Lost Art Press

Category: The Anarchist’s Design Book

New Chapter: Staked Low Stool

Posted on by Lost Art Press

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We sold out of copies of “The Anarchist’s Design Book” this week, so the pressure is on to complete the expanded edition as soon as possible. To that end, I have just completed the first draft of the chapter on the staked low stool.

If you own a copy of the current edition of the design book, you can download this draft chapter for free. No forms to fill out. No buttons to click to prove you aren’t a robot. Just click the link below.

ADB-Low Stool

Every draft chapter comes with caveats. Here you go:

  • If you see a typo or factual error, you can report it in the comments. Note that we use AP style and don’t use the Oxford comma. So don’t bother editing this for Chicago style and then sending us a stern letter about footnotes.
  • The illustration is a CAD drawing. The final illustration will be a copperplate etching by Briony Morrow-Cribbs. So please overlook its CAD-ness.
  • The final chapter will include challenging quotations in the book’s margins plus some images of elaborations on this stool’s design.

I am now wrapping up the new chapters – just a couple more to go. Briony needs time to create the etchings, and we need to clean up all the chapters and add the details that will make the book better than average. Look for it at the end of 2019.

— Christopher Schwarz

P.S. If you haven’t been keeping up with updates to this book, here’s a quick primer. If you own the current edition, you’ll be able to download all the new chapters when they are completed. It doesn’t matter where you bought the book – from us or from anyone else.

New Chapter: The Island of Misfit Designs

Posted on by Lost Art Press

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While the projects and techniques in “The Anarchist’s Design Book” are the backbone of the work, I quite enjoy writing the chapters that are woven between the projects. For the forthcoming expansion of the book I’ve written a bushel of these interstitial essays on design, self-doubt and chair comfort.

My guess is about half of these peckings will make it into the book and half will end up in the ether.

That’s typical for the way I write. I might tap out 2,000 words in a typical day; about half are usable. The other half are misfires, exercises in self-loathing or quarter-baked ideas. But they’re all saved in the cloud so that when I die, Lucy can read them and be reminded of what an odd dufus I was. Before deleting them.

This essay, however, will make it in the book so I thought I’d share it here. It’s about the crappy prototypes that led to the finished designs in the book. There were hundreds of sketches (two sketchbooks full). Dozens of prototypes. And a lot of staring, trying to figure out how to improve the next iteration.

The point of the chapter is to show you how bad or misguided designs can lead to good designs. You just have to study them a bit, instead of destroying them immediately.

As with the other advance chapters for the expanded edition, this download is offered on the honor system to people who have already purchased “The Anarchist’s Design Book.” If you haven’t purchased the book, don’t download the file. Simple.

ADB Island of Misfit Designs2

The caveats:

  • This is a rough draft that will get edited by professionals. There are typos in the pdf. If you see one, feel free to point it out in the comments.
  • If you feel compelled to rip the designs shown in the chapter, then you have missed the point of the chapter. Think again.
  • There are stool jokes in this chapter. And a dancing frog simile. I know some of you are sensitive to the occasional playground jest. If this is you, I’d absolutely positively avoid this chapter.

— Christopher Schwarz 

New Chapter: Mule Chest

Posted on by Lost Art Press

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I’ve finished the first rough draft of the chapter on the Mule Chest for the expanded edition of “The Anarchist’s Design Book.” This chapter is offered as a free download for those who already own the book.

The chapter is offered on the honor system. If you own the book (either the hardbound or pdf), then please download this chapter and enjoy it. If you haven’t bought the book, know that downloading it will make your glue curdle and your finishes wrinkle.

ADB Mule Chest4

Other important things to note about this chapter:

  • It is a draft. If you find errors, please let us know in the comments.
  • The illustrations are not the final and beautiful ones that will be provided by Briony Morrow-Cribbs. The illustrations in the text were made by me. And I suck.
  • The opening photo isn’t the final photo. It’s just a quick snapshot I took today without my photo lights.

But other than that, all the information you need to build a mule chest is there.

I’ve published three additional new chapters, which you can download using the links below:

Boarded Settle Chair

Staked Armchair   

Staked High Stool

In addition to the project chapters, the expansion of “The Anarchist’s Design Book” will contain more personal stories, a chapter on designing chairs for an individual sitter and some new research on glue.

The expanded edition should arrive in January 2020. When it is released, we’ll provide a way for everyone who owns a copy of the original edition (no matter where they bought it) with a way to download the new content for free.

— Christopher Schwarz

Weird Nail Tales

Posted on by Lost Art Press

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I wrote about the following trick to reduce splitting when nailing in “The Anarchist’s Design Book.” Since then, I’ve caught flack from people who say it’s not true. So much so that I’ve been doubting my own shop experience.

Here’s the problem: When you nail together a piece – especially using cut nails or Rivierre nails – it’s easy to blow out the end grain, reducing the holding power of the nail. Driving a tapered nail is a delicate balance. You need the nail to bite hard, so you don’t want to use a huge or too-long pilot hole. But if you use a pilot hole that is too small or short, the nail will split the work and ruin everything. Oh, you also have to account for the wood species and how thick it is.

It’s a balance of factors to get a good joint. (And that’s why I recommend you make a test joint before nailing together anything – especially if you’ve never worked with a particular brand of nail or species of wood.)

All this is a lot of set-up for…

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A common split. This joint was unclamped when I drove the nail.
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Here’s the joint (a few inches away from the failed joint) after the joint was clamped hard while I drove the nail.

Here’s the Trick
If you apply a bar clamp across the end grain of the joint, you can reduce the tendency of the wood to split out the end grain. The clamp has to apply significant pressure for this to work.

Today I tried a variety of strategies as I nailed together a mule chest using 40mm Rivierre nails. All the joints were in Eastern white pine. All the pilot holes were the same diameter (7/64”) and depth (7/8”). And all the holes were located the same distance (7/16”) from the end of the board.

Without a clamp, about half of the joints busted out the end grain (good thing I started at the rear of the chest). When I added a clamp and applied hard clamping pressure – what you would use to close a joint – the failure rate dropped to zero.

I wondered if I needed to have the clamp at full pressure. What if the clamp’s pad simply acted as a wall to prevent the end grain from fracturing? Nope. Clamp pressure – lots of it – was important to keep the joint intact while driving the nail.

I have all sorts of thoughts on why this hard clamp pressure works. But I am weary of theories. If you’ve read this far, give this trick a try yourself in the shop before pontificating in the comments.

Confession: I was greatly relieved that this trick still worked. The internet had made me doubt myself again.

— Christopher Schwarz

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‘Glue Size’ – What is it? How Does it Work?

Posted on by Lost Art Press

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You can greatly increase the strength of a woodworking joint by “sizing the joint” or employing “glue size.” But what the heck do those terms mean? And how does the process work?

The word “size” as it relates to an adhesive is a synonym for “washcoat” – a thinned version of the adhesive you are using. “Sizing” with a glue has a long history in our language, and it is employed in a variety of ways – fine art painting, house painting, wallpaper and other mechanical arts.

Basically, to “size” a joint means to apply a thin, preliminary coat of glue to a surface.

Why would anyone do this in woodworking?

I know you’ve been told this a thousand times, but wood is like a bundle of straws. The end grain represents the open ends of the straws. So when you put a liquid on the end of a straw, what happens? It gets sucked into the straw. When you put a liquid on the outside of a straw what happens? If that liquid is glue, then the straws get bound together.

This straw-like property is why end-grain joints in wood are weak. The straws suck the glue away from the joint, starving it of adhesive.

But what if we could plug these straws so they couldn’t suck the glue away from the joint?

And that’s what “glue size” does. The thin coat gets sucked into the end grain. After a couple minutes it begins to set up, which plugs up the straws. Then you apply a full coat of glue, and it cannot be sucked away from the joint – thanks to the plugs. So the joint becomes stronger as a result.

I’ve been experimenting with glue size for more than a decade. At first I thinned glue with water to create my “size.” That seemed logical. It turned out to be unnecessary. Simply paint a thin coat of glue on the end grain and the process works perfectly. Yellow, white and brown glues are all about 40 percent water already and are easily sucked into end grain without any thinning.

After I paint on the “sizing coat,” I wait a minute or two (or longer). The end grain will become dry as it pulls the adhesive in. That’s when I apply a full coat of glue on the end grain and on all face-grain surfaces of the joint.

It takes only an additional minute or two to apply a sizing coat during assembly. In fact, it can add exactly zero time to a glue-up if you simply start by painting all the end-grain surfaces first. Then paint the face-grain surfaces. Then paint the end grain again.

Does it work? The scientists at Franklin International have studied sizing and compared the strength of joints with and without it. As far as I know, they haven’t published a technical paper on this topic. But in interviews they contend that sizing the joint significantly improves its strength. After 23 years of working with the technologists at Franklin, I can say one thing for sure: They’ve never lied to me or led me astray.

Bottom line: Doesn’t hurt. Might help.

— Christopher Schwarz