Lost Art Press

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Meet the New Editor of Lost Art Press

Posted on by Lost Art Press

I am pleased to announce that we have hired Megan Fitzpatrick as the editor at Lost Art Press. She is our company’s first employee, and I cannot think of anyone I’d rather have in that position.

I am not going anywhere. I will be the publisher. That means I’ll be deciding what titles we’ll print, what tools we will make and – most important to me – I’ll be writing many more books for Lost Art Press (my real love).

Why are we doing this? During the last few years our company has grown to the point where it cannot function with only me, John and a few part-time contractors. We now ship more than 60,000 books a year. And we make tools and apparel, too. We have dozens of supply chains and more than 50 books that have to be managed – plus another four or five new titles every year.

I have resisted hiring employees because I don’t want to manage people. And I don’t want to control anyone’s livelihood. Luckily, Megan does not have to be managed.

Megan and I have worked together for about 20 years now. I first met her when she was on the marketing team at F&W Media about 1998, and she had no problem bossing around my boss when he was late. I immediately liked her. I later hired her as my managing editor at Popular Woodworking Magazine, and she made quite an impression on her first day. When the IT guy (a former Marine) repeatedly failed to do his job, she quietly but fiercely (and correctly) explained his shortcomings to him and reduced him to tears.

Megan was a beginning woodworker when I hired her, and she quickly latched onto anyone on the magazine’s staff who would teach her things. Her skills advanced quickly. After I left the magazine in 2011, there was some shuffling about on the staff and she ended up as editor. And I was one of her freelance authors.

After so many years of working together in different roles, Megan and I can (mostly) read each other’s minds. We (mostly) don’t annoy one another. And we both agree 100 percent on how to make good woodworking books and how to treat our authors.

So not much will change here, except for the fact that I’ll have more time to write books and blog entries. And Megan will be in charge. She’ll continue to teach woodworking classes here and elsewhere. And I hope she will continue to write for Fine Woodworking as well.

Please congratulate Megan on her new job. And I hope we get to work together for another 20 years (and that she never has to make me cry).

— Christopher Schwarz

(Ed. note: I will never try to make authors, customers or Chris cry. The guy he’s talking about, though, absolutely deserved it.)

Clamp Storage

Posted on by fitz
Bob Allen’s clamp storage. (Photo by Bob Allen.)

The following is excerpted from “The Workshop Book,” by Scott Landis. First published in 1991, it remains the most complete book about every woodworker’s favorite place: the workshop. This edition was published in 2021 with a new foreword by Roy Underhill.

“The Workshop Book” is a richly illustrated guided tour of some of the world’s most inspiring workshops — from garage to basement shops, from mobile to purpose-built shops.

Landis traveled all over North America to discover the workshops featured in this book. The result is an intriguing and illuminating look at multiple successful approaches to shop layout.

Clamps, like other hand tools, live on the wall in many workshops. Hanging his clamps was one of the first projects Bob Allen undertook when he set up his new workshop in Raleigh, North Carolina. Allen’s open layout makes it easy to find the right clamp in a hurry, but to speed the process, he also marked each clamp with its maximum clamping distance.

Ken Bishop’s rolling clamp caddy. (Photo by Ken Bishop.)

Allen’s layout is attractive if you have the space, but clamps may be needed anywhere in the shop, wherever the action is. For that reason, a lot of woodworkers store their clamps on rolling carts. Many clamp carts hold one or two types of clamps well, but Ken Bishop’s rolling clamp caddy seems as comfortable with long pipe and bar clamps as with wooden handscrews and small C-clamps. Bishop’s caddy is built from standard 2×4 lumber, mounted on a plywood base and 2-in. casters. All the horizontal components, which carry the clamps, are 24 in. long. The plastic bucket contains an assortment of hardwood glue blocks.

Rotary clamp rack. Note: Conduit may be suspended from a 6-in. wide plywood crosspiece between ceiling joists, as shown, or though-bolted directly to the joist.

Robert Markee, of Iowa City, designed the rotary clamp rack shown in the drawing [above] to hang from the joists of his workshop ceiling. “It’s nothing but a lazy Susan, hung from the top,” he explains. Markee has four of them in his shop, two filled with clamps (93 on each one, at last count) and the others draped with hammers, screwdrivers, wrenches and various other hand tools. The rack is suspended by bolts through the top and bottom of the central conduit, and is held in place by the weight of the tools.
“Heavens,” Markee says, “I think I’ve got 50 lb. on there!”

Lewis Judy’s clamp can.

Clamp racks don’t get much simpler than Lewis Judy’s galvanized clamp can. Judy bored concentric rings of 1-in. dia. holes in a plywood disc and jammed it inside the top of a garbage can to receive bar clamps. He spaced the holes about 3 in. apart, staggering them as they radiate out from the center. The bottom of the can is filled with sawdust to protect it from the long bars. “I don’t know how many it holds,” Judy says, “but I can’t lift it.”

‘More than Kit and the mountain lion’

Posted on by fitz

It’s not often that I find book reviews a delight to read, but Yaël Ksander’s consideration of “Shop Tails: The Animals Who Help Us Make Things Work” in the Limestone Reader is just that. “If the life of a woman who has not only made a living but also distinguished herself over the past four decades in the overwhelmingly masculine orbit of fine woodworking is not worthy of memoir, whose is,” writes Ksander. Indeed.

“Shop Tails is a paean to that life Hiller has made, bathed in the new light that reconciliation and reorientation have afforded. In that way, the comparison with Herriot’s All Creatures series finally seems apt, given that he named it after an Anglican children’s hymn extolling the wonders of the natural world. In the same spirit, Hiller’s book records the routines and pleasures of daily life and the flora and fauna (of all species) she has encountered along the way. Not a refuge from reality — like Kit and the mountain lion were for me as a child — but a mindful embrace of it.”

Click here to read the review in its entirety.

— Fitz

Discoveries in Translation

Posted on by Kara Uhl

I experienced several surprising coincidences and discoveries while working on “Cadi & the Cursed Oak.” In the beginning, all I had was a short passage about the Nannau oak while working on “Honest Labour.” To turn the tale into a children’s book, I wanted the story of the oak to be so much more than what happened on that fateful day in 1402, when Hywel Sele and Owain Glyndŵr went hunting, which is the tale that has long made the Nannau oak famous.

The longbows carried by Owain and Hywel on their hunt brought to mind an entirely different hunt – an Instagram post by Welsh stick chairmaker Chris Williams in which he was arm bow hunting with his daughter, Alice.

Couldn’t my main character, I thought, be a Welsh stick chairmaker’s daughter? Hence, Cadi.

I spent hours considering Welsh names. At the time, Cadi ranked No. 90 on a “popular names in Wales,” list. It’s one of the Welsh diminutives of Catrin (then ranked No. 82). Owain Glyndŵr had a daughter named Catrin, Catrin of Ferain (c. 1540-1591), a noblewoman known as “the mother of Wales.”

How do you connect a present-day character to a tree that no longer exists and an event that took place more than 600 years ago?

That’s one of the beauties of wood, and a good editor.

I discovered there were actual objects claimed to have been made from the Nannau oak, that still exist today, including some acorn-shaped cups (how fitting!). The acorn cup became the tie between past and present, and the reason for which the story of the Nannau oak was passed down to Cadi.

After reading my first draft it was Christopher Schwarz who told me that he expected a scene in which Cadi drank from the acorn cup. After seeing pictures of it, he asked, “How could anyone not?”

I researched the cup some more. According to Remy Dean, it had been said “that those who drank from the cups were plagued by ghostly apparitions and suffered nightmares for several nights afterward.”

Without giving too much away (the book is, after all, only 48 pages), Cadi, finds the cup, accidentally cracks it, drinks from the cup and hides it by stuffing it into her backpack.

There are two silver discs attached to the wooden sleeve of the cup. In my research, I discovered that there are inscriptions on each disc. One is an engraving of an oak tree with the words Ceubren yr Ellyll, and 1813. The other? A coat of arms and ASGRE LÂN DIOGEL EI PHERCHEN: a good conscience is the best shield.

How apt.

Sometimes, when I’m in the thick of a project, I lose sight of the obvious. Months had gone by when I realized I had forgotten that the four acorn cups also have four inscriptions or toasts. (You can learn more about them here.) By this point, “Cadi & the Cursed Oak” had become longer and a bit more complex; the Nannau oak was also representative of stories that are passed down through generations.

Cadi’s grandmother pulled out a small pile of acorns from her coat pocket.

“These acorns may be from the same tree. Or different trees. They might be related to the blasted oak, holding its stories within. But each acorn has a different story, depending on where it grew on the tree, what it witnessed, where it fell – what it will be. All you can do is gather and listen. All of it, the bad, the good, the mundane, the thrilling, it’s all part of the acorn’s truth. And with time, the stories can change. In fact, they almost always do.”

Now Cadi was mad. She didn’t understand why things had to be so complicated. She didn’t understand why some stories could be so scary. Or sad. She didn’t understand why she had to be the one to find the cup and she didn’t understand why the cup had to crack – she didn’t want it to crack, she didn’t mean for it to crack. And she didn’t understand why the spirits’ stories were haunting her so.

“The worst thing you can do,” her grandmother said, interrupting Cadi’s angry thoughts, “is hide a story that needs to be told.”

They walked back to the car park, mostly in silence. As Cadi climbed into the car, her grandmother turned to her.

“Sometimes,” her grandmother said, “I hear the cries, too.”

Suddenly, Cadi realized what she had to do.

I fully expected the second inscription on the acorn cup to be something about a toast for a birthday celebration (which was the reason the acorn cups were made). Imagine my delight when I discovered the transcription:

Lle gwreiddio y Fesen, Llwydded y Dderwen: the oak tree may succeed where the acorn takes root.

It fit the story, particularly the already-written end, so beautifully.

Near the end of the production of “Cadi & the Cursed Oak,” we hired Dr Iwan Wyn Rees, lecturer and director of the Cardiff Centre for Welsh American Studies, to edit and correct the transcriptions, and create a simple pronunciation guide for the 20+ Welsh words and phrases we have scattered throughout the text. He was so incredibly thorough and patient and wonderful to work with. Also, as if it were meant to be, he said he remembers his Nain (grandmother) telling him that her own Nain was head housekeeper at none other than — the Nannau estate.

“Cadi & the Cursed Oak” is at the printer and will be available for $19 hopefully sometime in March.

— Kara Gebhart Uhl

Stumps with Legs

Posted on by fitz
Three friends, all of red oak. The left stump (with a protective cover) is 25″ high; this is my favorite for hewing the exterior of a half-log bowl. The center stump is 28-1/2″ high – a sweet-spot compromise height (for my height). The right stump is 31″ high; it’s taller for spoon carving. The steel ring is for attaching a block knife. I like the rough-rived legs. The leg tenons are turned when the legs are air-dry.

The following is excerpted from “Country Woodcraft: Then and Now,” Drew Langsner’s revised and expanded edition of his 1978 book that helped to spark a movement (still expanding today) of hand-tool woodworkers who make things with mostly green wood. Among many other additions, it includes greatly expanded sections on building shavehorses, carving spoons and making green-wood bowls. One of the key tools for working with green wood is a chopping stump. Below is how Drew makes his.

Chopping stumps may seem so ordinary that even seasoned axe users never give them much thought. They’re just a chunk of a log, cut off more or less square, at whatever height happens to happen.

In Wood-Carving Land, chopping stumps are an honored member of the shop equipment. They are the pre-workbench workbench, especially for axe work.

There are several qualifiers that separate good stumps from the also-ran stumps. Height is the first consideration. Stumps should be tall enough that you don’t need to lean over with bad posture when hewing something small, like a spoon. And low enough that you can get a powerful swing when hewing something larger, as when shaping the exterior of a bowl. This means that you should probably have more than one shop stump.

Chopping stumps shouldn’t wobble – for safety and efficient use of energy. Freshly cut stumps are heavy – they’re about half water – and the surface can become chopped into uselessness quickly. You need to plan ahead.

The chopping surface should be free of abrasive detritus. When a sharp axe chops into a gritty surface, it quickly becomes dull, or even chipped at the cutting edge.

Most stump grit comes from the bottom of someone’s footwear. Almost everyone will rest a foot on a stump of the right height, or climb onto a stump to reach something on a high shelf. Keep your stumps covered with something like a plywood shoebox lid.

Stumps can be most any kind of log, with harder species preferred. Mine are red oak. Drying a stump takes time – years – so you’ll most likely be using your first stump while it’s wet and heavy. If drying happens too quickly the log might split – sometimes so badly that it becomes firewood. You can dry the log stored on its side, or on prop sticks to let air circulate underneath. Do this in a sheltered place, without direct wind or sun exposure.

The chopping surface can be roughened with chain saw scoring grooves, and/or a small and rough chain-sawn hollow. These provide places to hold the work steady for hewing.

I learned about stumps with legs while looking at photos of sabot (wooden shoe) makers’ long-handled block knives. Almost always, the stump is rather short, supported by three stout legs. So smart!

Stumps with legs are not only lighter weight – appreciated when you need to move one – but also more stable with the wide three-point base.

Making a stump with legs
You can go fancy, but I use rough-split legs with very little shaping. Ideally the stump and leg materials are split and left to dry before assembly. This will take more than a year. So, realistically, stumps with legs are often made using wet wood, with the hope that drying will be proportionate. If not, the legs will eventually come loose, but the fix isn’t difficult.

In the rough, the legs can be about 30″ long, and about 3″ across. Make them long, so that you’ll have options when it comes to determining the working height of the stump.

Cylindrical leg tenons are best made on a lathe. Tenon diameter can be 1″ to 1-1/2″, depending on what size auger is available. Tenon length is 2 -1/2″ to 3″. Don’t make the tenons too tight. They should be a tap-in fit. If a lathe isn’t available, follow the steps for carving cylindrical tenons in Chapter 15: Wheelbarrows.

The chopping surface on this stump has been scored with a chain saw. The grooves help to prevent slippage during hewing.

The leg mortises are bored into end-grain, so be ready to do some real work. You can use a bit and brace or an electric drill. The brace should have a 12″ sweep; the electric drill needs a 1/2″ chuck and a side handle to stop it from twisting you around.

Locate three drilling points on the bottom of the stump. They should more-or-less represent an equilateral triangle. Use a crayon or felt marker to draw sighting lines from the drilling locations to a common center point.

Angle the drill 12° to 15° from vertical, facing toward the center point. You may need to remove frass periodically as you drill. This depends on the type of auger.

After the legs are inserted, turn the stump over – so that it’s upright. Don’t worry about how it looks at this stage. Level the top surface by sliding low-angled wedges under two legs.

Decide on the height. Spoon-carving stumps are usually 30″ to 36″. Bowl-hewing stumps might be 26″ to 30″. Subtract the height of the desired stump from the height that it presently is. This is the amount of wood that will be removed from the bottom of the legs.

The next step is scribing from the floor to the cut-off, using the result from the little math exercise. You can do this scribing with a pencil placed on a block of wood of the suitable height. Or use a stout compass. Scribe around each leg.

Use a carpenter’s panel saw to saw off excess length at the scribed lines. To do this, make an effort to secure the leg well so that you can make an accurate, angled saw cut. A bench vise will sometimes work. Or use clamps, or your best friend.

Before starting the kerf, aim the saw so that it’s in alignment with the scribed lines on the other two legs. Because the stump has three legs, you don’t need to be concerned with making super-precise saw cuts.

On this stump, the legs were inserted before they were dry. Shrinkage has been compensated for by driving a row of small wedges into the resulting space. This repair isn’t beautiful to look at, but it will serve well

…One or two years later…The leg tenons may shrink more than the stump mortises, causing wobbling or even legs falling loose. If this happens, make up a batch of small wedges and tap them into the loose spaces where the leg tenons enter the bottom of the stump. (This is very funky coopering.) Be sure to have the legs orientated so that the foot trim angle is still flat on the floor. Use a little glue, also.

When you stop hewing, don’t leave the axe with the blade driven into the stump top. The axe could get knocked loose, and become a dangerous flying object. Also, this odious practice chops away the stump surface, destroying your pre-workbench workbench.

Don’t do this.