Lost Art Press

Category: The Anarchist’s Tool Chest

Chain of Tools

Posted on by fitz

At least once a month someone asks about lid stays for the Anarchist’s tool chest; now I’ll be able to refer them to this post.

Both Christopher Schwarz and I (now) use chains to hold out chests open, but they attach differently. Both methods work. As will multiple other methods, but these are ours.

But let’s back up two ticks. In “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest,” Chris directs readers to leave the back corners of the dust seal a little overlong and cut an angle on them. That will work if you’re gentle with your chest, and don’t use it all the time. If you are not gentle, and do use it all the time, that corner will start to break off – then you’ll need to come up with another method of holding your chest open.

The back corner of the original lid stay (after years of use), as shown in the book.

After the back corner of his dust seal started to show its years, Chris added a rigid aluminum lid stay, held in place by knurled knobs. The problem – if you can call it a problem – is that to use it, you had to unscrew the knob, put the stay in place, then screw the knob back in. And reverse that to close the lid at the end of the day.

Chris’ aluminum lid stay.

When I built the ATC I use at the Lost Art Press shop, I decided to add a nickel-plated chain to the outside, because I like shiny silvery things. So I bought a length of chain from McMaster-Carr along with some 3/8″ threaded rod, and found female-threaded finials on a lamp-repair-supply website. I cut two pieces of threaded rod to length, then epoxied them in place in the side of the dust seal and upper skirt. The chain fits over the rod; the finials screw onto the rod. (I’ve used this same approach on a couple of chests built on commission…but I added a threaded insert into the side of the lid and top skirt for extra insurance. Overkill, but I’d rather err on the side of solid when I’m sending out my work.)

It doesn’t look pretty when the finial is off – but it works.
That’s better!

Chris used a different approach, in part, I think, because he already had threaded inserts and knurled knobs from the aluminum lid stay.

A knurled knob and its insert.

He simply screwed both knobs in tight, then bought a dog collar.

The advantage here is that the chain can be removed in a jiffy when Fido needs to go for a walk.

In truth, though, both of us store our chests against a wall – so more often than not, it’s a wall, not a chain, that holds our chests open.

— Fitz

‘The Anarchist’s Tool Chest’ Back in Stock

Posted on by Lost Art Press

We have just received seven pallets of “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest” at our Indiana warehouse. We have had a lot of inquiries from customers as to when it would arrive. So here’s your answer: today.

Like most manufacturing businesses, we have been fighting supply chain problems. We strive to never have our books go out of stock. But because of a lot of wild coincidences, this book took eight weeks to print instead of four.

This is our 13th press run of “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest.” It is our bestselling book and every copy sold helps make Lost Art Press stronger. So thank you – all of you.

— Christopher Schwarz

‘The Anarchist’s Tool Chest’ Now Available in French

Posted on by Lost Art Press

You can now order and read a French translation of “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest” from the publisher Editions du Vieux Chene. The hardbound book is 52€ and is currently in stock and shipping.

In addition to translating the book to French, the publishers have made some manufacturing upgrades to the title. The Lost Art Press edition is 6” x 9” and printed on uncoated paper. The Editions du Vieux Chene version is 8-1/8” x 10-13/16”. The text is printed on heavy coated paper and the book blocks are sewn for durability. The hardboards are covered in gloss paper. 

The publishers have kept the flavor of the layout, however, using a label-maker to create the chapter headings. It is, all in all, a nice edition.

And if French isn’t your tongue, don’t forget that the book is also available in German through HolzWerken. We are currently in negotiations to translate the title into Squirrel and Poodle.

— Christopher Schwarz

The whole ATC family: English, German and French. Just enough for the start to a good joke. “An American, German and French anarchist walk into a bar…”

Another Free Poster & an ATC Anniversary

Posted on by Lost Art Press

We saved so much money with our A.J. Roubo Plate 11 poster download, that we decided to offer another discontinued poster.

The Anarchist’s Tool Chest poster was a letterpress project we did with the now-defunct Steam Whistle Letterpress and Randall Wilkins. Randy drew the image, and Steam Whistle printed the image on its proofing press. We’ve long sold out of the posters, and Steam Whistle has dissolved.

So now you can download a high-resolution image here and get it printed out at any print shop that can handle poster-sized jobs. This poster is 18” x 24”, a standard poster size and the size of the original. 

Here’s the link.

https://blog.lostartpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/ATC_poster-18×24-1.jpg

If your local print shop is concerned about copyright violations, bless them. Print out this blog entry and show it to the employees. Lost Art Press is the copyright holder, and we grant you permission to print this out for your personal use.

The 10-year Anniversary of ATC
It dawned on me recently that we are coming up on the 10th anniversary of the publication of “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest.” You can be sure that we are planning on making a bunch of worthless trinkets for you to buy to commemorate the meaningless passage of time going to do very little to mark the occasion.

We are thinking about making a special baseball cap – something handmade in the USA – with an old-fashioned felt patch featuring the cover logo. But honestly, we might skip that. 

What I am doing to mark the occasion is something I would encourage you to do as well: I am packing up tools that I don’t need and finding new homes for them. Recently I gave away an old tool chest, a dust collector and a thickness planer. I now have another box of tools ready and have several people in mind for them. (Hint: No need to pester me for free tools.)

Excess tools are a scourge. Taking care of them takes time away from my furniture making. And leaving tools idle keeps them out of the hands of people who could use them.

Where do my excess tools come from? Good question. Sometimes they are given to the shop as gifts. Sometimes when someone leaves the craft, they give us their tools to give to others. Sometimes locals find tools in the cellar and drop them off. And occasionally I need to buy a tool for an article or book or photo shoot I’m working on.

If you’ve never given away your excess tools, I recommend it. It’s cathartic.

Anyway, in the coming months we’ll soon have many more pieces of plastic junk from Oriental Trading Company branded with the ATC logo for you to buy and throw away we might have some news about that hat.

— Christopher Schwarz

Page Design in the ‘Anarchist’ Series

Posted on by Lost Art Press

Shortly after “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest” was released I got a nasty call from a reader.

“I’m a graphic designer. I own other Lost Art Press books,” he said. “And I have to say this new book has a terrible, amateurish design.”

“Exactly right,” I replied.

Each of the three books in the “anarchist” series takes its design cues from different points in history, reflecting something about the book’s content or storyline. (This is true for all of our books; we don’t have a house style.)

“The Anarchist’s Tool Chest” is supposed to look like a manifesto set on a Macintosh. The chapter headings were made with a clicky label maker. The body copy is 11-point Cochin, a free font, and is set on a 17-point baseline (way too much space between the lines). The font used for the quotations is Courier 8 point, another freely available font. 

From a broader perspective, the book doesn’t have a formal “grid,” which is the underlying structure used by most page designers when setting columns, photos and drawings. Photos intrude into the body copy in awkward ways. Yet, the book is (I think) still readable from a typographical perspective.

For the second book, “The Anarchist’s Design Book,” I looked to 18th-century pattern books and 17th-century texts. The book’s physical size is the same as Andre Felibien’s “Des Principes de l’Architecture…” The body copy is Caslon 12 point (on 13-point leading). Caslon is from the early 18th century (circa 1722). The style of the subheadings, the drop capitals and even the running heads on the pages are all ideas swiped from early books. 

Plus, of course, the book’s copperplate etchings by Briony Morrow-Cribbs add to the overall older feel to the book. The idea behind the book design (and the book itself) was to treat vernacular furniture with the same respect as the high-style stuff.

The third book, “The Anarchist’s Workbench” (download it for free here), is from an entirely different place. It is meant to echo the books of the early 20th century that were set with Linotype machines. The body copy is, again Caslon, but the letters are set tighter. The type is 10.5 point on 12-point leading. In fact, all of the text in the book (except the data page at the front with the ISBN) is set in some form of Caslon – a common feature of books of this time.

Unlike the other two books, the text is carefully justified to look more formal and present letterspacing that looks like it was done by a real designer. The images and text are locked to a rigid grid system. The design is (supposed to look) mature. And that mature design is supposed to reflect the ideas in the book (poo jokes aside).

Apologies for the “behind the scenes” content. I get asked sometimes why our books look so different. This is why.

— Christopher Schwarz