Lost Art Press

The Dirty Secret of Woodworking Publishing

Posted on by Lost Art Press

If you want to make good money writing woodworking books, you don’t need a lot of skills, tools or primo wood. You don’t need to know a lot of joinery or be a particularly good finisher. You don’t even really need a workshop.

During my 14 years at F+W Publications, I did a long stint as a contributing editor to the now-dead Woodworkers Book Club. As part of the job I had to read about 70 woodworking books every year and review them for the club’s bulletin. And I learned an awful lot about what makes a woodworking book sell by poring over the monthly financials.

Beautiful furniture projects do not sell. Books on building your skills don’t sell much. Books about wood and its properties – no sale. Books on hand work? Nope.

The woodworking books that make real money are birdhouse books. They outsell other kinds of woodworking books about three-to-one.

While this surprised me at first, it makes a lot of sense. Birdhouse books appeal to the non-woodworker, the dead-nuts beginner, the Boy Scout troop leader and the birder, to name a few. And they appeal to me as well.

I’ve seen a lot of crazy birdhouse books. Sure, there are lots of books out there that try to build houses actually intended for birds that pay attention to wood selection, house placement, opening size, etc. And then there are the ones that look like Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater or a giant uterus.

I’ve always wanted to write a birdhouse book – one of the crazy ones, of course. My first inclination was to build birdhouses while channeling a famous furniture-maker:

“James Krenov Crafts Houses for Birds” – All the birdhouses would be chests on a stand, have gorgeous dovetails and be made from olive wood. And they would be too nice to put outside.

“G%$#@& Birdhouses by Gary Knox Bennett” – All the birdhouses would be covered in bent nails and roach clips.

“Sam Maloof, Birdhouse Builder” – All the birdhouses would be rocking chairs.

And so on.

Well one night my wife, Lucy, and I had a little too much wine to drink at dinner and we started brainstorming ideas for the most ridiculous birdhouse book we could think of.

The title: Killer Birdhouses
The concept: Birdhouses made to look like things that normally kill birds.
The projects: Birdhouses in the shape of a…

Blender
Frying pan
Sliding-glass Door
Oscillating Table Fan
Cat Mouth
Shotgun
Jet Engine
Stump and a Hatchet
Worms with a Cannon (my favorite!)
ICBM
Oven
Bucket of KFC Chicken

That reminds me, I need to get Lucy a fresh box of wine. We need to come up with some more book ideas.

— Christopher Schwarz

Failed Experiments in Dovetailing

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Perhaps I should just learn to listen to my body. My best ideas come to me in the shower. My worst ones come while I’m in bed.

This one popped into my head as I was drifting off to sleep this week. Lots of people have seen Frank Klausz’s special bowsaw blade where the toothline switches from 0° to 90° over the space of an inch. The blade allows you to saw out the waste quite quickly.

See the blade in action in this video.

There’s also a rare Harvey Peace saw that does this same basic thing. I snapped these photos of one belonging to Carl Bilderback.

So my crazy idea was to tweak a coping saw or fretsaw blade to do the same thing. I would bend the blade using two pliers so the toothline would change its axis. Then I would drop the vertical section of the blade into my kerf and then push the saw so the horizontal teeth would do the cutting.

Simple, right?

Simply stupid. First I did this with a high-quality Olson coping saw blade. If you bend the blade with the pliers too close together, the steel can rip. And it’s game over. If the pliers are too far apart, then the toothline changes its axis too slowly and the teeth won’t bite. Game overer.

So I fiddled with it until I got the teeth to turn 90° over about 1/16” of an inch. When I put the blade to work, the whole thing went to pot. When I pushed the saw forward (or pulled it back, I tried it both ways), the horizontal teeth didn’t engage much at all. Instead, the kerf in the wood tended to bend the blade just as well as the pliers had. Yup, wood defeats steel in this instance. I could baby the teeth into engaging the side of the waste, but it was impossibly slow.

Then I decided to try something else, and this new tactic seemed promising.

What if I tool a spiral fretsaw blade and “de-spiraled” about 1” of the blade? So I’d have a 1”-long section that was .010” thick. I would drop that section to the bottom of the sawkerf, then push forward and the spiral teeth would engage the waste. I could cut out my waste right along the baseline. Brilliant!

Nope. Have you ever unwound a spiral blade? I got pretty good at it after about 10 attempts. It doesn’t take too long — less than a minute for a blade.

Almost turgid with excitement, I loaded the blade into my fretsaw. It dropped to the bottom of the kerf and pushed forward. Ting! The blade snapped.

I tried another. Ting! Ting! Ting!

My guess: Unwinding the steel blade fatigued the blade. Hmmm, perhaps I could convince a blade manufacturer to make a batch of blades with 1” of the blade unspiraled?

Or instead, I reasoned, I could stop mucking around and finish this dovetailed carcase for the traveling Campaign Bookcase I’m building.

But then I realized that I was already done. During all the experimenting I had cut eight tail boards and eight pin boards.

I need a shower.

— Christopher Schwarz

Now Shipping: The Third Printing of ‘The Anarchist’s Tool Chest’

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On Friday we sold the last beige copy of the second printing of “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest” and are now shipping the charcoal third printing, which includes a full index and a slightly extended ending.

The page count is now 494 pages, but the price remains $37 plus shipping.

The new printing is also on its way to our retailers. Yesterday I shipped 612 pounds of this book to Lee Valley. (Note to self: Write shorter, lighter books.) Plus 200 pounds to Highland Hardware.

One final note: All the copies that we sell through our store are autographed. I’m only mentioning this because we get this question a lot.

The third printing of “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest” is available here in our store.

— Christopher Schwarz

Sold out: Slightly Damaged Copies of ‘The Anarchist’s Tool Chest’

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We have a box of slightly damaged copies of “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest” from the first two printings that we are offering at the reduced price of $18 plus shipping.

The damage to these copies is cosmetic: A corner was bruised during manufacturing or shipping, there is a small tear to the cotton cover, or a drip of glue from the bindery.

All the copies are 100 percent readable.

All the copies are also marked as damaged with a green marker across the bottom. All sales are final on these copies. We have only 14 damaged copies. Once they are gone, they are gone.

Update: We are sold out of the damaged copies.

— Christopher Schwarz