Lost Art Press

How to Add an ePub to Your iPad or iPhone

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Some readers have downloaded “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest” and have asked how to then get it on their iPad or iPhone. The process is manual, but it is easy and quick. Here’s a short tutorial.

1. Find the file named “ATC.epub.” It will probably be in your “Downloads” folder. If you can’t find it that way, try searching your computer for that file.

2. Open the file in iTunes. There are two easy ways to do this. You can simply drag the “ATC.epub” file over the iTunes icon and drop it. That will open iTunes and import the file into iTunes.

The other way to do this is to first launch iTunes, then go to File/Add to Library. That will open a dialog box that will allow you to navigate to your “Downloads” folder or wherever you have put the ATC.epub file. Once you find it, click on “Open” and it will bring the book into iTunes.


3. Connect your iPhone or iPad to your computer. Your device will then show up in the left sidebar of iTunes. Click on your device and navigate to the “Books” section of your device. You should see “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest” there and be able to click the box below it. Then sync your device and you will be ready to read the book in the iBooks app.

— Christopher Schwarz

ePub Version of ‘The Anarchist’s Tool Chest’

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“The Anarchist’s Tool Chest” is now available in a completely DRM-free format for your iPad, iPhone, Nook or other reader that can read .epub files.

The price of the ePub version is $16. A Kindle edition will be released shortly. Click here to order the ePub version.

This is exactly the same book – same words, photos and drawings – we have been offering since June 2011. But with the ePub version you will be able to search the entire book, write electronic notes in the margins, change the font size and (of course) carry it with you anywhere on an electronic reader.

Unlike many ePub files, we chose to make ours without DRM – the acronym for “digital rights management.” Many ePub files with DRM are a pain to use. You might have to be connected to the Internet to read the book (that stinks on an airplane), or you can be restricted from copying the file for backup, or even simply copying and pasting passages from the book.

Frankly, DRM doesn’t jibe well with the philosophy of the book or its author.

So what is “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest” about?

“The Anarchist’s Tool Chest” paints a world where woodworking tools are at the center of an ethical life filled with creating furniture that will last for generations.

Author Christopher Schwarz makes the case that you can build almost anything with a kit of less than 50 high-quality tools, and he shows you how to select real working tools, regardless of their vintage or brand name. “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest” will guide you in building a proper chest for your toolkit following the ancient rules that have been forgotten or ignored.

Schwarz argues that woodworking is a rare and radical act in today’s age of cheap, mass-manufacturing and wasteful consumption. He uses the word “anarchist” to describe individuals who “work with their hands, own their tools, and seek to live in a world where making something (anything) is the goal of each day.”

Building a chest and filling it with the right tools just might be the best thing you can do to save our craft.

Note for international customers: You can send $16 via PayPal to john@lostartpress.com and we will process your order from there.

All or Nothing

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Not all the period stools we studied had this chamfer on the interior corner of the stiles, but many did (some tables, too). Never did we find one in which some stiles had chamfers and others did not. It was either all or nothing. This led us to think it was intentional. Then we began to wonder what its use might be. We might be wrong, but it works for orientating your parts during construction – even if that was not its original purpose.

— Jennie Alexander and Peter Follansbee from their forthcoming book on joint stools

More Places (the U.K.!) to Buy Lost Art Press Books

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Today I shipped off a couple hundred pounds of Lost Art Press books to Axminster, a leading woodworking supplier in the United Kingdom. The company will stock Robert Wearing’s “The Essential Woodworker” and copies of “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest.”

So look for those products in the Axminster 2012 catalog and on the company’s web site in the near future.

Also, F+W Media Inc. will be carrying three Lost Art Press books: “The Essential Woodworker,” “The Joiner & Cabinet Maker” and “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest.” All three products should show up shortly in the company’s web site: ShopWoodworking.com.

I am actively working on a supplier in Greenland and Monaco. More on that as it develops.

Thanks to all our international customers for their patience. We know it’s has been a hard slog to get our products, and now that I am a hobo self-employed, we will be making more strides in this area soon.

— Christopher Schwarz

The Tale of Bill Booby

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“Well,” said Ebenezer, “I’ll tell you seriously. If you intend to have a bench and tools just for play, and think that because the tools look bright and curious you can make things with them at once, without learning, then it will turn out just like it always does with boys in such cases. Just as it did in Bill Booby’s case.”

“How was it with him?” asked John.

“Why, he teased his mother to let him buy a chest of tools. When it came home he looked the tools all over, and was very delighted; but on trying some of them, he found they would not cut, for being new they had not been ground and sharpened.

“So he had to send them all to a carpenters’ to be put in order for work. Then he found he could not work without a bench, and so his mother got a man to come and make his bench.

“When at length he got his bench and everything ready, he determined, for the first thing, to make a martin-house to put on top of a tall pole in the yard. He was going to have it the shape of a church, with a belfry and a spire on the top, and a portico before the door.

“So he got a board and tried to saw it off, of the right length; but he could not make the board hold still. So he said he must have a vice; and his mother gave him some money to buy one, and to pay a carpenter to come down and put it upon his bench.

“Then he tried to saw off his board, but his saw would not go straight; and so the ends of his pieces, when they were sawed, were all askew. When he tried to plane them, the plane would hitch and stick, because it was set too rank. So he knocked out the iron and set it again, and now it would not plane at all….

“When he tried to nail his boards together, first he drove nails without boring, and they split the work….”

“Then he tried to bore holes, but he could not bore straight…”

“Finally, he got in a passion and knocked his martin-house all to pieces with the axe…. He slammed the tools all back into his chest, and went in and told his mother that the man that sold them the tools was a cheat,– for the tools would not work at all. He could not do anything with them.”

“What a silly fellow!” said John.

“But where does Bill Booby live?” he asked after a moment’s pause.

— from “John Gay; Or, Work for Boys: Work for Spring” by Jacob Abbott, 1864