“American Peasant” is back in stock with a new diestamp on the cover. When I designed the cover for the book, I developed six different images, all of which I liked.
So we decided to use a different diestamp for each printing. We sold out the first printing last month, which featured an engraved spell I developed (it is a wish for bountiful wood).
The second printing features a detail of a peasant cupboard I drew for the book. This cupboard is engraved with the “fishing net” protective spell, plus some other agricultural spells.
The interior content of the second printing is the same as the first (except for a few typo corrections). So there’s no need to buy the new one if you have the first one. If you prefer the old cover, some of our retailers still have some copies.
‘Good Eye’ Goes to Press
Late last week, we transmitted the final press files for “Good Eye,” the new book from Jim Tolpin and George Walker. It is, naturally, about furniture design. And it explores simple proportions in a new and deep way.
Their last book, “Euclid’s Door,” showed how artisan geometry could be used to create the essential wooden tools for bench work. “Good Eye” takes a different tack. Jim and George take several beautiful pieces of furniture from different periods and then show the proportional systems behind them. Plus, “Good Eye” shows you how to reverse the process and use the same proportioning system to create new pieces.
If you have been following the work of George and Jim, this new book will expand your understanding of artisan geometry. If you are new to design, “Good Eye” or any of their other books are great entry points to the topic.
We hope the book will ship by the end of the year. I suspect the retail price will be $29. We don’t take pre-orders, but we soon set up a page where you can sign up to be notified as soon as it is released. And, as always, we have no idea which of our retailers will carry it. Read this for more information.
The editorial staff is currently on the road to Wales, which is why we haven’t been posting much on the blog this week. Despite our remoteness (physically) we’ve been working on Lost Art Press stuff the whole time.
Here are some updates on new things and reprints.
“Dutch Tool Chests” by Megan Fitzpatrick should ship from the printer this week. We’ll have it up for sale next week. All copies purchased directly through Lost Art Press will be signed by the author.
“Good Eye” by Jim Tolpin and George Walker is in its final stages. George and Jim have a few corrections to the text. We’ll make those when we return. Then the book will be off to the printer – and out right before Christmas (assuming no publishing tragedies).
“American Peasant” (second printing) should be back in stock by Nov. 13. The second printing will have a completely different cover than the first printing.
Exeter hammers should be back on sale sometime during the week of Nov. 18. We have a bunch of hammer heads on hand now and are waiting on the handles. With any luck, we’ll have 500 more hammers out in the world by the end of the year.
“The Woodworker” series of books. Many of you have noticed that we are out of stock on all four volumes of our “Woodworker” books. These will be back in print in early 2025 in a nice softcover format. During the pandemic, the prices for making these books nearly doubled. We can’t in our right minds double the retail price on these. So we are switching to a softcover. The binding will be the same: folded, stitched and glued signatures. The only difference will be the cover. We hope to sell the set of four books for $99 as a result.
The following is an excerpt from Chris’ newest book, “American Peasant.” The book is an introduction to a style of peasant furniture and decoration that is almost unheard of in the Americas. Built primarily with tongues, grooves and pegs, the furniture is frequently engraved with geometric symbols that beautify the piece and protect its owner.
With this book, you will learn to build 10 simple pieces using common tools and whatever lumber is on hand. And you’ll learn to engrave the pieces using nothing more than a cheap craft knife and a vinyl flooring cutter. (We were so thrilled with this tool that we now make a commercial version of it.)
In addition to furniture making, “American Peasant” delves into other areas of the craft that will make you a more independent woodworker. Learn to make your own commercial-grade glue using only three ingredients (food-grade gelatin, salt and water), all of which you can find at the grocery store. The glue is strong, reversible and non-toxic (it’s edible, though we don’t recommend eating it).
You can make your own finish using beeswax, linseed oil and citrus solvent. This non-toxic finish is easy to apply and to repair. Plus, it looks better with age and use.
Finally, you’ll learn the language of the engravings, which come from Scandinavia, Eastern Europe and the U.K. These geometric engravings can protect a loved one from sickness, guard your valuables and grant good fortune to others (there are no negative engravings or spells in this book).
Many projects in this book use a tongue-and-groove joint to create the wide panels that make up the fronts, sides, backs, lids and bottoms of the pieces.
On many original pieces in Eastern Europe, this joint was created using rived stock, as discussed in the previous chapter. The tongue was at the tip of the board. The groove was plowed with a T-shaped grooving tool that is unavailable in the West. It’s a clever and effective way to build furniture – if you have rived stock.
Sawn stock from the lumberyard or mill is rectangular in cross section. And the grain is rarely dead straight through the board. So the approach to making these pieces requires a different tool.
For centuries, planemakers have made wooden-bodied tongue-and-groove planes, sometimes called “match planes.” One plane makes the tongue; a second makes the matching groove. These tools are effective, if you can find them in working order and they haven’t lost their mate.
Stanley Works had a clever solution. In 1875, Stanley started making the No. 48 Tonguing and Grooving Plane. It is one plane that makes both parts of the joint. The position of the tool’s rotating fence determines which part of the joint the plane cuts.
In one position, the fence exposes only one of the plane’s two cutters to the wood. So it makes a groove. Spin the fence 180 degrees, and it exposes two cutters, which makes the tongue.
Vintage Stanley catalog listings for its tonguing and grooving plane.
The No. 48 was designed to be used on stock from 3/4″ to 1-1/4″ in thickness, with the tongue centered on 7/8″-thick stock. Later, Stanley made a smaller plane, the No. 49, which joins boards that are 1/2″ thick (though it could handle boards that were slightly thinner and thicker).
The Nos. 48 and 49 are remarkable tools, and Stanley made many of them. So you can find them (and copies of them) on the used market. Sometimes their irons go missing, but replacements are out there or can be made easily.
A Stanley No. 48 set up for tonguing (left) and grooving (right).
Lie-Nielsen Toolworks makes heavy-duty versions of the Nos. 48 and 49, which have some improvements, especially the tools’ wooden handles and the use of a single iron, instead of two irons. These are the tools I use throughout this book, and I recommend them. (Note: There are other modern manufacturers who make planes that can do the same task, but you must swap out some tooling to make both parts of the joint.)
Both the Stanley and Lie-Nielsen tools have some peculiarities in setting them up and using them. Here are some tips to get you started.
Sharpening
I sharpen almost all my plane blades at 35 degrees. This keeps my life simple, and it doesn’t hurt how the tools perform. Argue the minutiae with me over a beer sometime, but the simple fact is that this is how I have worked for many years.
To ensure my edges are dead-square and at 35 degrees, I use a side-clamping honing guide when possible.
To sharpen the two blades for the Stanley versions of these planes, you clamp them in the honing guide and sharpen them like a bench chisel.
The ingenious Lie-Nielsen forked cutter clamped (with care) in a honing guide.
If you own a Lie-Nielsen version of this tool, you have only one iron to sharpen, which looks like a forked tongue. You can sharpen this iron in a honing guide, but you need to be careful when cinching down the guide on the blade. With some honing guides, you can bend the forks of this blade. So take care and cinch the guide down to where the blade is held firm, but isn’t bending.
Setup
Setting up the Lie-Nielsen tools is simple. Put the forked blade in the tool, secure the lever cap and set the blade projection. Set it for as heavy a cut as your muscles can manage.
Setting the blades for the original Stanleys takes more fiddling, but that is a positive aspect of this plane. I set the blade that is farthest from the fence a little deeper than the blade near the fence. These slightly offset cutters ensure tight-fitting joints. Here’s how:
First thing to know: The fence of the tool should always run against the “true surface” of every board. This is true for both the tongue and the groove.
If the term “true surface” boggles you, here’s a quick explanation. In handwork, we call a surface “true” if it has been flattened so it can join other surfaces. On a dining table, for example, the underside of the tabletop needs to be true so it sits flat on the table’s base. The top surface just has to look flat. So when you are tonguing and grooving backboards for a cabinet, the fence needs to ride against the faces of the boards that will face toward the inside of the cabinet.
The true face relates to other pieces of the project. The true face of a tabletop is the underside because it has to mate with the base.
So, when the single cutter is exposed to make the groove, the groove is a little deeper than normal because the blade is set deeper.
When set to make the tongue, the deeper cutter overcuts a little compared to its shy cousin. The net result: The show surface of the joint is always tight. The non-show surface has a small gap between the boards.
One of the advantages of separate blades is that you can set one deeper than the other – ensuring a gap on the back and a tight joint facing the user.
Use
The main difficulty with these tools is that the fence becomes wobbly. This is almost always caused by the user “unscrewing” the fence as they switch back and forth between the tonguing and grooving settings. If the fence becomes too loose, the boards won’t mate flush.
I keep a screwdriver on the bench when I use these planes. And I make sure the tip of the screwdriver fits the head of the screw on which the fence pivots (this prevents the screw’s slot from getting chewed up). After I adjust the fence, I snug up the screw, which prevents the fence from wiggling.
Whenever I spin the fence on my tongue-and-groove plane, I cinch the center screw to keep everything tight.
One of the many things I disliked about working for a family newspaper was how fragile the editors were to reader criticism. If one person complained about the tiniest thing in a news story I’d written, I’d be dragged into the city editor’s office and raked over the coals about it.
They’d print a correction, clarification or retraction – even if it wasn’t warranted.
The editors’ temerity eventually seeped into my reporting and writing. If I thought someone would complain about the way I wrote a story or the subject matter, I would sanitize it to the maximum degree. Why? I needed the job to eat and stuff.
For the past 13 years I’ve been free of the corporate mamby-pamby poopy-butt stuff. It took awhile for the poison to pass through my system entirely (I’d been gagging on it for 21 years). And the result of this cleansing is my substack “The American Peasant.”
My writing for “The American Peasant” is the way I wrote when I was fresh out of journalism school. I was unafraid of speaking my mind (or perhaps too stupid to not be afraid of speaking my mind). I wrote like I talk and how I think.
Why do I keep that writing sequestered on the substack? Good question.
Recently we started running a few advertisements for “The American Peasant.” The ad (above) is goofy (it looks like I’m trying to sell a tape dispenser). And the reaction has been about what I expected.
Omar P. Bounds III: “Just because you can do some woodworking doesn’t mean you can’t be an ahole.”
Allison Loxsom: “I might have considered buying this. I’ll get something from a craftsman who doesn’t need to be vulgar to be cheeky.”
For me, this means the ad is working. These people wouldn’t like the substack and would be horrified if they subscribed. The language there is direct and unapologetic. The specific words are sometimes crass (and justified). And the topics are not what you’ll find in magazines or books. But they are things I’ve wanted to get off my chest for a long time.
Some readers have asked: Why not put this stuff on the Lost Art Press blog? It’s too personal. And I don’t want this stuff to appear in the same space as writing from our authors. That’s not fair to them.
A free subscription allows you to read about half the posts. It’s a good way to try things out and see if it’s right for you. “The American Peasant” is not for everyone, but it appears to be for a lot of people (“The American Peasant” has just as many subscribers as this blog.)
“Set & File: A Practical Guide to Saw Sharpening” by Matt Cianci is back in stock after we absolutely burned through the first printing. We now have enough copies to begin filling wholesale orders for our international retailers. So stay tuned.
Now the not-so-good news: Two titles have been delayed because of manufacturing glitches. The Stick Chair Journal No. 2 and “Principles of Design” are stuck in the cover department of the plant. They are having trouble getting a clean diestamp on both covers. Here are some photos for those of you who are curious about what gets rejected.
We are trying to find a foil and cover material that will give a crisp impression. I hope it won’t take long.
