Lost Art Press

Wendell Berry on Making a Maul

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Drew Langsner’s mauls as shown in “Country Woodcraft: Then & Now”

Wendell picked up a maul, which Meb had made from a hickory tree. It had a smooth handle and a bulbous head, squared off at the end. “With it,” he told me, “you can deliver a blow of tremendous force to a stake or a splitting wedge.” Thinking about a modern sledgehammer, I asked how the handle was inserted into the head. He put his hand on my shoulder and said, “No, no, honey,” then hastily explained himself: “That’s our way of taking the sting out of it, you see, when we correct someone.” He showed me the swirling grain of the maul’s head, chopped from the roots of a tree, and swung it over his shoulder to demonstrate how it becomes a natural extension of the body.

When I was back home, he sent me a diagram and explained how the strength of the wood came from the tree’s immersion in the soil: “The growth of roots makes the grain gnarly, gnurly, snurly: unsplittable.” After you cut the tree, you square off the root end. Then, above the roots, where the grain isn’t snurly, you saw inward a little at a time, “splitting off long, straight splinters to reduce the log to the diameter of a handle comfortable to hold. And so you’ve made your maul. It is all one piece, impossible for the strongest man (or of course woman) to break.” He scrawled at the bottom of the page, “There is a kind of genius in that maul, that belongs to a placed people: to make of what is at hand a fine, durable tool at the cost only of skill and work.”

— “Wendell Berry’s Advice for a Cataclysmic Age,” The New Yorker, Feb. 28, 2022, by Dorothy Wickenden

9cm Dilated & About to Push

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We have so many things coming down the birth canal this month that we should install stoplights?

Next week we will release our embroidered SuperWoobie™* on the world. This is our favorite microfiber cloth embroidered (here in Covington) with “Don’t Despair – Nothing Without Labour” on one corner. It’s a small, encouraging reminder you’ll see every time you wipe down your tools after a good (or off-the-rails) day in the shop.

I expect these to be $23 or $24 retail. They’ll come with instructions and a small zippered bag that makes soaking the rag with oil a simple task.

After that, look for the Lost Art Press Full-zip Hoodie. Tom Bonamici investigated what it would take to sew and stitch a hoodie, and then we compared the price and quality to the American Giant zip hoodies, which are the best ones that I know of on the market today. We decided to use American Giant as our supplier because we couldn’t beat the price or quality.

I have worn these hoodies for years and can vouch for their comfort, fit and durability. Ours will be printed with the “Nothing Without Labour” logo on the back with a bee printed on the front. I don’t have a retail price calculated, yet.

After that, the Crucible Dovetail Template is coming. This is a solid steel template based off the Woodjoy Tools one that is no longer made (yes, we are paying the designer a royalty on every tool sold). This is Megan Fitzpatrick’s favorite dovetail marker and has slopes for 1:6 and 1:8 dovetails. 

Unlike the original, ours is milled out of one piece of solid steel, which reduces assembly time for us and ensures a perfect 90° at the corner. The price will be less than $50. In time I hope we will come out with a marker that also has 1:4, which is the redneck dovetail slope I prefer.

And after that, our beautiful edition of Joseph Moxon’s “Mechanick Exercises or the Doctrine of Handy-Works” will arrive. This important early woodworking book deserves to be in print at a price everyone can afford (about $25 for a clothbound book with sewn signatures). Plus every book sold will help benefit the Early American Industries Association, which assisted with book production.

— Christopher Schwarz

*We didn’t really trademark SuperWoobie™, ChairChat™ or 38” Workbench™. I just finally learned to make a trademark symbol on the keyboard and am enjoying it.

Chairmaking on the Cheap(er), Part 1

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Since the publication of “The Stick Chair Book,” I’ve received many complaints that some of the tools I use in the book are expensive or there is a wait list to receive them. Most notably, the Veritas Tapered Tenon Cutters, Veritas Tapered Reamers (Large) and Veritas Power Tenon Cutters. Also, people gripe about the expense of scorps and travishers.

My goal with “The Stick Chair Book” was to keep the tool kit as small as possible, without asking readers to make the whole chair using only a pocketknife.

So the criticism stung a bit because I thought my tool list was quite reasonable.

During the last six months, I have tried out a lot of new tools and methods to see if I could make the tool list even cheaper and more accessible. Many of these experiments were expensive failures. (Don’t buy the Lumberjack tenon cutters. Just don’t. Anyone want to buy a set of Lumberjack tenon cutters?)

But I have had a few “a-ha” moments, which I am going to share here. Here is the first of several ways to reduce your tool bill.

Rule-breaking Tenons

Aside from the legs, almost all of the rest of the joints in a stick chair can be 5/8” in diameter. I’ve used the Veritas Power Tenon Cutter (the 5/8” is $99.90) for many years and love it. There can be a wait to buy these, and some people consider them expensive.

As an alternative, I decided to investigate plug cutters, which are used to make wooden plugs and sometimes tenons using a drill press. Most plug cutters warn you to use the tool only in a drill press. But I thought there was a way to make them work in a brace or handheld electric drill.

I was right. All you have to do is taper the end of your stock so it fits inside the mouth of the plug cutter. Then you can easily shave the tenon with a plug cutter that’s powered by a drill or brace.

A cheap chamfer/deburring cutter prepares your stock for the plug/tenon cutter.

To get the tenons perfect, you need your stock to be held level in a vise. And you need the tool to also be level. Plug cutters don’t come with levels installed on them. But you can epoxy an inexpensive bubble level (they are less than $1 each) to your drill (or the chuck of your hand-powered brace) to do the job. 

The plug cutter makes a perfect tenon. You just have to taper the shoulder into the tenon to clean things up.

A premium 5/8” plug cutter is $26. You can get utility ones for a few dollars. If you want to make it easy to taper the end of the stock consistently before cutting the tenons, also buy a chamfer/deburring cutter ($10). These are normally used to chamfer the ends of steel bolts, so they do a fine job on wood.

— Christopher Schwarz

P.S. Yes, I know you can make the 5/8” tenons with a block plane alone. I consider it a tedious technique when I have 16 sticks that have to be tenoned perfectly on both ends.

Scholarship Chair Class July 11-15

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To lend a hand to people who are underrepresented in our ranks, I’m teaching a free stick chair class this July for women, BIPOC and GNC (gender non-conforming) woodworkers at our storefront in Covington, Ky. There are six spots in the class, and the scholarship covers both tuition and materials for the chair.

The emphasis of this class is to help create a new generation of woodworkers who teach. We have two spots for students who have some chairmaking experience and want to teach others, and four spots for students with little-to-no chair experience but who have some sort of active teaching practice (elementary school math, academic writing, shop maintenance in educational facility, podcasting, etc).

The class is being organized by Aspen Golann, who runs The Chairmaker’s Toolbox. You can apply for the class via this link. Aspen and Megan Fitzpatrick will be assisting during the week and helping out with the “teaching about teaching” component of the class – sharing advice, war stories and strategies for teaching woodworking in a live environment.

I am thrilled to be able to do this. I am sure some of you have questions. Here are some answers.

Why Not Offer Scholarships to Everyone?

For my first 10 years of teaching, I donated all the royalties from my videos to woodworking scholarships based purely on need. Of all the people I funded, I know of only one recipient who was female. Other free teaching that I do currently (such as at The Florida School of Woodworking) funds both need-based scholarships and scholarships for people who have been historically excluded from our craft.

Bottom line: I’ve funded a ton of scholarships for white guys like myself. For this one class, I’d like to do something different.

How Can I Help?

I rarely ask for help with these things. But I’ve decided to make an exception with this class. I am going to pay for all the material and stock preparation for the students from my pocket. And I’d like to use nice wood, such as cherry. I estimate that the wood for the class will cost between $1,500 and $1,700. If you would like to donate a little money to help, you can click on the donate button below.

If the button doesn’t work (sorry), try this link instead. Or if you prefer to use Venmo, my username is: christopher-schwarz-10.

This is not a tax-deductible donation. This is like tucking a $20 bill into my shorts at the pro shop. (Did that sound weird? Yes.) If I unexpectedly collect more money than needed for the materials, I’ll use the excess to pay for students’ meals during the class.

Thanks to Aspen and everyone who is working to expand the circle of people who love woodworking.

— Christopher Schwarz

Now Shipping: ‘Cadi & the Cursed Oak’

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Perhaps the most important books we’ll make at Lost Art Press are children’s books.

If I had to point to a moment in my young life when I decided to make things, it’s when I became obsessed with the books of David Macaulay, especially “Cathedral.” I checked that book out from the Fort Smith Public Library at least a dozen times.

With that in mind, we have decided to invest significant time and resources into children’s books. And our first book* from this initiative is “Cadi & the Cursed Oak” by Kara Gebhart Uhl and illustrated by Elin Manon.

And I’m pleased to announce that we are now selling and shipping this book. It is $19 and features all the core principles of other Lost Art Press books: a beautiful book, printed on outstanding paper and clothbound with a sewn binding.

“Cadi” is the first of many new children’s books in the works here at Lost Art Press. This effort is being headed up by Kara, an expert in the field of children’s literature. So it seemed appropriate to have one of her books kick this off.

“Cadi & the Cursed Oak” is the tale of a girl who finds a wooden cup that was made from the wood of the famous and haunted Nannau Oak in Wales. Objects made from the oak are said to be cursed (the story of the oak is true). 

When Cadi drinks from the cup, she begins to see strange things. And with the help of her grandmother, Cadi learns how the cursed cup is tied forever to a skeleton stashed in the old Nannau oak. But how will she stop the terrifying visions?

And, because this is a Lost Art Press book, you know there will be woodworking parts. Cadi’s father is a Welsh chairmaker, and some of the scenes happen while the two are hunting for arm bows in the forest.

The illustrations by Welsh artist Elin Manon completely suit the story, with every page richly drawn with delightful and spooky details. 

We hope you’ll consider purchasing a copy for the children or grandchildren in your life. You never know what acorns you might be planting with the gift of a book.

— Christopher Schwarz

* “Grandpa’s Workshop,” now out of print, was a translated title from a French publisher. “Cadi” is our first “from scratch” children’s book.