Lost Art Press

Category: Downloads

‘The Essential Woodworker’ for Kindle

Posted on by Lost Art Press

You can now purchase Robert Wearing’s hand-tool masterwork, “The Essential Woodworker,” for your Kindle or other reader that is compatible with Kindle files. The Kindle book is $10 and can be purchased here in our store.

That means you can now buy this landmark book in hardcover for $23, ePub for iPad or iPhone for $10 or in Kindle format for $10.

This reprint is fully authorized by the author – beware of pirated editions – and royalties from the sale of both the electronic and hardcover Lost Art Press editions go to help support Wearing in his old age.

The Kindle and ePub editions of “The Essential Woodworker” are based on our revised 2010 edition of the book where we incorporated corrections and revisions from Wearing, reset all the text and recreated photos that were lost by the previous publishing company.

Bringing this book back into print was a three-year ordeal for us – you can thank my partner John Hoffman for slicing through most of the red tape. But the hard work was worth it. “The Essential Woodworker” is one of the most important hand-tool woodworking books published in the post-Charles Hayward era and it remains one of my favorite references.

We are dedicated to keeping this book in print for as long as possible – we have thousands of copies stockpiled in my basement – and at a reasonable price. And getting it into Kindle and ePub formats helps ensure the book will not be forgotten or lost.

To purchase and download the Kindle edition, visit our store. International customers can send $10 via PayPal to john@lostartpress.com and he will send you a link to download the file.

— Christopher Schwarz

‘The Essential Woodworker’ ePub Edition

Posted on by Lost Art Press

You can now download the ePub edition of “The Essential Woodworker” by Robert Wearing in a completely DRM-free format for your iPad, iPhone or other electronic reader that supports .epub files.

Click here to visit our store and purchase the ePub edition for $10.

A Kindle edition of “The Essential Woodworker” is in the works and will be released shortly.

The ePub version of the book follows the format and layout of “The Essential Woodworker” version published by Lost Art Press. We reset the entire book in a classic typeface, incorporated changes from Mr. Wearing and laid out the book in a classic 6” x 9” format.

This is an authorized reprint by Mr. Wearing. With every purchase of the electronic or physical version of the Lost Art Press book, significant royalties go to Mr. Wearing.

In our opinion, “The Essential Woodworker” is one of the best books on hand-tool usage written in the post-Charles Hayward era. Wearing was classically trained in England as a woodworker and embraced both power and hand tools in his shop and in his teaching.

The book “The Essential Woodworker” was written to remedy the lack of fundamental hand-tool knowledge in the post-World War II woodworker. While Wearing discusses basics such as sharpening and tool use in the book, the true genius of the book is in how Wearing shows you how to apply all the tools and processes to actually build things.

He begins with a table. As you read the chapter on building a table, Wearing connects the dots for the hand-tool user by showing how all the tools are used in concert to produce accurate work. It’s not just about sawing a tenon or planing an edge. Instead, it is about how to gather these skills and apply them to building furniture – tables, doors, carcases, dovetailed drawers, plinths etc.

The book is filled with more than 500 hand-drawn illustrations by Wearing that explain every operation in a hand-tool shop. His illustrations are properly drafted, drawn in perspective and masterfully clear.

For a tutorial on how to manually add a book to your iPod or iPhone, view this tutorial on our blog. It’s easy.

— Christopher Schwarz

Download the ‘Pretty’ Edition of ‘The Anarchist’s Tool Chest’ Index

Posted on by Lost Art Press

Last night I uploaded the files for the third press run of “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest” to our printing company. Production began this morning (our printer works crazy hours, too).

As mentioned earlier, this press run of the book will contain an index at the back. This is the index developed by Suzanne “Minion” Ellison, and actually is fun to read. In addition to the traditional index, Suzanne also developed an index to all the photos in the book, a list of people mentioned in the text and two pages of quotes from the book that she thought were notable.

I laid out the pages for the index this weekend and got to use some photographs in it I have been eager to publish – these are pictures I took of John Sindelar’s collection this spring. (No, my high-resolution photos of the naked mermaid brace are not among them. If you want a naked mermaid brace, drop me a line. I know the guy who makes them.)

You can download the formatted and picture-laden index using the link below. If you are especially anal retentive you can cut out the pages, bind them and carefully affix them to the back of the book.

ATC_index3

Suzanne prepared this index out of the goodness of her heart. But lest you think us ungrateful, I sent her the walnut English Layout Square that I built while on Roy Underhill’s show “The Woodwright’s Shop.” I learned that tip from Minion Fancy magazine.

In addition to the index, the new press run will have a few minor typo corrections that slipped though the second printing, and I tweaked a paragraph to the section on plow planes to reinforce a couple of my original points. Nothing earthshaking.

Also, the linen cover and the stamp will be a different color. Books from this press run will be for sale in about four weeks (same price). We are likely to run out of copies of the second printing in about two weeks if sales continue at this clip. Just FYI.

— Christopher Schwarz

Download Plans for the Traveling Tool Chest

Posted on by Lost Art Press

During 2012 I’ll be teaching three classes in building a traditional tool chest. Students will be able to build either the full-size chest from “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest,” or the slightly smaller chest shown here that is designed for traveling.

This chest is based on a historical example I own, and I’ve been surprised at how many tools it can carry. It will hold almost all the tools of a full-size chest, but getting to all these tools isn’t as easy as it is in a full-size chest.

But this smaller chest will fit in a hatchback – something a full-size chest can’t do.

This chest has some interesting features worth exploring. Let’s take a look.

• There are two sliding trays for your small tools, which slide on runners that are screwed to the inside of the chest. In the original, these trays are nailed together (not dovetailed). When I build this chest for my own travels, I will dovetail the trays together.

• The trays are ingeniously positioned so you can fit moulding planes and typical bench planes below the trays without interfering with the way they move. The downside is that the planes must be stored with their soles against the floor of the chest – so you won’t be able to see the profiles of all the moulding planes.

• The back wall of the chest has a tool rack that is pierced with 1/2” holes on 1-1/2” centers. This little rack gives you lots of space to store screwdrivers, awls and other tools with narrow blades. But if you fill the rack you will limit the travel of the sliding trays.

• The sawtill at the front of the chest is a single piece of wood. It holds three saws easily and without taking up much space at all.

• The real downside of the chest is that it is only 15-3/8” high. So if you store it on the floor, you’ll be doing a lot of crouching or bending over. If you store it on your benchtop, I hope you have a huge bench. When I had a bench this size, I stored it on top of a wooden crate that was about 12” tall. That worked.

• The original chest was made of pine boards that were nailed together. I changed the joinery to dovetails. Also, though I don’t show it in the drawing, I recommend you dovetail all the skirting around the shell of the chest – just like I did on the full-size chest in the book.

You can download the plans for this chest for free from Google’s 3D Warehouse. You need Google SketchUp to view the files, but it’s free, too. And if you haven’t gotten your feet wet in SketchUp, I highly recommend you do so – it’s become the design language for woodworkers. [Editor’s note, 2021: The product is now owned by Trimble. There is still a free version available, though it is significantly less robust than the subscription versions.]

Click here to download the plans.

— Christopher Schwarz

How to Manually Add a Kindle Book to Your iPad or iPhone

Posted on by Lost Art Press

Several readers who have purchased the Kindle version of “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest” have asked how to add it to their iPhone or iPad and read it with the Kindle app.

This was once a difficult process, but with an update to the Kindle app in January it’s easy. So the first thing to do is make sure you are running the newest version of the Kindle app.

Now connect your iPad or iPhone to your computer and launch iTunes.

Click on your device in the left-hand sidebar of iTunes. Now click on the “Apps” tab at the top of the page.

Scroll down a bit and you will see a section called “File Sharing.” And your Kindle app will be listed. Click on the Kindle app.

Now you can add your Kindle version of the book to the app. Simply click “Add” and navigate to the file. The next time you sync your device, the book will be waiting for you in the Home section of the Kindle app.

— Christopher Schwarz