Next week, Lost Art Press titles that I’ve written will feature a new design of signature bookplate.
Designed and printed by Brian Stupayrk at Steam Whistle Letterpress & Design, these bookplates are printed in two colors on Crane & Co. self-adhesive paper.
If you purchased one of our books from another retailer and would like one of these bookplates, you can order one in our store here.
— Christopher Schwarz
One stick can improve the way you work. Two sticks can change your entire workshop regimen.
This blog entry began months ago when Richard Maguire posted an excellent video called “The Holdfast and the Batten,” which demonstrates how to use a notched batten to secure your work against your planing stop.
It works brilliantly. So brilliantly, in fact, that I started to comb through my old books – both in French and English – for some hint of it. I asked Jeff Burks what he thought. And, most important, I made a notched batten that looks identical to one shown in Albrecht Dürer’s famous “Melancholia I” (1514). This engraving is so famous that it graces the wall of the bathroom at The Woodwright’s Shop.
If you start looking for this notched stick in the historical record, you will begin to see it everywhere. It has different shapes at the ends – ogees, coves, bootjack, etc. Many of these sticks have holes bored in them as well. They appear in workshop drawings, engravings about architecture and geometry, and in images of libraries.
It is obvious that the stick is a straightedge, called a “reglet” in France and England – used to lay things out or to follow a line of text in a book. But why the shaped ends?
Here’s my guess: To differentiate it from sticks that were mere offcuts, scrap or project parts.
And the holes? Peter Follansbee thinks they are for hanging the reglet on the wall. Two holes ensure you are always going to be able to hang the thing without flipping it end for end. I think that’s an excellent guess.
Several weeks ago I made a reglet that looks like the one shown in Melancholia I, and I hung it on the wall above my bench. The bench I use everyday is quite primitive. No tail vise. No dog holes. My leg vise lacks a parallel guide and a garter. It is a lot like a workbench from the 16th, 17th or 18th centuries.
The ‘Dürer Stick’ (as I call it) has been a constant companion during the last two projects. It has been a straightedge, and it also has held my work in place as I traversed it or planed it with the grain. I have ogee ends on my stick, and they work just as well at securing the work as the straight taper that Maguire shows.
Also, the holes in the stick? I used those to nail the stick to the bench to act as a fence while cutting 16 dados today. Again, it worked brilliantly.
Before you jump up my butt about this, know that I am wearing two pairs of flannel-lined pants. Also, I ask you to do this one thing before criticizing: Make a stick. Use it. If you can’t make the stick, you probably shouldn’t be commenting on a woodworking blog anyway.
Was that bitchy? Sorry.
Oh, and what did I mean about how two sticks could “change your entire workshop regimen?” More on the second stick later. This second stick is a mind-blower.
— Christopher Schwarz
Randy Wilkins – the blogger behind The Designer’s Assistant – is giving away four Lost Art Press titles as he culls his collection of duplicates. Read this blog entry on how to enter the contest. And be sure to check out the rest of Randy’s blog. He’s a set designer for films and has built some very cool stuff.
— Christopher Schwarz
While you can place orders on our web site 365 days a year, we will not be shipping orders between Wednesday, Nov. 27, and Sunday, Dec. 1. Any orders received during that time will be mailed on Monday, Dec. 2.
So if you need something lickety split, I recommend you order it today or tomorrow.
— Christopher Schwarz
The best thing I ever learned about furniture design came from my mom while we were driving the family Suburban somewhere in the Florida panhandle.
My mom is absolutely the best cook I have ever encountered. She can do anything with nothing. She makes it all look effortless and taste amazing. She, quite frankly, opened my eyes to the possibilities of food in the way my dad introduced me to wood.
So anyway, we’re driving back to our beach rental place one summer in the 1980s, and my mom and I are talking about food. And I describe some fruit smoothie. It’s stupid, really, but it’s a fruit smoothie with some weird combination of fruits and juices.
I say: I think that would taste good.
She says: You can visulaize that?
Me: Yeah, no problem.
Mom: That’s cooking. Right there.
That moment has stuck with me for almost 30 years now, both as a cook and a furniture designer. And after much thought, I’ve concluded there are two kinds of designers: cooks and bakers.
I have always been a cook. I am interested in combining different ingredients until I gradually achieve a perfect balance when making a sauce or casserole or carcase. I taste and taste. Modify and modify. And I’m never satisfied until the very last, when I place the food on the table.
My wife, Lucy, on the other hand, is a baker. She treats ingredients like a chemist. She measures. Measures again. And makes fantastic cookies and cakes that I cannot ever hope to make. But – and this is not a criticism – her cookies always taste the same. My shrimp and grits always tastes different, depending on what’s available and my mood.
What the heck does this have to do with woodworking? Everything.
When I design furniture, I am willing to alter the details at any stage. I refuse to use a cutting list. I simply feel my way through the project, step by step. I can do this because I have a vast library of furniture books and images in my head and in my house that I use to guide me. I start with a basic recipe that is based on the material I have, the photos of similar objects I’ve culled from my library and the desires of the person I’m building the piece for.
When I build this way, I am always happy with the result.
During my years at Popular Woodworking Magazine, I tried to build things according to more of a baking paradigm. I took the print, developed a cutting list and stuck to it. At times this process worked. The baking soda was right to the granule. Other times, I felt like I was simply reproducing someone else’s mistakes.
So, bottom line, I want my mistakes to be my own.
The problem with my approach is that it’s hard (no, impossible) to teach to others. I much prefer the approach of George Walker and Jim Tolpin in “By Hand & Eye,” who teach woodworkers to develop their designer’s eye through exercise and exploration.
My approach is more like Anthony Bourdain. Eat everything. Make yourself sick again and again until you you can find the balance between beauty and botulism. Yeah, sometimes you’ll throw up on the street, but sometimes you’ll find something that can silence a room.
— Christopher Schwarz