Lost Art Press

Category: Lost Art Press Storefront

Storefront Open this Saturday

Posted on by Lost Art Press

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The Lost Art Press storefront will be open this Saturday, Oct. 8, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. to sell books, holdfasts from Crucible Tool, T-shirts, posters and the like. The storefront is at 837 Willard St., Covington, Ky. 41011.

We have the new “Stanley Catalogue No. 34” in stock at the store, as well as the red edition of “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest.” We also have a decent selection of blemished books for 50 percent off retail (blemished books are cash only). And a few slightly blemished letterpress tool chest posters.

While you are in Covington, be sure to stop by Covington Coffee on West 12th Street. They have fantastic coffee, Lil’s Bagels and make waffles on weekends. (This is not an advertisement.)

— Christopher Schwarz

P.S. We’ve gotten a few curt notes stuffed in our mailbox from customers who have stopped by on a Saturday when the storefront isn’t open. Please note that we are open only the second Saturday of each month – not every Saturday.

Reminder: We are Open Tomorrow

Posted on by Lost Art Press

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John and I finished building the above rolling book display this afternoon. Pocket screws and Dragonply aren’t my favorite materials, but they do get the job done in a hurry.

If you are in the area tomorrow, please stop by and check out our new holdfasts, T-shirts and two new Roman workbenches. Also, the Main Strasse Oktoberfest celebration is running this weekend. Good news: good beer and sausages are two blocks away. Bad news: Parking won’t be as easy.

No matter who shows up, I’ll be there rasping my new vise nuts so they fit my hands just right. (Wow, after reading that sentence I doubt anyone will show up tomorrow.)

— Christopher Schwarz

This Saturday: A WIA Preview

Posted on by Lost Art Press

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The Lost Art Press storefront will be open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. this Saturday, Sept. 10, less than a week before Woodworking in America.

We’ll have all our books for sale, plus some new T-shirts for Lost Art Press and Crucible Tool for $20 each.

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In addition to commerce, we’ll have both Roman workbenches out in the shop and available for you to play with. And we’ll have a Crucible holdfast on the bench for you to hit as much as you please (sorry, we won’t start selling these until Sept. 15 – we still don’t have the retail pricing calculated).

I’ll also be finishing the construction of a mobile book cart we’re taking to the Marketplace at WIA. It will feature some of my finest craftsmanship (actually, plywood and pocket screws).

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So do stop by if you can. The storefront is located at 837 Willard St., Covington, Ky., 41011.

— Christopher Schwarz

P.S. If you come to town that day, check out the newly opened Covington Coffee three blocks away. They have outstanding pour-over coffee, they sell Lil’s Bagels and they make waffles on Saturday. Also worth drinking: Stop by Braxton Brewing and order a pint of Haven – the best weissbier I’ve had outside Bavaria. Finally, if you want to please your spouse, get brunch at Otto’s that morning. The Benedict Otto’s is fantastic.

That’s a Three-barbarian Door

Posted on by Lost Art Press

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Yesterday I managed to hang my braced and ledged door for the stables at our storefront. The stables will eventually house my machinery, so I wanted the door to be nice and handmade.

So by following the instructions on these traditional doors from “The Woodworker: The Charles H. Hayward Years,” I built this massive (8’ tall) door from 1-3/8”-thick yellow pine that has been seasoning in my shop for four years.

Perhaps I should have used cedar.

I’m not sure how much the door weighs, probably close to 70 or 80 pounds with all the hardware installed. And hanging it by myself in the heat was sweaty business. But now comes the fun part: Today I’m going to trim out the door, add the lock and begin making the door’s handle. I have a piece of wood I’ve been hanging onto for seven or eight years for just this purpose.

I’m eager to rip out the crappy disintegrating drywall and stud walls inside the stables and uncover the loft area above (the loft has a floor and I haven’t found a way up there – yet). But it’s just too dang hot to ask my friends to do this miserable work. So I’ll probably put it off until the heat breaks.

I’ve still got plenty to do. This week I’m installing our new front entrance to the storefront, and Nicholas Mogely is going to gild our new logo on the door. Oh, and I have to install a new fence and repair the deck before it kills someone.

At least I don’t have any bats to battle.

— Christopher Schwarz

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Come Help Make Roubo ‘As Perfect as Possible’

Posted on by Lost Art Press

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During our next open day for our storefront, Aug. 13, we’re throwing a special “reading party” for the forthcoming “Roubo on Furniture.” You’ll get an advance look at the book and get to read some of the great stuff the authors have dug up from “l’Art du menuisier.”

At the party, we’re going to have the translated text for all 97 plates of “Roubo on Furniture” printed out plus a big jar of red pens. To help, we’ll also have a bunch of copies of “The Book of Plates,” the original 18th century French volumes and my library of woodworking books, which includes a French woodworking dictionary.

Oh, and we’ll have free beer and snacks.

The storefront is located at 837 Willard St., Covington, Ky., 41017. Our hours for that day will be 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

If you can attend, we’ll set you up to look for typos or other errors in the text (we have found multiple cases where Roubo refers to the wrong figures in the plates and we are trying to clean that up). The text for each plate takes about 30 to 40 minutes to read carefully.

For every plate that you edit, we’ll give you a nicely printed commemorative postcard. And a free beer.

The text for this book has already been edited many times by the authors, Megan Fitzpatrick, Wesley Tanner and me. But we haven’t performed a final copy edit on the text where we root out all the nasty language gremlins. So your help with this will be greatly appreciated.

If you can attend, leave a note in the comments section so we know how much beer to bring.

I’m afraid we cannot do this over the Internet. We are not ready to send out this text into the unknown, where people can post it before it’s ready for the public. Apologies, but we’re immovable on that point.

— Christopher Schwarz