After fighting printing plant delays for the last eight months, we received good news on Friday. Our historical reprint of “The Joiner and Cabinet-Maker” was complete and being trucked to our warehouse in Indiana – weeks ahead of schedule.
It should arrive Monday or Tuesday. Then the warehouse will start shipping out the pre-publication orders shortly after.
After the book arrives in the warehouse, we’ll also begin selling a special bundle of the historical reprint of the book plus the edition we originally published in 2009 with historical essays and expanded construction information. Look for details and special pricing on that some time next week.
I’ve completed the last new project chapter for the expanded edition of “The Anarchist’s Design Book.” Now, I need to clean up the new chapters that are related to design and shop mentality and the writing will be complete.
Briony Morrow-Cribbs is working on the copperplate etchings, and I am now figuring out how to stitch the new book together so it flows well and makes sense. We are on track to have the revised edition out by the end of the year.
In the meantime, here is a new chapter that owners of the first edition may download for free. It’s a chapter on a low boarded bench.
I Greco-Roman wrestled with myself over whether to include this chapter. The project is beyond simple – the only joints are the nails. The bench itself is the opposite of fine furniture. But after building five or six of these benches, I concluded that they have some important lessons to teach – lessons that some of us skip.
And what would a blog post be without caveats? Here they are:
This is a rough draft. It might contain typos or small factual errors. If you see one, please point it out in the comments. If you want to edit my “tone,” then you must first build a time machine, travel back to 1981 Arkansas and stop Mrs. Hatfield from teaching me to write.
The drawing is a CAD rendering. Briony’s will be gorgeous and handmade.
And yes, the chapter’s comment on farts is true.
I am thrilled to be done building the six new projects for this book (though I really wanted to include an additional four that would have spawned a trilogy).
There was a mixup at the printing plant, and they ordered the wrong color paper for the cover of our special reprint of “The Joiner and Cabinet-Maker.” While we had ordered a dark green for the cover, the printing plant used a dark blue instead.
Our choice today was: Pulp the entire press run or use the blue cover.
While I would have rather had a green cover, I despise waste. And so we have decided to go with the blue cover. Apologies if you hate blue. If it is really and truly a problem, please contact help@lostartpress.com and we’ll cancel your order.
The book looks really good – even in blue. And the rest of the printing job is great as well.
I don’t have an update on when the book will ship to our warehouse, but I am guessing it will be a couple weeks. I’ll post an update as soon as I have it.
Here’s a free PDF peek at a handful of some of the 157 hand-tool-woodworking helpers in Robert Wearing’s “The Solution at Hand: Jigs & Fixtures to Make Benchwork Easier,” excerpted from the Marking Aids and Cramps chapters (along with the author’s introduction and the table of contents).
This will end up in the 2019 Anarchist’s Gift Guide, so consider this Christmas in August.
I’m no carpenter, but I use carpenter pencils all the time for rough layout and (after planing them in half) for leveling the legs of chairs. Most of the carpenter pencils from the home center are miserable physical specimens. The lead is crumbly or comes pre-fratcured. The wood is spongy and offers no support. These examples get tossed.
During the last two weeks someone stuck an extra-long carpenter pencil in our shop’s communal pencil cup. My best guess is a student left it behind (finally, our first profit from offering classes). The pencil stuck up above all the others. It was red. A few days ago I grabbed it and have now claimed if for my own.
It’s a Two Cherries carpenter pencil, and it’s the best one I’ve ever used. It’s 9-1/2” long, which makes it feel more like a magic wand. Its wide faces are gently rounded. The wood carves beautifully. The lead is soft but can be knifed to a fine point.
I realized how fond I was of it when Megan tried to take it from me today in the machine shop. I resisted.
I know it costs more than the free crap they give you at the hardware store. Most good things do.