Lost Art Press

Auction for the Wood Whisperer: ‘With Hammer in Hand’

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When it comes to landmark books in the woodworking craft, it is hard to beat Charles Hummel’s “With Hammer in Hand.” This pioneering book chronicles the lives, tools and projects of the Dominy family from East Hampton, N.Y.

The Dominys were renowned clock makers, but they produced furniture of all kinds using a set of tools that is well documented in “With Hammer in Hand.” And what makes the Dominy collection even more notable is that the shop and many artifacts and finished furniture pieces are preserved at Winterthur.

There you can see all the shop’s patterns hanging on the wall and the resulting pieces below them. It is simply astonishing and a great field trip for any woodworker.

Hummel’s very important book about the Dominy family, their shop and their tools is a delight to read. It documents their work, their tools and the things they built – connecting the dots of a pre-Industrial workshop like no other work I know.

It is inspiring and humbling – the Dominys built amazing stuff using very simple (yet refined) tools and an impressive amount of skill.

“With Hammer in Hand” is long out of print and is becoming harder and harder to find. I bought my copy more than a decade ago for $50. Now the book goes for $120 to $200, easy.

To assist TheWoodWhisperer.com in his fight against a DDoS attack, one of our readers has generously offered up her extra copy of this book to benefit the Wood Whisperer.

Here are the terms: Bidding starts at $20. Place your bid by stating it in the comments below. The auction ends at midnight Friday, March 16 (EST). The highest bid wins the book. I’ll ship this book anywhere in the world – 100 percent of the proceeds go to benefit Marc and Nicole Spagnuolo.

— Christopher Schwarz

Unsolicited Praise for ‘Make a Joint Stool from a Tree’

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We never request reviews from woodworkers, magazines or fellow authors. And we don’t sling around free copies of our books in the hopes of hooking a review.

So when we get a review, it’s from someone who had to seek out the book and read it. We respect those reviews, whether they are positive or from Lumberjocks.com.

This week, we have received some nice notes from readers about “Make a Joint Stool from a Tree” by Jennie Alexander and Peter Follansbee. Here are a couple of note:

Good gracious what a wonderful book. I loved it! It has found a good home on my bookshelf between American Seating Furniture: 1630-1730 and American Furniture in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Volume 1, Early Colonial Period. The discussions are great and the photographs are priceless. The overall quality of the publication is spectacular.   This is a must read for anyone who studies early American furniture.  Now I cannot wait till your book on “Make a Chest from a Tree.”

Best wishes,
Erik Gronning
Sotheby’s New York
Vice President
American Furniture Department

My book arrived this morning. I’ve already commented on the content, of course, but I was pretty floored by the printing. The matte color is gorgeous – perfect for the material.  Understated.  Perfect.  

I’m going to assume you’ll get a good few complaints from people who think glossy coated papers = quality, but this is one of the nicest printed books I’ve ever seen. It’s quite close to what I would have imagined 18th c. color photography printing would have looked like. Had there been color printing, photography, or printing beyond type and litho blocks, that is.

You managed to really knock my socks off with the print on this.  It’s hard to impress so much with anything these days, much less get people to notice (and consider) the ink, paper, and techniques of printing. Quite a feat.

Raney Nelson
Daed Toolworks

We like the book, too! And we are eagerly awaiting Peter’s follow-up book on building and carving 17th-century chests, which is already in the works.

— Christopher Schwarz

On Forcing Yourself

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If it weren’t for my wife, Lucy, I’d probably live and work alone – without a phone and with as little direct human contact as possible.

Yup, Lucy had to ask me out on our first date. And yes, she had to ask for my hand in marriage.

During the last 20 years, I’ve tried to pretend to be more social. Why? Because it has helped my woodworking immensely.

As I’ve mentioned before, all of my ideas for books were the result of talking to other woodworkers about their tools, their workbenches and they way they work. And all the best things I have learned about the craft have come from watching other woodworkers build things – not a DVD, not on a computer screen but in their shop and in real time.

I was reminded of this last night while installing hardware on this Campaign Secretary. I’d dusted off my plunge router to waste away a bunch of wood for a piece of brass in a prominent place on the secretary. Everything was going great until my hand slipped and the bit flew into a place it wasn’t supposed to. In about a second, I had made a dime-sized major error on one of the most visible surfaces of this piece.

I unplugged the router, carefully wrapped the cord around it and returned it to the bottom of a drawer for another two-year shunning. Dang I hate those spinny tools.

Now, how to fix the error? The answer was easy, thanks to my friendship with Carl Bilderback. Carl is a semi-retired carpenter, tool collector, woodworker and all-around generous fellow. We first met when he called to give me some grief about an error in one of my tool reviews. Despite the fact that he was ripping me a new one, he was gentle about it. And he became an excellent resource for me on hand work and an occasional author for Popular Woodworking Magazine.

Carl had written a piece on how to make a “dutchman” – a patch used to disguise an error such as this. Patching other people’s mistakes was one of his specialties as a carpenter. The article, “Perfect Patching,” is in the February 2008 issue on page 76 if you’d like to read it. I took the photos for the article and was his editor.

It’s a brilliant article, and Carl’s knowledge and willingness to share it really saved my butt. In about 15 minutes I had glued in a patch. Then I went to dinner with a fellow woodworker where I confessed my crimes (“Forgive me Norm, for I have sinned”). When I came home I leveled the patch and went back to work – this time removing waste with a firmer gouge instead of a router. Thanks Carl.

So where exactly is the repair? I’m not telling. It’s my job to hide it. It’s your job to find it.

— 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

Second Printing of ‘The Joiner & Cabinet Maker’

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We are just about to run out of copies of “The Joiner & Cabinet Maker” and are ordering a second printing. We have compliled a list of typographical errors that we want to correct in the second printing. If you have found any grammatical or factual errors, please send them to chris@lostartpress.com, and you will have my gratitude.

The other news on “The Joiner & Cabinet Maker” is that we hope to issue an audiobook of the original text of the fictional tale of young Thomas and bumbling Sam. This would be offered as a download for $8 (or so) or an audiobook CD for $12.

I first got the idea to do the audiobook from Roy Underhill. He suggested doing the book as a short film and casting Megan Fitzpatrick as the love interest for Thomas. Wait, I don’t remember Sally being Thomas’s love interest.

Anyway, after Roy’s suggestion, I was approached by a reader who asked if he could record the book on tape for a class of autistic children. He thought the tale and the associated handwork to build the packing box would be valuable to the students.

And that made me think that perhaps an audiobook might be fun for everyone.

Stay tuned.

— Christopher Schwarz