Lost Art Press

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One of NYC’s Largest Trees Lived in Prospect Park

Posted on by meghanlostartpress

It was circa 1870 when a European elm tree was intentionally planted in a quiet southwestern corner of Prospect Park in Brooklyn. It was late 2015 when the tree was declared dead and cut down.

This tree is one of the few things in NYC that had remained unchanged for that century and a half. Think about it. When planted, dirt roads, horses and farmland surrounded it.  By the end of its life, it neighbored a gas station taking credit card transactions and nearly every person walking around it had a smart phone in their pocket.

Andrew Ullman, Brooklyn’s Director of Forestry, was the one tasked with making the decision to fell the tree after it had become a danger to park visitors.  “18 and 24 inch limbs [had] been broken off in the hurricanes and tornados,” Ullman says. Upon interviewing Andrew, I had all but forgotten that tornadoes had recently touched down in NYC. I recalled a few years ago when I was riding my bike down Dekalb Avenue in Bed-Stuy and saw every tree in a two-block area decimated by a twister.

It was also Andrew who encouraged the Park Service to seek out RE-CO BKLYN to mill and dry lumber from the tree instead of chipping it to be sent to a landfill. We will then go on to build a custom conference table for the NYC Parks Prospect Park offices in Litchfield Villa with lumber from the tree. Andrew closes the interview with, “The worst thing we could be doing is just throwing this stuff in a landfill. One of the best things [ . . . ] we can do with it is mill it into timber and [ . . . ] build lasting products out of it.” Hearing this type of progressive thinking come from the NYC Parks Department is a major step in the right direction. We are passionate about keeping as many NYC trees out of the chipper as possible and especially focused on NYC Park trees because of the personal connection that the public has with the trees.

The process of felling the tree, breaking it down and transporting it to our facility took months of planning. A crane was used to help fell the tree, then two log trucks with cranes and a large loader worked together to get the logs onto multiple trucks.  We rented a 60,000 lb. excavator to offload them upon arrival in our yard. When we first started RE-CO BKLYN, we were moving logs around with 2×4s and milling them with a chainsaw on the sidewalk. We could never have anticipated this.

This business is a constant surprise, so we’ll keep moving forward, anticipating the next adventure around the corner.

— Dan Richfield
(re-co bklyn)

 

Starting the Roman Workbenches

Posted on by Lost Art Press

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With several hundred pounds of red oak now sitting on my workbench, it’s time to get serious about building the two benches for my next book, “Roman Workbenches.”

The simpler of the two benches has a top that is about 3-1/2” thick, 18” wide and 7’ long. This will be a low bench – somewhere slightly above knee height but below the groin. The height will require some experimentation because the operator needs to sometimes straddle the benchtop for some operations.

As a result, 38” would be too high, even with my ostrich legs.

This bench’s workholding is super-simple: a planing stop (copied from one recovered at the Roman fort at Saalburg) and a Roman holdfast. Both iron bits were made by blacksmith Peter Ross. In the last couple months I have become very fond of the Roman holdfast, which holds like crazy.

This simpler bench will also feature some holdfast holes that occasionally will have some tall wooden stakes in them. More on this later (those of you who have read “Woodworking in Estonia” probably know what I’m tilting at).

The second workbench will be taller and made with a larger slab of oak. It will have a wagon vise (perhaps the first one ever illustrated), a series of forged-iron dogs and a twin-screw vise. Oh, and a ripping notch.

Both benches will be made using staked construction with no stretchers connecting the legs. For a variety of reasons I’ll explain later, the legs’ tenons will be cylindrical instead of tapered. Boring these 3”-diameter compound-angle mortises might seem like it will require a ship’s auger. But I have a plan.

— Christopher Schwarz

Soft Wax: Funky Winkerbean Approves

Posted on by Lost Art Press

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After a long weekend of bagging groceries, Katy is cooking up more wax and she just listed 33 more jars on her etsy site.

This time she conned Funky Winkerbean to pose in a photo. Unlike the last cat, Funky didn’t mind the smell. Of course, this animal licks its own butt and seems to like it.

We’re also experimenting with making a non-stinky black wax. Our next batch is going to have carbon black in it – we are just waiting for our shipment to arrive. So stay tuned.

— Christopher Schwarz

Now in the Store: ‘Woodworking in Estonia’

Posted on by Lost Art Press

WIE_blue_cover_mockup1_1024x1024“Woodworking in Estonia,” the cult classic woodworking book, is now available for pre-publication ordering in the Lost Art Press store. The book is $29 (that price includes domestic postage) and will ship in August.

You can read more about the book and order it here.

Our version of “Woodworking in Estonia” is the first authorized translation of this classic 1960s text about hand-tool woodworking in this fascinating Northern European country. The original Estonian book was translated by the Israel Program for Scientific Translations in 1969 for the Smithsonian and the U.S. National Science Foundation.

Since then it has earned a small but loyal following of readers including Roy Underhill, who named it one of his three favorite woodworking books.

But what’s the book about? And why should anyone in North America care about this ethnographic study?

I first obtained a copy of the book about six years ago – a version that had been in the Albion College Library and then dropped from its collection. It’s a curious-looking book. The text is typewritten, not typeset like a nice book from the 1960s. And the images are terrible. Dark, murky and occasionally indecipherable.

Despite this, I read it all in one sitting. It’s a fascinating look at hand-tool woodworking during the last 2,000 years. The tools are similar to what we know, but different in places. But what struck me then – and still strikes me today – is how well these woodworkers knew their material.

It’s not a “green woodworking” book. Yes, there are times that they use green wood. But there are times they dry it in a variety of ways, steam it, bury it in dung, whatever it takes to get the job done. They take advantage of the natural shapes of the branches to make tools and furniture components.

It is, I think, a much more balanced view of what woodworking was really like during the last 300 years. The wood isn’t all perfectly seasoned for years. And it’s not all fresh from the tree. It is, instead, all of those things and more.

Also fascinating are the objects made in Estonian workshops: spoons, beer tankards, bent-wood boxes, sifters, rakes, tables, chairs, chests and all manner of household implements.

In the coming weeks we’ll publish a couple excerpts from the book. But for today, we need a short nap.

About the Price
In an effort to make “Woodworking in Estonia” accessible to all our readers, we’ve kept the price as low as possible – $29, which includes domestic shipping. We consider publishing this book both an honor and a public service. And we have tried to do the right thing at every turn.

This book is the first authorized translation, done with the full cooperation of Ants Viires (until his death in 2015) and his family, which will receive royalties from sales of the book.

We have obtained the rights to the original photos and drawings, which are crisp and clear compared to the original 1969 translation. And we are, as always, manufacturing the book to a high standard, with sewn signatures and cloth-wrapped hardcovers.

We hope you will take a chance on “Woodworking in Estonia,” like we did when we first made contact with the Viires family through woodworker David Lanneorg. Getting this book to press was a long and sometimes difficult process, but we think it was worth it, and I hope you’ll agree.

— Christopher Schwarz

P.S. We do not have any information yet on which retailers will carry “Woodworking in Estonia.” We’ll post it here when we know.

Another Workbench Journey Begins

Posted on by Lost Art Press

Metz

About 8 a.m. Wednesday morning I’ll pack a thermos of coffee and hit the road for North Carolina in the hopes of gaining some small understanding of the craft culture of ancient Rome.

Thanks to Will Myers, there’s a large load of dry oak waiting for me in North Carolina that I’ll use to build two Roman-style workbenches. The benches are separated by about 1,400 years but share the same DNA.

The reason I do this stuff, which is admittedly a bit bonkers, is the same reason I started building nearly vanished French and English style workbenches in 2005. I’m not looking for a better workbench, just another one that might make sense for your work and mine.

For me, the appeal of 18th-century French and English workbenches is that they are simpler. They are far easier and faster to build than your typical Scandinavian or Germanic bench. I don’t have anything against those central and northern European benches. The ones that are made by woodworkers for woodworking are great.

But not everyone wants to build a bench that is that complex, with a tail vise and a shoulder vise, a fifth leg, a dovetailed skirt and square dogs. Some of us would rather do something else with our time.

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In the same vein, the Roman workbench has always interested me. It is even simpler than a French or English bench. No stretchers. Simpler joinery. Less mass (perhaps). And during my last 11 years of ongoing bench research, I’ve concluded that the Roman workbench has never fully gone extinct. Instead it has gone out to pasture, so to speak.

By building and using these two Roman benches in my shop, I hope to learn their strengths and weaknesses – all bench forms have upsides and downsides. None is perfect. My hope is that I can show how these even simpler benches can be used to hold boards so you can work on their faces, edges and ends. Because that goal has never changed for woodworkers, whether they wear togas or flannel.

— Christopher Schwarz