Category: The Art of Joinery

Our revised edition of Joseph Moxon’s “The Art of Joinery” is only a couple weeks away from going on press and will be released in November – just in time for the holidays.

“The Art of Joinery” was the first publication of Lost Art Press in 2008. That book has been out of print for several years now, and used copies are fetching obscene prices on eBay and Amazon. We originally sold the book for $17; we’ve seen it sell for $300.

The fully revised second edition will sell for about $21 (a significant savings over $300) and will be twice as thick. What’s in it?

1. The text from the first edition – a lightly edited adaptation of the original 17th-century text that made the odd grammar, spellings and sentence structure easier to digest.

2. Commentary. I’ve written about each section of the book, trying to amplify Moxon’s writings with photos and additional drawings from other sources (such as Randle Holme’s “Academy of Armory”) to put Moxon’s work in context and make it understandable to a woodworker. The revised edition will reflect a lot of things I’ve learned since 2008.

3. All the illustrations have been paired with their text explanations – no flipping back and forth between text and drawings.

4. The unedited and unchanged text, exactly as Moxon wrote it. We reset it in an historically appropriate font so you can get the real-deal old-school stuff.

5. A selection of plates from Andre Felebien’s earlier work, which Moxon might have copied for his work (you decide).

6. A complete index by Suzanne “Saucy Indexer” Ellison, who made the excellent index for “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest.”

The book is ahead of schedule at this point thanks to designer Linda Watts. I was planning on designing the book myself (which is what I do with my own work), but I realized that I had been ready to design the book for almost two months and had not done squat. So I called in Linda, who designed the entire book in about 10 days. Yay Linda!

So tonight I’m proofing Linda’s layout and we will have this to the printer in less than two weeks. We’ll have complete details and a pre-publication free-shipping offer in mid-October.

— Christopher Schwarz

Getting through U.S. Customs Saturday was a harrowing experience. I was certain they would pull me aside and go through my luggage because my declaration card was filled with red flags I’d gathered during my three weeks in Melbourne, Australia.

I always err on the side of declaring everything – everything, even breath mints – when I pass through immigration. Honesty is so much easier than trying to hide a backsaw in a body cavity.

So my declaration card included:

• Old tools with wooden components.
• Random chunks of timber, some with bark.
• Lots of expensive and pointy bits of stuff.
• Bizarre Australian candy for the kids.
• Antique Japanese paring chisel with a rosewood handle.

When it came time to go through my luggage, the Customs officer didn’t give a second look at the tools, timber or other pointy bits. It was the candy that received the scrutiny. Some of the wacky sweets looked like bananas. Fruit and meat are a no-no. After the “bananas” were determined to be completely artificial, I was free to go.

After a big sigh of relief, I sprinted to catch my connecting flight.

Of all the stuff I brought back, the biggest treasure is five small sticks of King Billy Pine (Athrotaxis selaginoides) I picked up from toolmaker Chris Vesper. It’s a slow-growing and endangered species from Tasmania that has a long, fragrant and storied history in the history of the region. It’s a protected species and difficult to get here. These sticks were acquired entirely ethically.

I got just enough to build two Roubo try squares. One of them will be part of my payment to Wesley Tanner for redesigning our revision of Joseph Moxon’s “The Art of Joinery” with my commentary.

“The Art of Joinery” was the first Lost Art Press book and is now out of print. This year we’re reissuing the book, which will be expanded to include the following parts:

1. The text from Moxon’s writing on the art of joinery which has been lightly “translated” by me to make it easier for the modern reader to digest. Most of the “translation” consists of removing the long “s” from the words and breaking up some long sentences with semicolons.

2. The “translated” text will have some commentary from me and the engravings from Moxon’s book placed in situ – e.g. the image of the chisel will be next to the chisel.

3. The original text, untranslated and with all its 17th-century peculiarities. The text will be entirely reset in a font picked by Wesley. We’re adding this section to the book because several readers complained that they really really really wanted the source text without any commentary. There were also grumblings that my light “translation” was like rewriting the King James Bible in the voice of Austin Powers.

4. We’ll be offering the whole book in either cloth or leather bindings, plus in ePub and Kindle versions.

Work is proceeding on the book, and it should be out by the end of the year.

— Christopher Schwarz