Lost Art Press

Free Shipping Now Available on ‘Mouldings in Practice’

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After years of publishing woodworking information, you often hear that there is nothing new in the craft. Everything has been done before, written before and fully figured out.

I used to believe that was true, until I read the manuscript that was to become “Mouldings in Practice” by Matthew Sheldon Bickford. This books explains how to make mouldings in a simple way that I have never ever encountered – either in print or from an instructor.

The book turns a set of complicated mouldings into a series of predictable rabbets and chamfers that guide your hollow and round planes to make anything – anything – that has been made in the past or that you can envision for your future projects.

During the last several months, we had many proofreaders edit this book and the universal reaction was much like this:

“Well crap. Now I want to buy some of these stupid planes.”

During the past 14 months, Matt and I have been working to make “Mouldings in Practice” into a book that is accessible for even the beginning hand-tool woodworker. It uses more than 200 color illustrations and dozens of photos to explain how to lay out, prepare for and cut any moulding you can draw.

The first half of the book is focused on how to make the tools function, including the tools that help the hollow and round planes – such as the plow and the rabbet. Matt also covers snipes bills and side rounds so you know their role in making mouldings. Once you understand how rabbets and chamfers guide the rounds and chamfers, Matt shows you how to execute the mouldings for eight very sweet Connecticut River Valley period projects using photos and step-by-step illustrations and instruction.

The book has a full index by Suzanne Ellison (the saucy indexer for “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest”), plus appendices on fixing up old moulding planes, building a sticking board and how to capture moulding profiles in the wild.

This book is, by far, the most complex thing we have published here at Lost Art Press, thanks to the hundreds of illustrations, photographs and geometry involved. Like all our books, “Mouldings in Practice” has been produced entirely in the United States. It has color illustrations with black-and-white photos, and it is printed on #60 white uncoated and acid-free paper. The pages are Smythe sewn to last a long time. And the book is hardbound and covered with cotton. Old school.

You can buy the book now for $37 with free domestic shipping from now until the book arrives from the Michigan printing plant in early August. After the book arrives in our warehouse (read, basement) the book will be $37 plus shipping.

As a bonus, everyone who orders this book through Lost Art Press will also receive an instant download of E.J. Warne’s book “Furniture Mouldings.” We acquired an excellent copy of this hard-to-find book and created a top-notch scan. The book is a collection of full-scale mouldings from historic furniture pieces. It is the perfect companion to “Mouldings in Practice.”

After you check out you’ll get a link to download Warne’s book.

To order the book, click here.

— Christopher Schwarz

P.S. I forgot to mention: The book will be available in ePub, Kindle and leather-bound editions later this summer. More details to follow.

6-Board Chests – the How and Why

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If you subscribe to modern theories of wood movement, then most of the six-boards chests out there should have exploded into a pile of splinters, lace doilies and purple heart medals.

They are, after all, the platypus of the woodworking world. They shouldn’t exist with all their crazy cross-grain construction, nails, poisonous fangs and wide solid-wood panels. But yet, there they are – in almost every museum, attic and Americana collection.

For the last couple years I’ve been collecting data, photos and crazy ideas about pieces both antique and new that I call “The Furniture of Necessity.” And the six-board chest has been a particular source of fascination for me.

I’ve built several of these chests before, but always with the machinery mindset guiding my hand. All the panels had to be square. All the ends shot straight. All the joinery referenced off these machinist-like edges.

I can almost guarantee you that is not how these chests were built originally.

Inspired by “The Joiner and Cabinet Maker” and the work of Jennie Alexander and Peter Follansbee in “Make a Joint Stool from a Tree,” I have spent the last few months attempting to decode these chests.

And when I write “decode,” I’m talking about the step-by-step procedures that were used to build them entirely by hand. It starts, like every good story (Kon-tiki!), with some ideas and some big trees.

Here are some basic ideas I’m exploring while building a few of these chests:

1. Did the design flow from the width of the boards available? If so, what would be the approach you would use to make a chest with, say, a 17”-wide board?

2. How were the boards cut to length and width in the shop to make the most of the material and use up the minimum amount of wood?

3. What were the steps to ensure that there was the absolute minimum ripping and fussy tweaking required to get all the pieces to the correct size?

4. How were these chests assembled with the minimum number of tools? How were they done without shooting boards?

5. How were the chests assembled to make it easy for one woodworker to do it alone?

6. Why would the maker choose certain features and joints exhibited on different kinds of chests? Some have rabbets. Some have dados. Some have notched ends.

I don’t expect to come up with definitive answers, but I do have some interesting theories to test as I build these chests with the minimum number of tools, operations and time at hand. And you’ll get to follow along. Next week I’m going to build one of these chests for a new forthcoming DVD from Lie-Nielsen Toolworks that will explore these ideas and – I hope – show how durable and beautiful furniture can be built with a handful of tools and a short amount of time.

— Christopher Schwarz

What a Valuable Waste

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This is about woodworking. You’ll just have to wait for it.

When I edit a book or a magazine article, I always feel shame during the process. Despite all the electronic tools available to me, I have to print the entire book at several stages of the process and work on what we call the “hard copy.”

It is a wasteful process. For example, Matt Bickford’s new book, “Mouldings in Practice,” is more than 250 pages. I think I’ve printed it out at least five times in the last six months. The printouts will get run through the printer again, and then they will be recycled. But still, that is a lot of paper, energy and waste.

I make these printouts because it helps my editing. Changing the format – from electronic to paper – makes me see the words differently. I always find things that I just couldn’t see on the screen. It could be the gestalt of the elements on the page. (You hear that Clem? He said “gestalt.”) I find things that don’t line up. I find enormous errors that I’ve been blind to for months – last night Megan Fitzpatrick (also a dirty paper waster) found a doosie in Matt’s book that everyone has been looking at for three months.

Plus I find more typos and little stuff. For me, paper is magic. I’ve tried changing the format to a tablet or a different computer, and it doesn’t help as much as printing the sucker out and going at it with a pen.

What does this have to do with woodworking? Lots. As I’ve mentioned before, “The map is not the territory.” Your scaled drawing is not the same thing as a full-size drawing, a mock-up or the real piece of furniture. You will see things – problems and triumphs – at every stage you choose to go through. But nothing – nothing – compares to the final product.

Which is why there are still typos in books after 20 people edit them. Because the territory is the territory. The book is the book. The secretary is the secretary.

— Christopher Schwarz

Wordworking

Posted on by Lost Art Press

At my first newspaper job, I hated the 2 p.m. mail call. That was when Reese Fant would separate all the day’s mail into the black cubbyholes for the reporters. More days than not, I received a postcard.

The postcards were from a retired high-school English teacher, and just about every day she had some withering comment to make about my grammar, word choice, style (or lack of it).

I hated those postcards at first.

I think you know where this story is going, but I think you’re wrong. The natural story arc is for me to recognize the importance of word precision and embrace the subtleties and nuances of the English language and become an evangelist for its proper use.

Truth is, I hated those postcards at first, and within a couple years I came to absolutely loathe them. In fact, I actively rejected my fine Northwestern University-honed journalism education to write in a coarser style to see if I could cause this retired teacher to burst a blood vessel.

I know this sounds messed up from a person who trades in words, but I am far more interested in meaning over the veneer of style.

This attitude was reinforced when I was introduced to the world of professional cabinetmakers. Before my first photo shoot with one of them, I can remember studying everything I could about the joinery nomenclature that was particular to fine cabinet work.

The next day, here is what I learned.

1. Everything is a “rail.” Table aprons? Rails. Leg stretchers? Rails? Mediary stiles? Rails. Muntins? Rails. Mullions? Again, rails. And on and on. Rail, rail, rail. Did this diminish his work? No. Did it diminish my understanding of his work? No, again.

2. Everything is a “groove.” Dado? Nope, groove. Rabbet? Bzzst! Groove. Cross-grain rabbet (a fillister?). Groove again. A long mortise? Yup, a groove.

3. Every operation is “run.” Crosscut? No — run a cut. Rip? Run that to 7”. Mould an edge? Run the edge? Cut the tenon? Run the tenon. Run was the only operation. And when you make furniture for a living, you have to run, period.

Why am I telling you all this?

Today I read an interesting book, “The Wrought Covenant,” from the Brockton Art Center, which was recommended to me by Peter Follansbee. It’s a gold mine of information on early furniture, but one of the essays had the following statement:

“We should further the retrieval of a proper seventeenth-century furniture typology by referring even to the individual parts of each form as much as possibly by their correct period name and placement; if we are to enter the craftsman’s world and his community aesthetic, we must learn their organization from his point of view, not ours.”

This stuff really makes me crazy. On the one hand, using words in a precise manner makes it easier to talk about things across a distance, such as when using the Internet. On the other hand, the language divides us. We discount people who haven’t learned the precise words for a haunch or a bolection.

Well, screw that.

If the meaning is clear, we are cool. Period. If the work is solid, we are cool. I am not silently correcting your grammar or word choice. I don’t give a poo if you don’t call it a dado or a micro-bevel or a “land.” In the end, anyone who becomes immersed in the craft will get the hang of the lingo. But until then, to quote one of the best movies ever, “Lighten up Francis.”

— Christopher Schwarz