Lost Art Press

Category: Crucible Tool

Updates: New Books, Reprints & Tools

Posted on by Lost Art Press
Castle ruins outside Newbury.

The editorial staff is currently on the road to Wales, which is why we haven’t been posting much on the blog this week. Despite our remoteness (physically) we’ve been working on Lost Art Press stuff the whole time.

Here are some updates on new things and reprints.

“Dutch Tool Chests” by Megan Fitzpatrick should ship from the printer this week. We’ll have it up for sale next week. All copies purchased directly through Lost Art Press will be signed by the author.

“Good Eye” by Jim Tolpin and George Walker is in its final stages. George and Jim have a few corrections to the text. We’ll make those when we return. Then the book will be off to the printer – and out right before Christmas (assuming no publishing tragedies).

“American Peasant” (second printing) should be back in stock by Nov. 13. The second printing will have a completely different cover than the first printing.

Exeter hammers should be back on sale sometime during the week of Nov. 18. We have a bunch of hammer heads on hand now and are waiting on the handles. With any luck, we’ll have 500 more hammers out in the world by the end of the year.

“The Woodworker” series of books. Many of you have noticed that we are out of stock on all four volumes of our “Woodworker” books. These will be back in print in early 2025 in a nice softcover format. During the pandemic, the prices for making these books nearly doubled. We can’t in our right minds double the retail price on these. So we are switching to a softcover. The binding will be the same: folded, stitched and glued signatures. The only difference will be the cover. We hope to sell the set of four books for $99 as a result.

  • Christopher Schwarz

The GoDrilla Saga (With a Happy Ending)

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Good news: We now have 500 pristine-perfect GoDrillas in our warehouse, and we’re shipping them out as fast as you can order them.

Today ends our six-month saga with manufacturing difficulties with this tool. If you care about sob stories involving aluminum extrusions and custom lathe tooling, then this is the bedtime tale for you.

Earlier this year we received a batch of GoDrillas that would not accept a hex-shank drill bit. Things were just too tight. The manufacturer said they were in spec. We ate the cost of that run. We ordered a replacement batch. It was better, but still on the tight side. We could get hex-shank tooling in with a little effort. After a few go-rounds using these GoDrillas, things loosened up and the GoDrillas worked normally. Still, we were grumpy.

So we sold that batch at a deep discount.

The interior surfaces of the new GoDrillas. So much room for activities!

Now we finally have GoDrillas that are perfect. We had to buy a $2,000 tool and add a step to the process to get here, but it was worth it. We all spent all day today packaging up GoDrillas and hex rods and instruction books, and they are ready to go.

If you have been waiting for these in-spec GoDrillas, the wait is over. You can order one here.

Thanks to Josh Cook, the mechanical designer for this tool, for figuring out the problem and getting a solution.

— Christopher Schwarz

Now Shipping: Exeter Hammers

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A few of the 100 hammers we assembled today.

We have a large batch of our new Exeter furniture-maker’s hammers for sale in our store now. These hammers are perfectly sized for people who build casework and chairs. They are the ideal weight for driving in 4d and 6d nails, smacking wedges in place and adjusting bench planes.

We’ve spent about three years developing this hammer, which is based on an old British form. The cross-peen is used to start brads and headed nails – the peen slips through your fingers to set the tip of the nail. Then you flip the head around to finish the job.

The octagonal handle feels great in the hand and offers two gripping positions: one for power and one for finesse.

At 9.8 ounces, the Exeter hammer is less fatiguing to use than a 16-ounce carpenter’s hammer, but is heavy enough to sink furniture nails for assembling carcases or planting mouldings. 

Like all our tools, the Crucible Exeter hammer is made entirely in the United States. The hickory handle is made in the Carolinas, the head is milled in Nicholasville, Ky., and the tool is hand-assembled in our factory in Covington, Ky.

You can read more about the Exeter hammer here. You can read all about our line of hammers here.

My stamp.

Fun Stuff

We take pride in the work we do here. So each employee now stamps the handle with a touchmark after assembling the hammer. My symbol is a bumblebee. Kale is an “X.” Mark is a shamrock. Gabe is an arrow. And Megan is a cat.

So you can look at the butt of the handle and know who assembled it. Note that we just started doing this on Sunday (Oct. 13). So hammers shipped out before today don’t have the touchmarks.

— Christopher Schwarz

News: ‘American Peasant’ Release, FWW Cover & The Stick Chair Journal

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The cover of “American Peasant.” Coming out this week.

Sometimes we have so much stuff going on at Lost Art Press that I need to condense it all into one brief blog entry. Here we go.

‘American Peasant’ Released Early

My latest book, “American Peasant,” shipped from the printer 10 days early and will arrive in our Covington warehouse on Monday or Tuesday. We’ll open up ordering as soon as we can. The book will be $37. It is the prettiest book I’ve ever written, designed or published. I hope you like it.

FWW issue 311

On the Cover of Fine Woodworking

I am on the cover of the latest issue of Fine Woodworking magazine, which was a surprise and shock. I wrote an article on building Irish stick chairs for the magazine, which I worked on with Anissa Kapsales. I had no idea that I was going to end up on the cover, and Anissa kept it a secret.

The article turned out quite well (I think). And FWW has contracted me to write three more articles for future issues. I was wary about getting back into the magazine publishing world, but the good staff at the magazine has made it a pleasure. And fun.

The Stick Chair Journal No. 2

The second issue of The Stick Chair Journal has gone to press and should be released in early August. The cover article in the issue shows how to build the Hobbit-esque chair from “The Lord of the Rings” movies. There’s also an article about the first John Brown chair made in America. And a new technique I’ve worked out that makes assembling stick chairs much easier.

Other news….

We have new Lost Art Press hats that will go up for sale this week. They are navy blue and feature our dividers embroidered in white.

Whitney Miller has just finished editing her video on building a Swedish Tool Chest. We hope to have that up for sale this week, too.

And also worth noting: We have started production on our new Exeter-pattern nail hammers. Sexy, sexy, sexy.

Our Exeter-pattern nail hammer.

The 10 Best-selling Products of 2023

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People love the pocket books.

I’m always a bit surprised by what sells well each year. I look at our sales every morning, track inventory and try to figure out our next step. But rarely do I step back and look at the big sales picture. Except for today. Here are the 10 best selling Lost Art Press/Crucible products of 2023 by units sold.

  1. “Sharpen This” This pocket book came out in September 2022, yet we’ve already printed 14,000 of these little suckers. It is my fastest-selling book (whatever that’s worth). If you buy it from us, I sign each copy personally and we include a PG-13 Slightly Naughty sticker.
  2. “The Woodworker’s Pocket Book” Another surprise, really. This has to be the best woodworking book for the bathroom. You can flip to any page and learn something interesting about finishing formulas, wood species or 18th century mouldings listed by furniture style.
  3. “The Handcrafted Life of Dick Proenneke” This book continues to sell thanks to the fact that 1) It’s a simply amazing read and 2) The incredible popularity of the PBS series about Dick. The author took care of Dick’s cabin for years and was the perfect (and authorized) person to write this book.
  4. “The Essential Woodworker” We reissued this book in 2010 with the help of the author, Robert Wearing, and it is now in its 10th printing. This book continues to sell because you can read it in a short afternoon and it connects all the dots with handwork. It is simple (but not simplistic), perfectly illustrated and simply the right book for those who want to work with hand tools.
  5. “Make a Gibson Chair” Video. This one isn’t a surprise. The video came out this year and shows how to make one of the most comfortable (and simple) stick chairs ever.
  6. “Workshop Wound Care” Another great and much-needed pocket book. This book should be in every shop. Not because it will help LAP financially or make you a better woodworker, but because you will need its advice some day when things go wrong. Not if – when.
  7. “Crucible Engraving Tool” We’ve sold more than 1,000 of these suckers, and I can’t wait to see what woodworkers do with them. We are out of stock this minute, but we have another 500 on the way in the next week or two. So sign up to get notified when we restock.
  8. “Euclid’s Door” This book, released in 2021, had a slow start but picked up steam in 2023. “Euclid’s Door” teaches you practical geometry as you build some very useful and accurate wooden shop tools. It’s fun and eye-opening. And the next book in the series (coming in 2024) will bring even more fans into the “By Hand & Eye” fold.
  9. “Karvsnitt” Jogge Sundqvist’s second book with Lost Art Press dives into the world of chip-carving, spells and color. Like all of Jogge’s work, this book is engaging, fun and inspiring.
  10. “With the Grain” Again, what the heck? This book is in its seventh printing and continues to sell and sell. I think I know why: It’s a no-nonsense guide to what you need to know about wood technology at the bench. There are much more scientific books out there, but you won’t find a more practical one.

— Christopher Schwarz