implantation.
Chapter 2: Building out a Proper First Aid Kit
Standard first aid kits that you buy over the counter contain some useful items but usually not in proper quantities or of proper quality. Collecting select high quality equipment will ultimately be more functional.
Chapter 3: How to Stop Bleeding
Stanching the flow of blood from an open wound is of nearly obvious importance but it is often done wrong. Here we will walk through the approach to stopping bleeding from various type of wounds
Chapter 4: Wound Healing Primer
The pathophysiology of wound healing is a series of biochemical cascades; understanding (in plain language) what is happening at a cellular level can give additional insight into expectations of the wound healing process.
Chapter 5: Anatomy Primer
Understanding the anatomy of frequently injured parts of the body can help on triage the seriousness of a particular wound. We’ll cover the anatomy of the hand and face primarily.
Chapter 6: Red Flags
Judging exactly when to seek care after an injury is very much situation-dependent, however there are certain things which will absolutely necessitate additional care by a medical provider (loss of function, neuromuscular compromise, wound healing, cosmetic concerns).
Chapter 7: Tetanus is a Bad Way to Die
This chapter will cover the risks of tetanus based on exposure type and immunization status with a brief primer on what tetanus is and how infections occur.
Chapter 8: Early Wound Care Principles
Appropriate early wound care and proper irrigation, in particular, is important for decreasing the risk of infection. We’ll focus on irrigation techniques with a focus on those that have the best evidence for preventing wound infections.
Chapter 9: Wound Dressings
If a cut/abrasion can be dealt with in the shop, or if a wound has been dealt with at a doctor’s office, an understanding of how to appropriately dress the wound to ensure a clean, not overly moist healing environment. We focus on care of sutured, taped, and glued wounds and focus on bandaging techniques that will lead to secure(ish) dressings.
Chapter 10: So You Cut Your ____ Off? Now What?
This chapter will give clear instructions on how to properly store an amputated piece of your body for possible reattachment. It will also cover the immediate care, and common treatment, of amputations.
Chapter 11: Lacerations
Among the most commonly encountered injuries, the initial care and triage of lacerations depends on the nature of the wound and what caused the tissue injury. Clean cuts from knives and chisels will generally be easier to manage than tissue-loss injuries caused by power tools.
Chapter 12: Crush Injuries
A misplaced blow of a hammer or dropped workpiece will crush tissues and possibly break bones. We’ll cover the general triage and pathophysiology of these injuries with special focus on subungal hematoma (bleeding/bruising under nails).
Chapter 13: Puncture Wounds
Puncture wounds may appear innocuous but pose the greatest risk in terms of wound infection. The triage of the wounds generally revolves around the site of injury, what caused the puncture, the cleanliness of your skin (and the object that punctured you). Splinter management is covered in this chapter.
Chapter 14: High-pressure Injection Injuries
These are a type of puncture wound where the puncturing object is the air and whatever was being sprayed. These injuries can seem relatively minor at first however they can be incredibly devastating with extensive tissue loss from necrosis that develops in hours and days.
Chapter 15: Eye Injuries
The eye deserves special attention as there is risk of permanent vision loss with some types of injuries. This chapter gives consideration to corneal abrasions, metal and organic foreign bodies, and puncture wounds/open globes.
We are in the middle of prepping hundreds of parts for a July 11-15 stick chair class in partnership with The Chairmaker’s Toolbox, and I am setting aside my aversion to plastic for this one moment.
As Megan Fitzpatrick and I prepare the parts – straightening the grain, octagonalizing the bits and sometimes tapering them, I sort through them. I group the parts by color and grain. And I wrap each bundle of parts into packets with a minimal amount of stretch-wrap plastic.
There are packets of legs, short sticks, long sticks and stretchers. When all the stock prep is over, I’ll group all the packets into 10 chair kits that are matched for color and grain.
It takes a lot of extra work, but I do this for two reasons. One, it makes for better chairs. Two, even the nicest people in the world become total dork-holes when it comes to picking parts willy-nilly from a big communal pile of parts during a woodworking class.
Inevitably, one or two people end up with all the exceptional boards. And the slow students, who need all the help they can get, end up with the dregs.
To combat this problem, I started picking and grouping wood for students years ago to avoid this “Lord of the Firs” approach to distributing parts. And I have stuck to this philosophy to this day.
Why am I telling you this? If you ever find yourself facing a pile of parts in a classroom, please be kind. Don’t be a hoggy-dog and take all the best parts for yourself. Someone is watching. And they are judging you.
And Furthermore….
If you are taking a woodworking class this summer, here’s a little tip that might make you feel better about your performance during the class.
If you follow a lot of instructors, schools on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter (like I do), you’ll see a lot of posts that exclaim, “These students are KILLING it.” Or “These students are amazing! Hardworking! Insanely Talented! Oblong!”
I’ve taken enough classes and taught enough classes to tell you that this piffle is either:
Unconditional positive regard (that is undeserved).
Marketing for the school/instructor.
Woodworking in a classroom environment is both tense and fun. In my experience, everyone struggles a bit – that’s what happens when you learn stuff. There are always failures in a class – a mis-cut, a broken part, a brain fart.
If you struggle in woodworking classes (I sure do, both as a student and an instructor), then you are perfectly normal. All those social media posts are just the gauzy, filtered unreality that clogs our phones and likely contributes to a lot of self-esteem problems.
Bottom line: If you make it through a class without locking yourself in the bathroom while sobbing, throwing your tools against the wall, or making a through-mortise in your hand, then you have succeeded. (All these things have happened in classes.)
But I will say in all honesty that every student in my classes has indeed KILLED IT (as long as “it” is a tree).
We received our first load of entries today for the “Stick Chair Merit Badges.” And everyone followed instructions. Thank you!
It’s great to see all the different chairs and their personalities (and their owners). If you would like a merit badge for your shop apron or tuxedo, there is only one way to get them and here are the instructions.
If you don’t sew, and you don’t know anyone who does, you can also glue these patches on garments. I use Fabric Fusion, which is used for fabric repair. It works like woodworking glue. Apply a thin and consistent coat to the back of the patch. Tape it to the garment. Place something heavy on top of the patch for a couple hours. That’s it.
Like furniture, a glue-only joint isn’t as good as something with a mechanical interlock. But this is better than rubber cement.
Note that the “Stick Chair Merit Badges” patches are not iron-on. They need to be stitched or glued on.
The WoodOwl augers make insanely clean holes (when used correctly).
I love spade bits, and I will always recommend them for people getting started in chairmaking. The bits are dirt cheap, widely available, sharpenable and are easily customized to do things other bits cannot.
But like many chairmakers, I am always game to try new drill bits. If someone told me there was a new drill bit made from hard cheese and rat pelvises, I would buy a few to try.
These bits cut quickly and cleanly and – insanely – leave a clean exit hole without any backing board. For the chairs I build, this is a big deal when drilling the holes between the armbow and the seat. With these bits I don’t need to clamp backing boards to the armbow. And I can easily drill through the seat – making the joint between the sticks and the seat incredibly strong with more surface area and wedges.
The exit holes for both WoodOwl bits. So clean.
But the bits have a learning curve. Because the flutes along the body of the bit are sharp, you have to keep a steady hand when freehand drilling, otherwise you will make weird overly elliptical holes. And you need to learn how to start them properly. And to deal with what happens when the cut stalls.
The OverDrive Bits
These bits are widely available in the United States. But after using them for 16 months in chairmaking, I don’t recommend them for making chairs. The bit’s center spur is too short for anything but shallow angles.
Why is this bad? Angles greater than 12° or so are difficult. You have to start the bit vertical then move into the correct (sometimes compound) angle. And you might have only a second or two to do this.
Wait, can’t you do this at “sloth speed” and ease into the cut? No. The bits are (in my opinion) designed to be used at high speed. When used at low speeds, they tend to tear up the wood. The OverDrives are great bits for furniture making where the bit is 90° to the work and in a drill press. But for chairmaking? Pass.
OverDrive bits (left) and Star-M bits (right).
The Star-M, F-Types
I buy these bits from Workshop Heaven in the U.K. If they are sold elsewhere I don’t know. But I haven’t found them in the U.S. These bits are similar to the OverDrive bits, but the center spur is radically different, which makes all the difference.
The long center spur and cone-shaped tip allow you to use this bit at radical angles (though I would argue that you shouldn’t do this without a stern warning, which is below). And because of the bit’s shape you can get the bit settled into the work with slow rotations until you spin things up to full speed.
STERN WARNING: When you use any bit at a radical angle, you tend to bring the flutes into the cutting equation. With a traditional auger, the flutes aren’t sharp, so it’s not a big deal. But with many modern augers, the flutes are pin-sharp. So it’s easy to make the hole an elliptical mess when the flutes start whacking at the rim of your hole.
During the last couple years I’ve found that while the bits allow you to start the hole at a 40° angle, that’s a bad idea. As you approach 20° off vertical, the risk of the bit’s flutes making a mess of things increases radically. Stay under 20° off vertical, and you’ll be OK (with a steady hand).
When I have to angle the bit more than 20°, I switch back to spade bits, which cut slower and don’t tend to ream the hole as much.
So here are a few tips for using the Star-Ms.
Start the bit’s spur slowly (or make a divot with an awl to start the bit). Otherwise the bit can skate across the work when cutting compound angles.
As soon as the bit is started, run up the bit to full speed without pushing the drill downward. The cut will be cleaner.
One you get to full speed, plunge in and let the bit determine your feed speed.
The bits are sensitive to changes in grain direction (like when you laminate two boards together. And when you drill through the far face of the board). No matter how powerful your drill is, the bit will sometimes stall. When this happens, ease off on any downward pressure on the drill. Run the bit up to full speed with no downward pressure then plunge gently again.
The Star-Ms can be difficult to find in stock, particularly in the 16mm (5/8”) size, which is common for chairmaking. But they’re worth the effort and the wait.
