Lost Art Press

Category: To Make as Perfectly as Possible, Roubo Translation

Price Cut for the Trade Edition of our Roubo Translation

Posted on by Lost Art Press

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In between cutting dovetails and teaching 10 students to cut dovetails for a tool chest, Megan Fitzpatrick and I are making the final changes to the proof of the trade edition of “To Make as Perfectly as Possible: Roubo on Marquetry.”

The book goes to the printer on Friday so it will be ready for Woodworking in America in October.

Thanks to some competitive pricing from our printer, we are happy to announce that the trade edition will cost $40 plus shipping instead of $60.

The book will be printed in the United States using all the same details that are typical to our books – cloth-covered boards, Smythe-sewn spine and so forth. The book will measure 8-1/2” x 11” and be 264 pages long.

We will have an introductory offer – free domestic shipping – on the book that will be announced here in the next week or so when we put the book up in the Lost Art Press store.

International customers will be able to buy the book through our network of international retailers.

I would like to write more, but we still have more than 100 pages to check.

— Christopher Schwarz

Roubo Translation News

Posted on by Lost Art Press

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This is going to read like a letter that recalls your car.

Lost Art Press is committed to bringing the first-ever English translation of A.-J. Roubo’s masterpiece to market in March 2013. No, make that July. August? Well crap.

OK, forget the form letter.

“To Make as Perfectly as Possible: Roubo on Marquetry” has been at the printer since July 1. But because of the complex nature of the project and the proofing process, we are scheduled to go on press this week. Then our pages head to the bindery on Sept. 3. And they will be shipped to us no later than Oct. 10.

That’s the bad news.

But there is lots of good news to report here. Here is some:

1. The trade edition will be released in time for Woodworking in America, Oct. 18-20. So we will have both editions of the marquetry book – the deluxe and the trade edition – at Woodworking in America in Covington, Ky.

2. As part of Woodworking in America, we will be holding a book-release party on Thursday, Oct. 17. Details to come, but if you ordered the deluxe edition you will be the first to be invited. If our luck holds, we will have as many people involved in the project – translators, editors, designer, etc. – as possible on hand to sign your copy of the book.

3. I reviewed the deluxe edition of the Roubo translation on Thursday and I can say this: It is awesome. Huge. Designed to a “T” by Wesley Tanner. And inspiring.

So thank you for your patience. I know this has been a long journey from the time we started this project more than six years ago. I know that once the book is released, I will allow all the stress and angst from the printing process to fade. Until then, beer please.

— Christopher Schwarz

P.S. We still have some deluxe editions to sell from our one-and-only press run. Details here.

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Where’s A.-J.?

Posted on by Lost Art Press

LAP-Roubo-PressmarkA quick status update on “To Make as Perfectly as Possible: Roubo on Marquetry.”

• The deluxe edition is supposed to go on press at the end of August. We were hoping for an earlier press date, but we didn’t get our wish. Then the book has to go to the bindery. And get its slipcase. We are now shooting for an early September delivery.

• Thanks to an error in our store, we mistakenly thought we were sold out of the deluxe edition. We have not quite sold out. We have about 50 copies allocated to the store. After those sell out, we are going to wait until we have all of the copies in hand. We will fulfill all the outstanding orders. Then we will count how many are left and sell those.

• If you have paid your $100 deposit but haven’t paid the balance, please contact John Hoffman at john@lostartpress.com to complete your order. We cannot ship your book until we have the full amount.

• Wesley Tanner is now laying out the trade edition of the book. We hope to have this in time for Woodworking in America.

• We are trying to plan a book-release party for Woodworking in America. If you bought a book, you will be invited.

— Christopher Schwarz

The French Oak Roubo Project: My Part

Posted on by Lost Art Press

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When I built my first French workbench in 2005 from Southern yellow pine, I vowed to someday build one just like the version shown in A.-J. Roubo’s “L’Art du Menuisier.”

I’ve come close to filling that pledge a couple times, but that vow is now eight years old. If my vow were a hot dog, it would be almost inedible.

On Sunday I leave for Georgia to participate in the French Oak Roubo Project, which has been organized by the Benchcrafted Brothers. I’ll be helping the students build their benches from the massive and ancient French oak slabs that Benchcrafted and Bo Childs have gathered for the week-long workbench orgy.

But I will also get to build my own bench. (I am paying for all my materials. #eyeroll)

My bench will be designed to the print of plate 11 of “L’Art du menuisier.” It will have a grease pot. A drawer. The rack. And the exact pattern of holdfast holes shown in the well-known plate. And the hardware… well I’ll be blogging about that next week, I’m sure.

I will have a leg vise. But I’ll have the leg vise shown in plate 11, which doesn’t have a parallel guide. How does it work? Roubo explains that in his long discourse on shops and benches. To date, only a small bit of that text has been translated. But thanks to Don Williams, Michele Pietryka-Pagán and Philippe Lafargue, we now have an excellent and complete translation of the text relating to the bench and other shop practices.

With the leg vise, you use loose blocks of wood on the floor to pivot the jaw into your work. A parallel guide is shown in Roubo, but it is on his “German workbench,” which will be discussed in our translation coming out in August.

This bench will be a daily worker in my shop. I’m going to have to re-organize some things, but now that we are not a book warehouse, that should be do-able.

Next week I’ll be blogging daily about the class, as will many of the other participants. But I won’t be answering e-mail or my phone.

This coming week is my vacation.

— Christopher Schwarz

In the Store Now: Roubo Deluxe Edition

Posted on by Lost Art Press

RouboIt took only six years, but you can now buy the deluxe edition of “To Make as Perfectly as Possible: Roubo on Marquetry” in the Lost Art Press store.

The book is made to the highest manufacturing standards. The content of this book took a worldwide team of dedicated people more than six years to complete. It is, in a nutshell, the first English translation of the most important 18th-century book on woodworking.

If you cannot afford the deluxe edition (which ships in August), we recommend selling your plasma. Or… we will be selling a nice trade edition this fall for about $60. But the deluxe edition will be printed only once. We are printing 600 copies. And more than 450 have already been sold. And I am sure you are lousy with plasma.

If you want one, you plasma-rich carbon-based lifeform, click here to read more about it.

— Christopher Schwarz