Category: Personal Favorites

You can buy a custom branding iron or metal stamp to sign your work. But what if you are, uh, parsimonious? Or perhaps your name is Megan Fitzpatrick?

This week I ordered a custom rubber stamp for a promotional thing-a-ding we have coming at Lost Art Press. As always, I used Simon’s Stamps in Massachusetts, which I’ve been using for years. They are fast, cheap and do good work.

Just choose a size of your stamp and upload your artwork. My stamp was 2-1/2” high and 2” wide. (That is huge.) Cost: $16 plus shipping. Turnaround time: Less than a week.

These stamps would be a nice way to mark your handiwork with a custom logo or even your signature. You can send Simon’s Stamps almost any kind of freaky shape and they’ll make a nice stamp with it. And the best thing is you don’t have to invest in an expensive metal stamp.

Now I just need to find some pink ink pads to really make it mine.

— Christopher Schwarz

Avert your eyes if you are sensitive, squeamish or have a heart condition. If there are small children in the room, send them outside to play.

Today a reader pointed out a new kind of “tool crafter,” separate from the saw painters, oilcan bow-tiers and moulding plane lamp makers.

It’s the router-plane coat rack makers. They are, of course, on etsy.com.

Yup, they took a perfectly good Stanley No. 71-1/2 with its square cutter still intact and turned it into a wall rack:

“It certainly could use a good scrubbing but the patina it has really adds to the history. Imagine hanging this in your entryway as a coat/purse/scarf holder – it would certainly draw some great attention from your guests!”

If I hung this in my entryway, my woodworking friends would probably gut me with a deer knife and hang me on one of the knobs.

However, that’s not the worst price I’ve ever seen on a Stanley No. 71-1/2 with an extra-wide accessory base…..

— Christopher Schwarz

One of the things I enjoy about visiting my father in Charleston, S.C., is you are always walking distance from stunning furniture from all over the world and across several centuries.

I spent this morning collecting images, details and dimensions for my next book and stumbled into a store I’d never been in before. It specializes in furniture from the West and East Indies – specifically campaign furniture.

Ever since I was a kid, I’ve loved campaign furniture – my grandparents had several pieces – and I’ve always wondered why it wasn’t a popular style among woodworkers. It’s manly, simple, robust and (generally) well proportioned.

The store’s owner has been importing it into Charleston for about 15 years and showed me a lot of construction details I hadn’t yet considered, such as how examples that used teak as a secondary wood were much more likely to be the real deal. Teak is quite bug-resistant. Dovetail joinery that didn’t rely on hide glue was a good thing because of the wetness, heat and bugs that would eat the hide glue.

If someone else doesn’t pick up this idea and run with it, campaign furniture might be a book in my future. Earlier this year I proposed a campaign chest project to Popular Woodworking Magazine – I haven’t gotten a “yes” or “no” yet. Perhaps these photos will sway Megan.

— Christopher Schwarz

Earlier this year, amateur woodworker Rob Thomas made a bold decision – to learn hand-tool woodworking using “The Joiner & Cabinet Maker” from 1839 as a road map.

And to hold his nose to the grindstone (and ensure he had the tools to do it) he started a campaign on Kickstarter.com to fund his tool and material purchases in exchange for items as small as a patch (see above) and as large as the full-on chest of drawers.

What’s Kickstarter? Visit Rob’s page here to read all about it.

Since launching his Kickstarter.com campaign, Rob has been busy building packing boxes – the first project from “The Joiner & Cabinet Maker.” Most readers skip right to “The Schoolbox” in the book, a sweet little dovetailed chest.

I think those people are missing out. The Packing Box project has four critical lessons that will enlighten any hand-tool woodworker.

1. Many times the ends of your stock can be left long in nailed work and then trimmed square after assembly. Yup, you don’t four-square everything before assembly. When I first learned this detail, I slapped my forehead repeatedly.

2. You learn how to make rub joints with hot hide glue. No clamps.

3. You learn to use cut nails in carcase construction. Cut nails are awesome.

4. You learn to clinch/clench nails.

When I started working with my daughter Katy on woodworking, the first project we built together was The Packing Box, which we sized to hold the DVDs for her class at school.

I encourage you to bookmark Rob’s blog, The Joiner’s Apprentice, to follow him as he builds his way through “The Joiner & Cabinet Maker.” It’s quite interesting to watch his thought processes and see the results.

And Speaking of Inspiration…

Since I first read about Kickstarter.com I’ve been thinking of starting a campaign to help fund the purchase of the Lost Art Press LLC headquarters. As some of you know, I’ve been actively hunting for 19th-century buildings in Covington, Ky., to house our book inventory (which has completely filled our basement and storage shed), house our workshop, mailing facilities and provide for a storefront for our publishing activities.

And on Tuesday, my dream building came on the market.

It’s the Covington Brewery Building, an Italianate building with three storefronts and six apartments above, all in pretty good shape. The building was the headquarters for the John Brenner Brewing Co. in Covington. And it was part of a long-gone campus of brewing facilities on Scott Street in Covington.

The price? Less than $200,000.

I’ve been working on selling the idea to my wife, Lucy, but she is the far more rational person in our relationship.

My plan is to offer classes in building custom workbenches and tool chests as part of the Kickstarter campaign. She (wisely) worries about the maintenance on such a huge building.

In any case, Rob Campbell has inspired me to grab the dice and shake them in my hands. We’ll see if I actually roll them.

— Christopher Schwarz