Lost Art Press

Some furniture and cabinets built by commercial shops are held together with the equivalent of snot, paperclips and the coat of film finish on top.

Some pieces are even crazier than that.

A few weeks ago I spent most of a week holed up in one of the units at Pleasant Hill Shaker Village outside Harrodsburg, Ky. It was great to be surrounded by the inspiring architecture, decorative objects and the furniture of this colony.

But on my first morning there I visited the store where they sell reproductions of some of the Shaker pieces built by the colony in the 19th century. What I saw there still has me a little bit in denial. I hope I am wrong.

One of the nice originals at Pleasant Hill is what they call the “Saturday Table,” a small side table with tapered and faceted legs. No drawer. Just simple and nice. We published plans for it in Popular Woodworking a few years ago, and Kerry Pierce published plans in “Pleasant Hill Shaker Furniture” (Popular Woodworking Books).

Pierce built the piece like I would have: The aprons are tenoned into the legs. The top is attached to the aprons using hand-cut pocket-screw holes (just like on the original).

While in the store, I turned over a couple reproductions of the Saturday Table. To my eye, it looks like the aprons are joined to the legs using staples. Then the aprons are pocket screwed to the top. To give the maker the benefit of the doubt, I tried to peer into a couple of the small gaps between the legs and aprons. Surely there must be a tenon in there. Surely these staples are there only to hold everything together as the glue dries.

Or something.

But I saw no tenon or even the shadow of one. I saw only a narrow sliver of light that indicated there was no wood-to-wood joint between the apron and leg.

If my vision is correct, we should all grieve.

— Christopher Schwarz

Reading Robert Wearing’s “The Essential Woodworker” was one of three lightning bolts that have struck me since I began woodworking.

The first shock was cutting my first perfect dovetail. Then there was the moment when I processed my first board entirely by hand. And the third came one afternoon while I was sitting in my chair and cracked open an English book that I had bought on a whim for about $5.

I read the entire book in one sitting (it took only a couple hours), but in that short period of time, Wearing assembled all the random puzzle pieces I had collected for years about handwork. He filled in all the missing details about dozens of basic processes, from laying out door joinery to truing up the legs on a table.

When I closed the book, I couldn’t wait to get into the shop. All the bits and pieces made sense.

Then I did a bad thing. I wrote about the book on my blog at work. And the price of the out-of-print book went to a ridiculous $80 to $100.

So for the last several years, John Hoffman and I at Lost Art Press have been trying to reprint this book so it will be available at a reasonable price and in a nice and permanent format. It took a lot longer than we expected. Robert Wearing was very eager and willing, but let’s just say that other publishing companies kept throwing sand on our strop.

Robert Wearing (photo courtesy of David Wearing).

All that is behind us now, and I am pleased – thrilled actually – to announce that “The Essential Woodworker” will be available this summer on the Lost Art Press imprint. We re-set the entire book, incorporated corrections and revisions from Wearing and retook many photos, which were lost.

Like our other books, “The Essential Woodworker” will be printed in a 6″ x 9″ format, hardbound with a cloth cover, and produced entirely in the United States. What is different about this book is that we will be using more expensive paper. It’s a little thicker and has a more old-school texture. Like our other books, this paper is acid-free, and the signatures will be Smythe sewn and casebound. We have not yet set a retail price, but we expect the 256-page book will be $25.

But enough about the manufacturing details. What’s inside “The Essential Woodworker?” I think it’s a gold mine of traditional hand tool techniques. Assisted by more than 530 hand-drawn illustrations, plus dozens of photos, Wearing walks you through the process of becoming a hand-tool woodworker. He starts with sharpening and ends with dovetailed casework.

To illustrate all of the basic principles, Wearing deftly guides you through building a few small projects. He starts, most ingeniously, with building a table, which teaches many of the core skills you need to build more advanced casework.

He then works you through open casework, backs, plinths, doors and then drawers. He presents no shortcuts or cheats. All the the methods are “neat and workmanlike” and would stand up to the scrutiny of an 18th-century master joiner.

But most of all, I think that Wearing can help you organize everything you know (and don’t yet know) about handwork into a framework that makes sense and is the baseline for every skill you will acquire in the future.

I know, I know. I’m gushing. But believe me, we wouldn’t go to all the trouble to bring this book back if it were merely another brick of information on your bookshelf. This, my friends, is an entire brick wall.

As of May 1, here are our plans for this book: We will produce one run of these books with a hardbound cover. There will be no leather-bound edition. We also will be offering a digital version of this book that you will be able to download when you pre-order the printed edition. The first announcement will go out via our e-mail newsletter.

— Christopher Schwarz

The hats we sell at Lost Art Press are likely the dumbest corporate self-promotional item ever.

We don’t have our company’s name on the hat. Nor our web site’s url. Catchy slogan? Nope. The only thing on the hat is a set of embroidered dividers taken from Joseph Moxon’s “Mechanick Exercises.”

Heck we don’t even make much money selling the hats. They’re premium caps from Adams – the same brand that Thos. Moser uses.

But I love my hat. It saved me $200.

Let’s back up a couple months. During a nasty snowstorm I pulled my wife’s Honda into our driveway and put it into park as I was still sliding a bit. The car’s shift interlock went haywire. Bottom line: The transmission was jammed in “park” and wouldn’t budge.

Thanks to a little trick from the Honda people I bypassed the lock and was able to get the car into “drive” and took it to the dealer. They recommended replacing a solenoid and a few other routine maintenance things I’ve been putting off. Price: $300.

So I sat my hinder down in the lobby as they worked on the truck. An hour later the service manager fetched me.

“The bill was $300,” he tells me. Then he lowers his voice. “But seeing as how you’re in the brotherhood, the bill is $100.”

I’m bewildered, but I’m not not so stupid as to ask questions. I pay the bill. I drive home.

I told my wife the story and she figured it out: It was my Lost Art Press hat. The dividers are part of the traditional Masonic symbol. The service manager assumed I was a Mason and cut me a deal.

Sweet!

Next up: Lost Art Press T-shirts featuring the logo of the Trilateral Commission.

— Christopher Schwarz

P.S. If you want to buy one of our “money hats” visit the Apparel section of our site. The hats are $16.