Lost Art Press

Category: Woodworking Classes

Two Spots Open in the Workbench Class

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Two students had to drop out of my workbench-building class at the Marc Adams School of Woodworking that starts Tuesday, April 10. If you’ve ever wanted a massive Roubo-style workbench and can take the time off from work, here’s your chance.

We’re building an 8’-long French-style workbench with old-school joinery and big 6 x 6 beams of beautiful Douglas Fir that I just chainsawed to length yesterday. This stuff is free of pith, kiln-dried and quite clear. It’s going to make some beautiful workbenches.

These benches will accommodate just about any kind of vises. Many of the students will be adding Benchcrafted tail vises and leg vises to their benches. Others will be using wooden-screw leg vises and a quick-release vise for the tail vise. This bench design can handle almost any kind of hardware that’s available.

But best of all: We will actually finish the benches. At most workbench classes you’re lucky to get the top assembled. When you drive away after five days you’ll have an assembled bench (or if you need to assemble it at home because of transportation issues, you’ll have all the parts ready to go).

If you are interested, contact Paula at the Marc Adams school at 317-535-4013 and she will get you signed up.

— Christopher Schwarz

Come See Lost Art Press at 2 Lie-Nielsen Hand Tool Events

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Lost Art Press will be exhibiting at two of the Lie-Nielsen Hand Tool events this spring: March 30-31 at the Popular Woodworking Magazine shop, and April 20-21 at Jeff Miller’s shop in Chicago.

Click here for show details.

We will have all of our books with us, of course, and perhaps a tool chest or two to show off. At the Cincinnati event I likely will bring along the finished Campaign Secretary I’ve been building – but that depends on how much hauling capacity we will have.

We attend these events every year because they are a fantastic and free way for people to get hand tool instruction and advice. There is no hard-sell by Lie-Nielsen whatsoever. They simply have all the tools out for you to use, and they offer instruction in how to sharpen, set-up and use them.

Lie-Nielsen also invites other toolmakers, publishers and instructors to exhibit at these events. Daed Toolworks will be at the event in Cincinnati, as will Glen-Drake Toolworks, Blue Spruce, Czeck Edge and Chuck Bender from Acanthus Workshop.

The Chicago event will feature Elkhead Tools, the boys from Benchcrafted, Glen-Drake and Daed Toolworks.

If you haven’t been to one of these events, I highly recommend you find one in your area and plan a day to just hang out and soak up the information. Ask Kevin Drake of Glen-Drake Tool Works to show you how he cuts dovetails (it’s cool). Ask Deneb Puchalski of Lie-Nielsen to show you how he uses toothed blades to prep stock (also cool). Then try the tools out yourself.

We hope to see you at one of these shows.

— Christopher Schwarz

Today, I Made a Stick

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On days like today, I wonder how many more times I can teach a class on building The Anarchist’s Tool Chest.

On Friday, I finished up a five-day class where I and 10 students built a tool chest entirely by hand, the only way I like to build them. It was a fantastic class. (View a Flickr set here.) They were good students – not a single jerk in the group. They worked until they dropped, and we all had a good laugh and a beer at the City Tap after class each day.

Plus Roy Underhill provided instruction, entertainment and popsicles through the week. It sounds like heaven, and it was. So what the heck is my problem?

Today I taught the first day of a two-day class at the Woodcraft store in Atlanta (in Roswell, Ga., in truth) and today we made a stick. OK, we actually made three sticks. First we made a lone stick (a straightedge), then we made a pair of sticks (winding sticks). Tomorrow we’ll make “stick in a stick” (a try square) and “stick through a stick” (a marking gauge).

No massive 75-pound carcases that needed to be lugged around. No dovetailing the end of every board that crossed your bench. No endless sharpening of your chopping chisels. No giant bowl of ibuprofen.

Instead, the 10 students at the Woodcraft focused today on removing the right shavings from the right places on these 30”-long sticks. I had to lift some shavings from the floor at one time during the day, but I’ll survive.

It’s funny how a small project, such as a wooden layout tool, can be a welcome relief after a vigorous but totally energizing and then draining project such as a tool chest. I better enjoy this while I can. When I return home to Kentucky on Monday night I’ll have 17 days to finish up a secretary for a photo shoot.

— Christopher Schwarz

Where Are My Turning Tools?

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Today Roy Underhill and I got ready to tape two episodes for the next season of PBS’s “The Woodwright’s Shop.” As the sun started to set over Pittsboro, N.C., we realized that we needed to turn down a spindle so we could thread it on camera.

No problem. Roy’s school has nice Barnes treadle lathes. Plenty of wood. And Roy.

“Hmmm. Now where are my turning tools?” Roy asked.

It turns out that his lathe tools were at home. Without skipping a beat, Roy picked up some bench chisels and started turning down the spindle.

This, of course, attracted onlookers who were wandering by the school.

Now all we have to do is rehearse. Roy’s show is taped live. No do-overs. Ugh. Time for a beer.

— Christopher Schwarz

Anarchy in the N.C.!

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For the next 10 days my blog posts will be erratic and fueled by barbecue, beer and fatigue. If you e-mail me during the next fortnight, my response is liable to be brief, odd or not forthcoming.

Why? I drive to North Carolina tomorrow to tape two episodes of “The Woodwright’s Shop” with Roy Underhill, then teach a five-day class on building “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest” at The Woodwright’s School and then teach a two-day class at the Atlanta Woodcraft on building the essential marking and measuring tools.

Then I will take a long nap. Actually, that nap thing is a lie. When I get back from my Southern tour I’ll be unloading almost 6,000 pounds of “Make a Joint Stool from a Tree” books and then packing up all the pre-publication orders we’ve received (thank you, kind reader) and taking them to the post office.

Then a nap? No. Then I have to finish this Campaign Secretary that has to be completed by March 15 for Popular Woodworking Magazine.

So all this is my way of saying: If you try to reach me during the next month and I don’t respond, it’s not because your smell offends me.

Thanks in advance for your understanding.

— Christopher Schwarz