Lost Art Press

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More Soft Wax Available Now

Posted on by Lost Art Press

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Hey kids: Don’t eat soft wax. But you can buy it for your woodworking here.

Katy and her boyfriend, Michael (at right), are taking time off from their busy spring break to make some soft wax for you. As always, it’s available in 4 oz. tins. Every tin is handmade by Katy (and with Michael the very polite trainee), packaged in a tin and shipped out entirely by teenagers.

It’s awesome stuff for the insides of your casework. It is great for leatherwork and renewing finishes that look dried out (our real estate agent uses it on old trimwork in houses). You can make it yourself – we’ve published the recipe for everyone to use. But it’s not made with the same sass and panache that come from the Katy Schwarz.

Also, she uses primo ingredients. Cosmetic-grade beeswax. Domestic turpentine. And teen sass. Get some here before it’s gone.

— Christopher Schwarz

The Dirty, Trembling & Troublesome Tills

Posted on by Lost Art Press

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You might look at the photo above and say: “Schwarz is a slob. Look at the mess of tools piled in his tills.” I don’t see things that way – open tills allow you great flexibility. The only problem is if you’re someone who doesn’t like their gravy to touch their peas.

Public service announcement: Gravy is good food.

When I look at the photo above I see something different that makes me crazy. Look at the soiled and oily area in the middle of the tills. Here’s a closer look.

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Yup, those darkened bronze pulls on the tills are like lederhosen on a lizard – totally useless. When you work in a chest with tills you grab them by the middle to move them. Why? Because after a few months of use, your tightly fit tills begin to rack. It’s almost impossible to prevent. Each till is 8” wide x 36” long, so it doesn’t take much for them to jam if you grab them by one pull or by a corner.

(Duncan Phyfe had a novel solution to this problem, which I’ll discuss some day.)

Go you grab the till with one hand to move it in place and use your other hand to grab the tool you need. The pulls are for show.

But that doesn’t mean you should do a crap job of fitting your tills in the chest.

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I fit the till bottoms first, then I build the dovetailed tills a smidge smaller than the perfectly fit bottoms so I don’t have to plane anything to fit.

Today I fit the six till bottoms for these two chests. It’s fussy shooting-plane work. A shaving too far results in a rattling, trembling bottom. Strive to get the bottoms moving forward and back with just a finger and without the aid of wax. That’s when you can call it done.

And here ends the worse SEO’d article I’ve written in a long time. Sorry in particular to the people who were referred here from termblingbottom.com.

— Christopher Schwarz

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‘Slöjd in Wood’ Ship Date (& Peg Board Project)

Posted on by fitz

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Jögge Sundqvist’s “Slöjd in Wood” ships from the printer on Thursday, and will soon thereafter mail to the many of you who’ve already ordered (thank you!).

Here’s a palate-tickler of a PDF excerpt for download and enjoyment while you wait: PegBoard2

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Don’t know what this book is about? Here’s some of the text from the back cover:

“Slöjd in Wood” inspires and teaches you how to start with green wood to make
functional and fun traditional household objects. With an axe and a small set of
knives, you can make your own spoons, ladles, spatulas, bowls, butter knives,
shrink boxes, cabinet knobs, walking sticks, cutting boards, stools and more.
You’ll discover the tools you need (and how to keep them sharp), how to select
and process your materials and what wood species are best for every type of slöjd
object. “Slöjd in Wood” includes everything you must know about riving green
wood and drying it properly, then carving, painting and finishing it in the slöjd
tradition. A special “Knife Grips” section includes detailed instructions and
illustrations to help you learn the various grips needed for safe, efficient and fun
slöjd work.”

The lusciously photographed and illustrated book is printed on heavyweight matte paper with a hard cover and built-to-last sewn binding. It is 116 pages, and, like all Lost Art Press books, printed in the United States.

We don’t know which retailers will opt to carry the book (we hope all of them will), but we will update you here when we have more information.

Note that on “Slöjd in Wood,” a translation, we do not have electronic rights (so we cannot offer a full PDF version).

Molding Plane’s Best Friends

Posted on by fitz
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Left to right: moving fillister, rabbet, & jack planes.

They say a sculptor sees the naked woman (or man, I guess) in the rock and then proceeds to remove everything that is not the naked woman. A sculptor would not start out with his or her fine finishing tools to make a statue; they would start with a jack hammer.

Making moulding is pretty much the same process. Starting with coarse tools to hog of as much waste as fast as possible is the easiest way. The planes I use most often for this are the moving fillister, jack, rabbet and plow planes. These planes can be set deep to remove material fast. Chisels and gouges can also be used to bash out wood close to the profile.

Today I made a top molding for the top of a reproduction Shaker case of drawers and snapped a few photos of the process.

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I used the moving fillister set to remove as much waste as possible inside the profile.
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After resetting the moving fillister, I cut a rabbet down to create the fillet at the bottom of the profile.
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The rabbet plane gets in pretty close.
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With so much of the waste removed it only took about 5 minutes to finish the concave portion with a round plane.
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To finish up, I roughly shaped the lower quarter round portion with a jack plane and finished with hollow plane.

— Will Myers

Last Chance for Free PDF with ‘Ingenious Mechanicks’

Posted on by Lost Art Press

IM_cover_mockup_web“Ingenious Mechanicks: Early Workbenches & Workholding” will ship from the printer’s docks on April 4, and that will be the last day you can get a free PDF of the book with your order.

The book is $39, which includes free domestic shipping and the instant pdf download. After Thursday, the pdf will cost $19.50 extra if ordered with the printed book.

The No. 1 question about this book has been: What the heck is it about? Basically, I took my short book on Roman workbenches that we published last year and expanded it greatly with lots of new research done on the ground in Italy and Germany.

And, in the process of expanding it, the book became more about the ingenious early workholding that Suzanne Ellison and I dug up than the benches themselves.

If you’d like to read a free preview of the book, check out this entry.

Soon we’ll have a complete list of our retailers that will carry the book.

— Christopher Schwarz