If you’ve ever wondered why I don’t host a podcast or do YouTube, click the image above to feast your eyes upon the laboratory animal that is me.
Kate Swann at the Florida School of Woodwork asked me to sit for a short interview while I was teaching there last month. I was happy to do it, but you might better enjoy the other interviews she’s done (check out her channel here).
The school is great – if you live in the Southeast I encourage you to check out the classes. And definitely bring your family – the area is filled with stuff for them to do while you build something. A win for everyone.
I am pleased to let you know that we now carry the Bevel Monkey and Big Protractor from FirstLightWorks in the U.K. These two tools are essential if you work in angles other than 90°. They are well-made by a small company in Derbyshire, U.K., and are both dead accurate and durable.
The Bevel Monkey helps you set a sliding bevel to an exact setting – even a fraction of a degree. The white markings are easy to read against the black acrylic background.
The Big Protractor is just that – big, it’s almost 12” long. Based on vintage protractors used by geometry teachers on a chalkboard, the Big Protractor simplifies layout chores on furniture-scale materials. And it eliminates the squinting necessary when using a cheap plastic protractor from elementary school.
Both are available for immediate shipment from our warehouse in Indiana. Read more about the Bevel Monkey here. More about the Big Protractor here.
When cutting curved parts on the band saw, there are many times that the curves are parallel to one another. To avoid lumpy curves, I put my thumb down on the band saw’s table to act as a single-point fence.
I prefer this to setting up a fancy single-point fence in wood because my thumb has feelings. I can easily tell if I’m pushing the work in the right direction and with the right amount of force.
This works best with pieces you can steer and push with one hand (my left in this instance) and control with my right.
Here I’m cutting out a pattern for a new crest rail design for an upcoming chair class. The thumb is doing a great job. Once again, a reason that lower species of animals should never be allowed on machinery.
The last few months here at Lost Art Press we’ve all been running near the redline, working on upcoming books, getting ready to file our tax returns (an enormous task for a small company) and improving some functions of the website under the hood.
Most of our labor you’ll never see (no one likes to read tax returns), but I am pleased to share some of our progress on our books.
The following is a list of books we are actively working on. That means the text is in our hands and we are working to get it published. If a book isn’t listed here, that means I don’t have anything to report – it’s still in the hands of the author.
This book is at the printer and is scheduled to ship to us sometime in the next two weeks. If you order a copy before the book ships, you’ll receive a free pdf download at checkout. After the book ships, the pdf will cost extra.
‘Honest Labour: The Charles H. Hayward Years: 1936-1966’
This book of columns by Charles Hayward during a 30-year period is essentially complete. Megan Fitzpatrick is doing a final copy edit (while working in Alaska, no less). We’ll go to press within two weeks and will open pre-publication ordering then. It’s a huge book – 480 pages. I love it, but I don’t know how it will be received by customers.
‘Make a Chair from a Tree’ by Jennie Alexander (with Larry Barrett and Peter Follansbee)
Peter Follansbee is getting this book prepared so we can begin layout. His long history with Alexander and the chair made him the perfect candidate to get the text ready. I don’t know when this book will be ready for the printer. People are working on it every day. It’s a complex and difficult project, but it will be worth the wait. (If you want to just build the chair, you can stream the video.)
‘Kitchens in Context’ or ‘Kitchen Think’ or ‘Some Other Title to Come’ by Nancy Hiller
With our layout work complete on “Honest Labour” I’ll turn my efforts to Hiller’s book this month. We hope to have it out this summer, just in time for kitchen season (by the way, it’s always kitchen season).
‘The Life of Dick Proenneke’ by Monroe Robinson
The big task with this book is the hand illustrations. Kara Gebhart and Robinson are working with paper artist Elin Price to generate the illustrations for the book (a sample is shown at the top of this blog entry). There is a lot of work ahead on this book, but it is going to be gorgeous.
‘Country Woodcraft: Then & Now’ by Drew Langsner
This fantastic update to Langsner’s classic book is in my hands. I’m making my way through the first edit. My progress has been slowed by all our other book projects, plus furniture commissions and some teaching. It’s a joy to edit and see the evolution of Langsner’s thoughts between 1978 and now. The original “Country Woodcraft” set the stage for much of the interest in green woodworking today, and this new book should stoke that fire some more.
What about Crucible tools? Well we’ve been working hard there as well. Everything is in stock, including this little gem, which I’ll talk more about this week. (There had to be some reward for reading this far.)
I just finished up teaching seven days of classes at the Florida School of Woodwork in Tampa, Fla., an urban school in a rapidly gentrifying area of the city that has an excellent facility and an enthusiastic, knowledgeable and hard-working owner, Kate Swann.
The Florida School of Woodwork is officially about two years old, though Kate ran her professional furniture-making business there for many years along with Carl Johnson.
I’ve always thought that Florida – with 21 million residents – didn’t have its fair share of woodworking schools. Lost Art Press has thousands of customers in the state, and the blog receives significant traffic from the Sunshine State. We also get a lot of questions from beginning woodworkers in Florida who ask: Where should I go for instruction and community?
Now they have an answer.
The school is located in a renovated motor-winding plant just north of downtown Tampa and near the new and bustling Armature Works and blocks and blocks of renovated Craftsman bungalows.
The front bench room and machine room is illuminated by enormous storefront windows. Each student works at a Benchcrafted workbench and with a wall-mounted kit of hand tools. The machines are well-maintained and safe (SawStops). There’s a nice break room, an overflow machine room at the back and a covered area to eat your lunch back by the local meadery. Oh and the floor of the shop is a sprung wooden floor – it’s great for your back and knees.
And there’s Kate. Affable and hand-working, Kate spent the seven days making sure the students had everything they needed, built jigs for my class, greeted the curious who stopped by and kept each day running smoothly.
Also impressive is the programming. The classes run the gamut, from a one-day class where you turn your first cup to multi-week advanced seminars with Michael Fortune. Project classes span a wide variety of styles, from period pieces to Arts & Crafts, Mid-century Modern to pieces with a serious artistic bent.
About half of my 10 students were from Florida, with the rest from states as far as Iowa and Texas. Many out-of-staters brought their families – February in Florida is about as nice as it gets. Also interesting – many of the students were repeat customers, which is remarkable for a young school.
I’ll be returning to the Florida School of Woodwork to teach in 2022 (my 2021 is already overbooked). But don’t wait for me. Check out the complete list of upcoming classes here. Florida finally has the woodworking school it has long deserved.
