Katy is thilled by Drayton Hall outside Charleston
We are closing the Lost Art Press warehouse (my basement) for the Thanksgiving holiday. So any orders placed after 3 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 22, will not be mailed until Monday.
My family and I are headed to Charleston, S.C., for Thanksgiving, which I am certain will involve grits, beer and long walks along the Battery.
The other good news is that I’d like to welcome Highland Hardware as one of our retailers for “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest.” We are cautious about who we work with, but when we were approached by Highland Hardware, it was a no-brainer.
I used to visit the store every other year when I had to attend the International Woodworking Fair in Atlanta, Ga., and I also stopped by several times on my way through the city. Highland Hardware is where I first met Roy Underhill about 1996 or 1997. He won’t remember it.
Roy was giving a demonstration on turning at the store and I was just too star-struck and shy to even introduce myself.
In any case, Highland Hardware is one of the more influential independent stores that have always gone the extra mile to keep the craft alive, especially handwork. I bought many of my hand tools there, and the staff has always been friendly and patient.
I got to meet Chris Bagby, the owner, this year at Woodworking in America, and I now have plans to teach down there in early 2013.
Right now Highland Hardware (aka Highland Woodworking) is stocking “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest”; click here to visit their store.
Earlier this year, amateur woodworker Rob Thomas made a bold decision – to learn hand-tool woodworking using “The Joiner & Cabinet Maker” from 1839 as a road map.
And to hold his nose to the grindstone (and ensure he had the tools to do it) he started a campaign on Kickstarter.com to fund his tool and material purchases in exchange for items as small as a patch (see above) and as large as the full-on chest of drawers.
What’s Kickstarter? Visit Rob’s page here to read all about it.
Since launching his Kickstarter.com campaign, Rob has been busy building packing boxes – the first project from “The Joiner & Cabinet Maker.” Most readers skip right to “The Schoolbox” in the book, a sweet little dovetailed chest.
I think those people are missing out. The Packing Box project has four critical lessons that will enlighten any hand-tool woodworker.
1. Many times the ends of your stock can be left long in nailed work and then trimmed square after assembly. Yup, you don’t four-square everything before assembly. When I first learned this detail, I slapped my forehead repeatedly.
2. You learn how to make rub joints with hot hide glue. No clamps.
3. You learn to use cut nails in carcase construction. Cut nails are awesome.
4. You learn to clinch/clench nails.
When I started working with my daughter Katy on woodworking, the first project we built together was The Packing Box, which we sized to hold the DVDs for her class at school.
I encourage you to bookmark Rob’s blog, The Joiner’s Apprentice, to follow him as he builds his way through “The Joiner & Cabinet Maker.” It’s quite interesting to watch his thought processes and see the results.
And Speaking of Inspiration…
Since I first read about Kickstarter.com I’ve been thinking of starting a campaign to help fund the purchase of the Lost Art Press LLC headquarters. As some of you know, I’ve been actively hunting for 19th-century buildings in Covington, Ky., to house our book inventory (which has completely filled our basement and storage shed), house our workshop, mailing facilities and provide for a storefront for our publishing activities.
And on Tuesday, my dream building came on the market.
It’s the Covington Brewery Building, an Italianate building with three storefronts and six apartments above, all in pretty good shape. The building was the headquarters for the John Brenner Brewing Co. in Covington. And it was part of a long-gone campus of brewing facilities on Scott Street in Covington.
The price? Less than $200,000.
I’ve been working on selling the idea to my wife, Lucy, but she is the far more rational person in our relationship.
My plan is to offer classes in building custom workbenches and tool chests as part of the Kickstarter campaign. She (wisely) worries about the maintenance on such a huge building.
In any case, Rob Campbell has inspired me to grab the dice and shake them in my hands. We’ll see if I actually roll them.
Last night I uploaded the files for the third press run of “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest” to our printing company. Production began this morning (our printer works crazy hours, too).
As mentioned earlier, this press run of the book will contain an index at the back. This is the index developed by Suzanne “Minion” Ellison, and actually is fun to read. In addition to the traditional index, Suzanne also developed an index to all the photos in the book, a list of people mentioned in the text and two pages of quotes from the book that she thought were notable.
I laid out the pages for the index this weekend and got to use some photographs in it I have been eager to publish – these are pictures I took of John Sindelar’s collection this spring. (No, my high-resolution photos of the naked mermaid brace are not among them. If you want a naked mermaid brace, drop me a line. I know the guy who makes them.)
You can download the formatted and picture-laden index using the link below. If you are especially anal retentive you can cut out the pages, bind them and carefully affix them to the back of the book.
Suzanne prepared this index out of the goodness of her heart. But lest you think us ungrateful, I sent her the walnut English Layout Square that I built while on Roy Underhill’s show “The Woodwright’s Shop.” I learned that tip from Minion Fancy magazine.
In addition to the index, the new press run will have a few minor typo corrections that slipped though the second printing, and I tweaked a paragraph to the section on plow planes to reinforce a couple of my original points. Nothing earthshaking.
Also, the linen cover and the stamp will be a different color. Books from this press run will be for sale in about four weeks (same price). We are likely to run out of copies of the second printing in about two weeks if sales continue at this clip. Just FYI.
In case you think I’m sitting around eating bon-bons in my boxers all day, here’s an update: It’s actually pretzels and a thong.
Apologies for that mental image.
We are working on several upcoming publishing projects here that you might be interested in. Here’s a quick look.
• Books: I’m still editing three books and getting them in shape for the printer: Jennie Alexander and Peter Follansbee’s “Make a Joint Stool from a Tree,” Matt Bickford’s “Mouldings in Practice” and a special reprint of “Theory of Mouldings.” As of now, we are shooting for a January release date for all three.
• Updated Titles: In crazy news, we are almost sold out of the second printing of “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest” and will be going back to the printer for a third run in a couple weeks. In the third printing we will add Suzanne Ellison’s excellent index to the book (you can download it for free here) and we are going to change the color of the linen and debossing on the exterior. Also, we are going back to the printer for a second press run of “The Joiner & Cabinet Maker.” We will be correcting some typos, but that’s the only change planned for the second run.
• Audiobook: We are producing an audiobook version of the original text of “The Joiner & Cabinet Maker.” We should be recording that after Thanksgiving if all goes well. I cannot tell you who the voice talent is, but I can say that you know this person well.
• ePub and Kindle Versions: Robert Wearing has given us permission to produce ePub and Kindle versions of “The Essential Woodworker.” His book is being converted now and it should be up for sale in our store in about three weeks.
• My own book: When everyone else in the house is asleep I’m working on writing my next book on furniture design. I am at the stage in the book where I need to present my findings to some people and have them tell me I’m full of poo – or that I’m on to something.
And lastly, I am hoping for one more beautiful fall day so I can fire up my Karmann-Ghia and drive out to the park overlooking the city with my laptop.
“Let us hope that the spirit of craftsmanship is strong enough in us to enable us to hand down to posterity things which will be considered worthy of the 20th century.”
