Lost Art Press

Category: The Stick Chair Journal

Coffee Mugs Back in Stock (and Other News)

Posted on by Lost Art Press

After long delays because of shortages of clay and glaze, we now have a fair number of our handmade coffee mugs back in stock and ready to ship.

Made by an artists’ collective in Minnesota, these mugs are outstanding for the workshop, with a wide base that makes them difficult to knock over (our cats have tried….). The generous handle makes them easy to pick up, even if you have gloves on. 

Both our coffee mugs and steins are made by Grey Fox Pottery, and are as high-quality as our books and our tools. Because of continued shortages, which are an everyday thing these days, order now to avoid disappointment as we likely will run out of these in short order. 

Books Going to Press

After a long dry spell, Megan and I are getting three books to press this month. “Euclid’s Door” by George Walker and Jim Tolpin is at the final proofing stage where we review the pages for problems on press. This book continues George and Jim’s exploration of workshop geometry that they began with “By Hand & Eye.” This book shows you how to put geometry to work to make beautiful and useful workshop tools, everything from a wooden try square to a panel gauge. As always, their work is eye-opening and mind-bending.

This book should be released this fall.

Today I am sending off the final pages of The Stick Chair Journal to pre-press. This annual publication is an obsession-driven personal project. If you are interested in nerdy chair stuff (and the occasional wild folk tale), you might enjoy the Journal. We are doing only one press run of the Journal. If you wish to be notified when it is released this fall, go here.

Finally, Megan is working with John Porritt to finish up work on “The Belligerent FInisher,” an outstanding little book on how to add aged-looking finishes to new pieces. Porritt is a lifelong professional chairmaker and antiques restorer. His methods are simple and surprisingly effective. If all goes to plan, this book will also be out this fall.

More news to come on future books, maybe even a book on Dutch tool chests?

— Christopher Schwarz

For Sale: Cherry Comb-back from ‘The Stick Chair Journal’

Posted on by Lost Art Press

This six-stick comb-back chair with a narrow comb is the chair I built for the first issue of The Stick Chair Journal. I spent about a year gradually changing details on my chairs to arrive at this design, which features a four-piece arm with mitered arms.

This chair, which is built using Pennsylvania black cherry, is set up for dining or relaxing. The back leans 17° off the seat, and the seat is tilted 5°, so the back is a generous 22° off the floor. The seat is 17” above the floor, which is a good height for most sitters. Overall, the chair is 39” tall, 28” wide, 23” deep and weighs 16-1/2 pounds.

 

The hands of the chair feature through-tenons that have been shaped pyramidal. The stretchers also use through-tenons, which add strength to the chair’s undercarriage. Also worth noting: The shoe is attached with both glue and two blacksmith-made roseheads – a tip of the hat to the iron hardware that sometimes holds together old examples of vernacular chairs.

Like all of my chairs, this one shows texture and evidence of the tools used to make it. There are subtle rasp marks in places. All the angles of the chair’s legs, stretchers and sticks are sighted by eye and without jigs. So there are small variations – some might say imperfections. I’ve never had complaints from customers, but I like to make it clear this is not like a factory-made chair.

The joints are assembled with hide glue and oak wedges, so the joints are strong but can be easily repaired by future generations. The finish is a home-cooked linseed oil/wax finish that has no dangerous solvents. The finish offers low protection, but it is easy to repair by the owner with no special skills or tools.

Purchasing the Chair

This chair is being sold via silent auction. (I’m sorry but the chair cannot be shipped outside the U.S.) If you wish to buy the chair, send an email to lapdrawing@lostartpress.com before 3 p.m. (Eastern) on Thursday, May 26. In the email please use the subject line “Chair Sale” and include your:

  • First name and last name
  • Bid
  • U.S. shipping address
  • Daytime phone number (this is for the trucking quote only). You will not receive a phone call or get put on a mailing list. I really dislike that stuff.

Shipping options: You are welcome to pick up the chair here in Covington, Ky., and also pick up a free yardstick and pencil. I am happy to deliver the chair personally for free within 100 miles of Cincinnati, Ohio. Or we can ship it to you via LTL. The cost varies (especially these days), but it is usually between $200 and $300. 

— Christopher Schwarz

Get Notified when ‘The Stick Chair Journal’ is Available

Posted on by fitz

The Stick Chair Journal is in the final stages of production and will be released in Fall 2022. We’ve added it to the store so that you can sign up for to be notified when it is available. To do that, visit the store page and click on “Notify Me.” (Note that on the front page of the store, there’s a banner on the Journal (and other items with zero units in stock) that reads “sold out.” Underneath is the “notify me” banner.)

When it’s available (again, not until Fall), there will be two ways to purchase it:

1. Order the softcover version and you will also receive two PDFs: a PDF of the journal and a second PDF of the patterns for the chair in this issue at checkout.

2. Order the PDF of the Journal and you will receive two PDFs: a PDF of the journal and a second PDF of the patterns for the chair in this issue at checkout.

We plan to print 4,000 copies – and when the press run sells out, that’s it (though the PDF will remain available). Unlike with our books, we do not plan to reprint to keep the physical item in stock.

The Stick Chair Journal, will be an annual publication that aims to expand the universe of all things stick chair: More history. More plans. More techniques. Reviews of tools. And Big Thoughts. It is a supplement to “The Stick Chair Book.“

In Issue No. 1, you’ll find:

• A Lousy Way to Run a Railroad: An explanation of what this journal is all about.

• How & Why to Make Hexagonal Parts: An exploration of hexagonal chair parts. How to make them both by hand and with some machine assistance. Plus the design considerations for their visual and actual mass.

• True Grit: A Dirty Job, But Not a Dirty Word: Abrasives in woodworking predate planes and other edged tools. There’s no shame – and there is plenty of historical precedent – in sandpaper.

• The Fat Boy Scriber: An ingenious tool for marking leg lengths and, with an easy modification, marking curves.

• Chairmaking on the Cheap(er): You don’t need expensive tools; here are less expensive and accurate alternatives for cutting tenons, fitting combs and locking in your important angles.

• Comb-back with an Improved Arm: Complete plans and construction information for a new six-stick comb-back chair, with a four-piece, mitered-end armbow and a thin, cut-away profile on the hands.

• Stick Chairs in the Wylde: The road to becoming a good chairmaker is looking deeply at beautiful chairs. We explore a chair that has launched the chairmaking careers of many makers.

• A Vampire Chair: A fabled chair in Tennessee was broken apart to murder its owner. Now that it has been repaired, it’s acting odd.

— Fitz

‘The Stick Chair Journal’ & a Sharp Pencil

Posted on by Lost Art Press

Every day (and most nights) I am working on the first issue of The Stick Chair Journal, an annual publication that will expand the universe of sticks chairs. More history. More plans. More techniques. Reviews of tools. And Big Thoughts.

The writing, photography and design for the first issue is coming together nicely, and Issue No. 1 will be released in the fall.

Every week, I’ve been pitching my ideas to Megan over lunch. Two weeks ago, I laid out the design aspects of the Journal, plus some of the mechanical aspects (paper stock, cover stock, binding, trim size and the like). As a writer and an editor, I got quite excited about the way it would look.

Then I did what every good publisher should do. I got out my calculator and pencil and did a proper P&L (profit and loss statement) for the title. 

Woodworking is a niche. The craft of chairmaking is a room inside that niche. And stick chairs are a cockroach hole in the baseboard of that room inside the niche. So now our plans are to print 3,000 copies of the first issue. If it sells out, we’ll sell pdfs of the first issue and consider increasing the press run for the second issue.

So I’ve had to make some changes. Instead of hiring an artist to draw the masthead for The Stick Chair Journal, I decided to construct it myself using fonts we already own. Same with the cover border – I can get about 95 percent of where I want to be by modifying some clip art we own. Instead of hiring a woodcut artist to make a cut of the chair featured in the issue, I’ll simulate that effect in Illustrator. 

Oh, and my plans to commission a series of woodblock initial caps for our stories? I nixed that, too. So, tonight I am making our own custom woodblock initial caps – using wooden children’s blocks that I am modifying with gouges and engraving tools. 

While all this might sound like I am retreating or giving up on my “dreams,” I feel the opposite. By doing this work myself, the first issue will become profitable if we sell only 1,000 copies. And that small fact ensures there will be issues Nos. 2 and 3.

— Christopher Schwarz

This is Not a Magazine

Posted on by Lost Art Press

I finished writing “The Stick Chair Book” last year with great reluctance. There were scads of techniques and forms of stick chairs that I still wanted to explore. But I knew that I was reaching the mechanical limits of our bindery (the book is 632 pages) and the patience of the readers (the book is 632 pages).

So I vowed to write some softcover “supplements” to “The Stick Chair Book.” Each supplement would explore a different form of chair and the new techniques required to build it.

I’ve been hard at work on the first supplement since September. As I started assembling my notes, I realized that the material went way beyond my original outline. When put together, all the different parts were like, well, a magazine.

Now, most of you know that I would sooner make sweet love to a porcupine than start a magazine. I did my time.

But I couldn’t ignore all these bits and pieces and how they fit together. As an exercise, I decided to sketch out the next few supplements, and the ideas came together quickly and seamlessly. Each supplement had a new chair plan, plus half a dozen articles on techniques and tools that expanded the stick chair universe.

Well damn.

So I am bewildered to announce the “The Stick Chair Journal, Vol. 1,” which will be available in September 2022. The Journal will be built and sold like a book. It will be 7-1/4” wide and 9-5/8” tall (the same dimensions as “Welsh Stick Chairs”). Coated paper. Sewn bindings. With a heavy card-stock cover. And it will have 128 to 160 pages – a very efficient size for printing. 

There will be no subscriptions. No advertising. And it will be sold like a book – $20 per issue. Here’s a look at the first issue:

The Chair

The first issue will feature complete plans and construction information for a new six-stick comb-back chair. The chair armbow is made of four pieces with mitered ends. The hands have a thin, cut-away profile, one I haven’t shown publicly before. Many of the through-tenons are domed and faceted. I’ve built variants of this chair about five or six times now and know exactly how it should look.

Techniques & Tools

  • How to lay out, cut and taper hexagonal legs and stretchers.
  • A new (and fast) way to make long back sticks that combines handplaning with some work from the Veritas Dowel Marker (or any dowel maker).
  • An exploration of how to use the travisher made by James Mursell to saddle seats without an adze or scorp.
  • How to sharpen a scorp and a travisher safely with a table saw.
  • How to effectively use the Tooley Park scribers in chairmaking.
  • Plus the blog posts from my “Chairmaking on the Cheap(er)” series, expanded with additional details.

Until I run out of ideas, the Journal will be written entirely by me. But I could see a future where there might be a guest editor or two.

— Christopher Schwarz