Ohio Book finished binding up copies of the third printing of “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest” this morning. I picked them up a few minutes ago and will ship them out Priority Mail for all the people who ordered them.
We actually have a couple extra copies with this run. We always send some extra book blocks to Ohio Book to make sure we have 26 in the end. So if you still want one, you can order it in our store.
As always, the work from Ohio Book is gorgeous, and we are proud to support this family-run institution in Cincinnati.
Any minute now I’m going to develop a complex regarding my undecorated tool chest. It’s pine on the inside and black on the outside. The only eye candy is a 3/16” bead on the skirt, plus the bumps and bruises inflicted on the chest these last 13 months.
No doubt some of you have seen what Peter Follansbee has been doing to his chest.
You can read all about the painting process on Peter’s blog. There’s a piece on period designs he used to inspire his work. Plus these two illustrated posts that show the painting process here and here.
And of course, there is some carving on the inside.
There are other ways to tart up your tool chest (and “tart” is not a bad word in my lexicon). Andy Brownell at Brownell Furniture has been building a traveling-size tool chest recently using some sweet walnut.
Note the bottom boards and the strategic placement of the sap. Very nice. Also worth noting are Andy’s shots of the chest loaded with tools – you can get a lot of stuff into this slightly smaller chest. He covers tool placement and organization in this post.
And do check out this post to see how his chain makes mine look like a Hello Kitty necklace.
And finally, Megan Fitzpatrick showed up at my door on Friday with the child’s tool chest shown at the top of this post that she picked up at a local auction. Likely from the 1920s, the chest has an awesome decal on the inside of the lid, complete with an eagle.
One of the little scenes on the decal shows a young boy holding a wooden hobby horse talking to an older boy holding a hatchet. I’m not sure what they are supposed to be doing, but I imagine the end result was like a scene from “The Godfather.”
The toy chest is missing its till, but it came with some of the tools, including the hatchet.
In a few weeks I head down to Roy Underhill’s school in North Carolina to teach a class in building tool chests. We are all going to use poplar, and I am contemplating some sort of decoration for the interior panel of my lid. Perhaps a pair of painted dividers a la the Lost Art Press logo, or a buxom barbarian woman holding a bloody dismembered head.
Peter Follansbee was sitting next to me at some crazy high-end pizza restaurant I’d found for us in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., and we were waiting for planemaker Matt Bickford to arrive.
I had two goals for the night. No, three. One: Eat some good pizza. Two, seal the deal with Bickford to publish his forthcoming book on moulding planes (stay very tuned). And three, try to open the door with Follansbee so he might publish something with Lost Art Press some day.
My strategy: Get Follansbee totally high on beer and animal-flesh pizza.
Then Peter notified me in a kind way that he neither drinks nor eats animals.
Well, crap.
Somehow I was able to keep his attention during the meal and make my case for the way we publish books at Lost Art Press. It’s really quite bass-ackwards compared to the rest of the publishing industry, but that’s not the point of this story.
Within a month or so, we’d made a deal to publish the long-awaited follow-up to John Alexander’s “Make a Chair from a Tree.” This new book, “Make a Joint Stool from a Tree,” had been in the works for more than 20 years. Follansbee and Alexander (now Jennie Alexander) have been corresponding and visiting and traveling together for more than two decades to piece together how furniture was built in the 17th century.
When I entered the picture last year they had a preliminary manuscript and photos that spanned the years.
So the question at hand was: Could this be a book?
The answer: Holy cow. Absolutely.
“Make a Joint Stool from a Tree” is like no other woodworking book ever published. It breaks new ground with every page. It shows you things you’ve never seen before. It will change the way you think about wood and woodworking.
Follansbee and Alexander are as unlikely a pair as you will ever find. Alexander is a retired attorney who has been working wood as an enthusiastic woodworking amateur for a lifetime. Alexander’s first book, “Make a Chair from a Tree,” is a certifiable cult classic. Long out of print for reasons too insane to go into here, the book has inspired generations of woodworkers, including people like Brian Boggs, to become woodworkers.
It is almost impossible to overstate the influence of that book.
Follansbee was Alexander’s student who sold all his power tools and became a professional hand-tool joiner at Plimoth Plantation. He was a terminally shy man who became one of the most engaging public speakers I’ve ever seen.
Their work together has produced a book that we hope will be in print forever. The first printing is in the works now and will be shipping at the end of February. It is a different kind of book for Lost Art Press. It is oversized (9” x 12”), in full color and with a heavy dust jacket.
It’s is being printed at a high-end publisher in Michigan as I type, and it is going to cost some serious coin for us to make when compared to the printers in Hong Kong.
But we figured: What the heck? We might have only one chance to do this right so we might as well go all the way.
You can read more about the book in our store by following this link. If you order the book before the release date of Feb. 27 we will pick up the shipping cost. Some people would call that “free shipping for pre-orders,” but not us. What’s a pre-order?
One last thing: I hate to sound like a tool, but you might want to order now. In the last 24 hours we have sold one-third of the first press run.
P.S. Other retailers that will be carrying this book include Lee Valley Tools, Tools for Working Wood, Lie-Nielsen Toolworks and ShopWoodworking.com – the store of F+W Media. We’ll announce more outlets as they sign on.
This post might not seem like it’s about woodworking. But really, it is.
For almost 10 years, I worked with Linda Watts, who was the art director for Popular Woodworking Magazine and the ill-fated Woodworking Magazine. She came to us on the recommendation of Nick Engler, who had hired her for his company, Bookworks. It was Bookworks that published the Workshop Companion series of books, which were crazy runaway bestsellers in the how-to category of books.
Before that, Linda had been the founding designer for Hands On! magazine at Shopsmith.
Which is to say that no one I know has more experience with woodworking publishing than Linda Watts. She was publishing woodworking magazines and books when I was still in (ahem) puberty.
And I know why she has been in the business for so long. She is pure backbone – my highest compliment. (What does that make me? The spleen, I think.)
In publishing, it’s always the designers who have to make up for the late authors and the slow editors, photographers and illustrators. In the 10 years I worked with Linda, we never missed a press deadline as far as I know. And the reason was that Linda would work like a demon to ensure every story was laid out, looked good and was press-ready.
When I twice said I wanted to redesign the magazine, Linda didn’t blink or even raise her eyebrows. She just did it – without the help of expensive outside consultants. And every time she reworked her previous design work, she managed to make it look even better.
She is impeccably organized and neat – as is her design work. My cubicle was next to hers for many years, and I always felt like the Oscar Madison to her Felix Unger.
But most of all, Linda was always unflappable. She took withering criticism without as much as a twitch. She never complained about her work load, the fact that editors rarely met deadlines or our questionable grammar (she’s a damn-good copy editor, too).
So today was a hard day for all of us who know Linda.
F+W Media Inc. laid her off during a company reorganization. Her last day is Friday, so a bunch of Popular Woodworking employees and alums took her out to lunch today. Through most of the lunch the group kept up with some lighthearted chatter. But as we neared the end of the meal, the table fell silent for Linda to speak.
She couldn’t. She started a couple times and managed to say: “When I moved down here you guys became my family. I feel like I’m losing my family.”
My drive home from that lunch was tough. I can’t believe that someone as skilled and easy to work with could ever be laid-off, dismissed or fired. If it weren’t for Linda, Popular Woodworking Magazine would not be the fine publication that it is today. It might not have actually come out seven times a year if it weren’t for Linda’s hard work. And it definitely wouldn’t have looked as good.
So thank you, Linda. You will be missed at the artistic helm of Popular Woodworking Magazine.
But this story does have a hopeful ending. I think you can look for Linda Watts’s name on several upcoming Lost Art Press books.
— Christopher Schwarz
From left: David Thiel, Megan Fitzpatrick, Kara Gebhart-Uhl, Linda Watts, Brian Roeth, Al Parrish, Steve Shanesy, Bob Lang and Glen Huey
I love black walnut (Juglans nigra), but walnut does not love us.
Sure, we all know that walnut is bad for horses – stables will not accept the shavings for bedding. Plus, walnut sawdust is not so good for mulch or bedding for plants.
It can be used with malice. I know a furniture maker who makes cooking spoons with walnut for customers – a gift! – who have been extreme pains in his tukus. Walnut can have laxative properties when it comes in contact with food.
Me, I dislike walnut from the inside. My insides.
Some time during the summer I got some nasty walnut splinters in my left hand. I don’t remember the trauma, but the surgeon had the proof. The walnut got under my skin and a bunch of scar tissue formed around the fragments.
A hand surgeon took out the splinters and scar tissue on Wednesday. Now I have to learn to cut dovetails with a massive splint and bandage around my finger. Stupid walnut.
