Now that we’ve sold through our copies, we’re offering a free pdf of our high-quality scan of the “Stanley Catalogue No. 34.” You can read it in this post, and click on the link below the window to download.
This catalog shows nearly every tool needed in a hand-tool shop, from the chisels to the butt gauges to every sort of plane in Stanley’s 1914 line. The catalog’s text explains what each one was used for and how it functions differently from other similar tools available at the time.
The catalog also has fantastic exploded views of many of the complex tools, such as the company’s miter boxes, the multi-planes and handplanes.
It’s a great way to better understand how hand tools of all sorts work.
We’re closing out our reprint of the “Stanley Tools Catalogue No. 34,” and are selling remaining copies for $10 each, simply to free up space on the warehouse shelves. Every purchase comes with a free PDF copy – once the 450 (or so) print copies are sold out, we’ll continue to offer a free PDF of the 1914 catalogue here on the blog.
This catalog shows nearly every tool needed in a hand-tool shop 100 years ago, from the chisels to the butt gauges to every sort of plane in the company’s line. The text explains what each one is used for and how it functions differently from other similar tools.
The catalog also has fantastic exploded views of many of the complex tools, such as Stanley’s miter boxes, the multi-planes and handplanes. It’s a great resource to have on hand at a tool meet or antique market – not only to identify vintage tools, but to see if all the parts are intact.
If you are just getting into hand tools, we think you will find this catalog a delight to read, hold and learn from. The information in it is factual and straightforward – not the puffery you get from many modern catalogs. And if you collect or appreciate vintage hand tools, we think you will love this catalog, which reproduces the vintage drawings with remarkable clarity.
Once these are gone, we are not reprinting. So get it now or forever hold your (Harvey) peace.
One of the best ways to understand hand tools is through the eyes of people who used them to make a living 100 years ago. Our reprint of the 1914 “Stanley Tool Catalogue No. 34” shows nearly every tool needed in a hand-tool shop, from the chisels to the butt gauges to every sort of plane in the company’s line at the time. The text explains what each one was used for and how it functioned differently from other similar tools. The catalog also had fantastic exploded views of many of the complex tools, such as the company’s miter boxes and braces, as shown in the excerpts below.
For the most part, facsimile editions of historical books don’t do much for me. The printing is muddy. The paper is a measly notch above groundwood (aka newsprint). And the binding is weak. The cover, however, always looks nice so as to trick you into buying the poor manufacturing job within.
If you’ve ever bought a facsimile of Thomas Chippendale’s famous book, then you know what I’m talking about. Some companies do a good job with facsimiles; most do not.
So when we decided to reprint the “Stanley Catalogue No. 34,” we wanted to reproduce the look and feel of the original and make some manufacturing improvements, such as a sewn binding, to ensure our version could outlast floods, dogs and babies.
Our first shipment of “Stanley Catalogue No. 34” arrived smack dab in the middle of Woodworking in America, and I haven’t had much time to look at it. (I had one in the car that I was examining at stoplights; that’s how nuts it has been here.)
So I’m happy to report that this book has exceeded every expectation I had for it. The prepress people managed to make plates that mimicked the original’s crisp drawings and text. The black are black. The screens are real screens – not some moire mess.
Our warehouse is getting an assembly line together during the next week to ship out all the pre-publication orders. So if you placed an order for one, it will be on its way soon.
“Stanley Catalogue No. 34” is $25, which includes shipping in the United States and Canada. Many of our retailers have decided to carry the book, including Lee Valley Tools, Lie-Nielsen Toolworks, Henry Eckert in Australia, Tools for Working Wood in Brooklyn and Classic Hand Tools in the UK. Check out our international ordering page for links.
Every now and then, we like to release a book without a long preamble. Something beautiful, useful and inexpensive.
Today we are accepting pre-publication orders for a reprint of the Stanley Tools No. 34 Catalogue, a project that has been a technical challenge for the last few months. It is $25, which includes shipping in the United States and Canada. It is available for ordering in our store. It will ship out in mid-September (it also will be offered for sale at Woodworking in America).
You can place your pre-publication order here. Orders received before Sept. 15 will also receive a free high-resolution scan of the catalog in pdf format.
This 1914 catalog shows nearly every tool needed in a hand-tool shop, from the chisels to the butt gauges to every sort of plane in the company’s line. The catalog’s text explains what each one is used for and how it functions differently from other similar tools.
The catalog also has fantastic exploded views of many of the complex tools, such as the company’s miter boxes, the multi-planes and handplanes.
When I was a beginning woodworker, I often read through catalogs such as this before I headed out to the local antique markets so I could identify what I was seeing and know if it was something useful (do I need a clapboard gauge, a wantage rod or a board stick?). Thanks to vintage catalogs I also could easily figure out when tools that I spotted for sale had parts that were missing. And I even learned how to adjust my grandfather’s level with the help of the old catalogs..While there are some poor-quality scans available of early catalogs on the Internet, we wanted to do better than that. For a long time, we have sought to publish a crisp and classy catalog from the heyday of Stanley Tools’ production of woodworking tools. So we collected a bunch of catalogs and finally settled on one produced in 1914 – one of our favorite eras of Stanley’s output.
This catalog contains all the planes, hand drills, measuring tools, chisels and hundreds more that are critical to a furniture shop, but without a lot of the oddball stuff that came later.
After selecting the catalog we liked the best, the next challenge was printing it. We wanted to capture and reproduce the crisp drawings from the 1914 original and produce it on the smooth and hard paper that was common at the time.
Without getting too geeky, we worked with our pre-press people to figure out a way to scan and print this catalog so it looked identical to the original. We had to develop a new scanning and image-processing routine to make the scans. Then we made a sample catalog using the scans on a modern offset press. We crossed our fingers. Many reproduction catalogs look muddy and display “moire” because of the screens used in the day.
Our pre-press manager came back with this happy news: “It looks clean enough to eat off of.”
We are pleased to offer this 144-page catalog, which looks and feels like the 1914 original. The only “improvements” we made to the vintage catalog is that we spent the extra money to sew and glue the signatures for extra durability. And we used acid-free paper to prevent the pages from yellowing over time.
If you are just getting into hand tools, we think you will find this catalog a delight to read, hold and learn from. The information in it is factual and straightforward – not the puffery you get from many modern catalogs. And if you collect or appreciate vintage hand tools, we think you love this catalog, which reproduces the vintage drawings with remarkable clarity.
Like all Lost Art Press books, this is produced entirely in the United States using domestic materials. Softcover. 144 pages. Color cover with black & white interior.
So when we decided to reprint the “
While there are some poor-quality scans available of early catalogs on the Internet, we wanted to do better than that. For a long time, we have sought to publish a crisp and classy catalog from the heyday of Stanley Tools’ production of woodworking tools. So we collected a bunch of catalogs and finally settled on one produced in 1914 – one of our favorite eras of Stanley’s output.