Category: Make a Joint Stool from a Tree

When you are trying to read a book and you want it to lay flat, it can be frustrating. You can be gentle, and the book will close shut as soon as you unhand it. Or you can be rough with the book and bend the spine backwards. The book will lay flat, but a slight breeze might blow a lot of its pages into the atmosphere.

Like anything, there is a right way to do it.

Wesley Tanner, a woodworker, printer and designer of fine books, shared with me how he conditions a well-made book to be read so it will lie flat on a tabletop and stay in one piece.

As an example, I conditioned “Make a Joint Stool from a Tree” – our latest book. Katy, my daughter, shot the video. Here’s how Wesley says it is done:

“The first thing I do when I get a book like this with sewn signatures is to ‘open it up.’ I remove the jacket off and lay the book on a table (admiring the lovely silver stamping). Looking at the top or bottom edge at the spine, I find the middle of the first section, and open the book with both hands gripping the outside edges of the pages, and gently ‘break’ the glue that has seeped through the sewing holes. I only open the book far enough to do this, about 80 percent of the way down to flat, as I don’t want to wreck the spine. After I’ve done two or three signatures I start from the back, as this will counter the natural twist the book’s spine will get after reading the book straight through. After that, the book should lay open on the table when I go get another cup of coffee.”

“Make a Joint Stool from a Tree” has eight signatures with 16 pages in each signature. That means you will need to do the operation described above eight times to make the book lie flat.

It really works. Just take care and don’t over-do it.

— Christopher Schwarz

As the woodworking community begins to read and absorb “Make a Joint Stool from a Tree,” there have been some interesting criticisms.

The most pointed: “The problem with (Peter) Follansbee’s 17th century methods are that they are completely impractical for the average woodworker.”

Strong words. And as someone who has read this book about a dozen times, I disagree and stamp my little foot as hard as I can. This book introduces you to an entirely different mindset and method of work that machine-trained woodworkers will feel uncomfortable with.

Even if you never work green wood – and I highly recommend that you try it some day – there are lessons throughout this book for anyone who cares about handwork.

But I’m not going to fill your ears any more with my blather. There is an interesting debate on the book going on at Rob Campbell’s blog. You can read his detailed review of the book here.

[Review] Make a Joint Stool from a Tree

Feel free to weigh in with your thoughts in the comments section. Either way is fine by me. Let truth and falsehood grapple and all that.

Also be sure to check out the follow-up entry, with some interesting stuff from Peter Follansbee, one of the authors of the book.

17th Century Techniques in Today’s World

By the way, you really should bookmark Rob’s blog. I’ll have more to say about his personal journey in the coming weeks. First, I’ve got to go dovetail five drawers.

— Christopher Schwarz

It took seven days and seven nights, but I just dropped off the last of the pre-publication orders of “Make a Joint Stool from a Tree” at the U.S. Post Office.

We still have cleaning up to do – our sun room is full of packing detritus and there are still a few odd packages where things went wrong. But before tending to those tasks I decided to sit down the with book for a little bit. All in all, I’m fairly pleased.

I’ve received the following questions from readers about the book as a physical object. Here are the answers.

1. Why switch to a larger size? “Make a Joint Stool from a Tree” is 9” x 12”, which is considerably larger than the 6” x 9” we have been publishing since 2007. We decided to use the larger format because this book has more visual information than any of our other titles. And so we wanted to publish the photos and drawings as large as possible.

2. Why switch to color photos? As many of you know, I prefer black and white for my books. But other authors like color. Jennie Alexander and Peter Follansbee thought color would be best for this book. I agreed – especially after seeing the red stools.

3. Why a dust jacket and the plastic shrinkwrap? The dust jacket suits the large size of the book, and the shrinkwrap protects it during transit.

4. Why no glossy paper? With all the other changes, some readers expected us to switch to glossy, coated paper. Instead, I chose uncoated paper for several reasons. First, uncoated paper is more readable than glossy paper. I dislike the glare from glossy coated paper. (Yes, you can get coated paper with a matte finish, but what’s the point of that?) The second reason I chose uncoated stock is that it suits the subject matter. This is not a highbrow museum title – it’s about getting down to business with a hatchet. One last word on the paper: It wasn’t a cost decision. The price difference between coated and uncoated stock is inconsequential in my book.

Before I go, let me say just a couple more things about this book. First, I want to thank Peter and Jennie for taking a chance and letting Lost Art Press publish this book. Taunton Press would have been glad to publish this book. An academic press would have also pooed its ivory jodhpurs to get a book like this. It was an honor to work with both authors on this project, one of the highlights of my career in publishing.

Second, one of the reasons Jennie and Peter signed on with Lost Art Press is that we return a far, far greater share of profits to the authors. And the reason we can do that is because of the surprising, unflagging and (at times) almost embarrassing support of our customers. So thank you for all your support, economic and emotional. With the help of everyone who has purchased Lost Art Press stuff I was able to walk away from a great corporate job in June and not worry if my kids would be able to afford the koala ramen they love so well.

Mmmm. Koala ramen. It tastes like cough drops.

— Christopher Schwarz

More than half of the orders for “Make a Joint Stool from a Tree” were dropped into the mail stream on Saturday. Then we ran out of packing material.

We spent all day Saturday trying to find the corrugated material that we’re using for this oversized book, but all the vendors we use were sold out. Luckily, one of the vendors was right by a store that sold growlers of beer. We bought a growler of Sierra Nevada’s “Ruthless Rye,” so the day was not an entire loss.

We have more packing material on the way and shipments will resume on Monday.

All our technology did do a bad thing, however.

A handful of people who bought “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest” in 2011 will be receiving a copy of the joint stool book. If you get one of these books in error, could you please send an e-mail to John Hoffman at john@lostartpress? He’ll e-mail you a return label for the book. Our apologies in advance for this mistake.

— Christopher Schwarz