Number One Chairs by Michael Fortune (photo by Michael Cullen)
At long last, our printing plant has shipped Marc Adams’s new book “The Difference Makers” to our warehouse. The book is en route to Indianapolis and should arrive at the dock on Monday or Tuesday.
After it arrives, our warehouse staff will immediately fill all the pre-publication orders. I don’t know exactly when that will start, but it should be quick.
If you have been thinking about buying this book, this is the last chance to get the pdf of the book for free. After Tuesday, the pdf will cost an extra $18 when you buy the book.
We are excited to see this book for many reasons. As a book nerd, I can’t wait to see how well the photos reproduced on the heavy #100 Endurance silk paper we picked out for the job. The photos should be gorgeous. Plus, we’ve never printed a book in an 11” x 11” format.
Like all Lost Art Press books, this one has been an emotional and technical challenge for everyone. Marc spent years gathering the stories and writing about the 30 makers featured in this book. Marc and our editors spent almost as much time gathering, editing and getting permissions for the hundreds of photos in the book, many of them published for the first time. And our prepress people have wrestled with this book since April, trying to get it on press at a printing plant that has been disrupted by new ownership.
I’ve read the book several times already during the editing process, so I already know it was worth the effort. And I hope you do, too.
The living room. The floors are done and covered in paper. New baseboard is on the sawhorses (the existing baseboard is being recycled to another part of the apartment). The fireplace is a disaster-in-waiting and needs replacement.
I’ve restrained from posting about the renovations above our storefront this year because it could take over this blog. And no one (including me) wants that.
A short and sweet update: We are due to move in at the end of the month. Our house has sold in Fort Mitchell. We are in the midst of selling my dad’s house in Charleston, S.C. And I am still wrapping up my father’s estate. So I’ve had my fair share of real estate agents, lawyers, accountants and tax collectors this year.
The good news is that the general contractor I hired isn’t on that list of people who stress me out. I spent a year researching contractors, asking every tradesperson who they like working with, and who has the sensitivity for a historical job.
I picked Bill Kridler of BK Remodeling, who runs a small crew and does quite a bit of work in Covington. If you have a job in Northern Kentucky, I cannot recommend him enough.
Oh look, at some point the kitchen caught fire. Here they’re patching the damage, which was then toned to match the old floors. Those cabinets are…something else.
The Historical 1980s My first urge when designing our living quarters was to rip everything out and start from scratch. That might have been cathartic and simpler, but during the last four years, I’ve come to respect the building’s owner during the 1980s, a jazz musician, who did the first remodel. He was on the vanguard of people who took a chance on Covington, then a scruffier place. And the neighbors always recall being awed when visiting his apartment above his bar.
So I decided to retain his floorplan and work with what we had on site. That meant restoring the original pine floors (instead of new oak ones). Plus keeping the bedroom and closet arrangements he set down in the 80s. We’re attempting to live with his kitchen layout for now. This approach is a lot less wasteful. The contractors haven’t had to rent a dumpster and have filled only 10 trash cans with debris (mostly rotted plaster) during the whole project.
Some stuff, however, had to go. The spiral staircase went to the steel recycler. One bathroom had to be re-tiled with a new vanity (and oh look, a secret compartment with drugs left by a former tenant). And the existing windows – all 20 of them – are inexpensive 1980s junk that was installed poorly and have since rotted. New wooden windows arrive next week.
All of this is to say: Please buy more Lost Art Press books! Just kidding. I’ve been saving for this project for years.
When we move in, the place will be rough and still a construction site. That’s OK. Lucy and I have been through this before. But living there will also give me a better feel for the space and the changes I hope to make.
Mostly, and this is the woodworking content, I am desperate to live closer to my shop. The last three years have been agony for me in the evenings with me living in Fort Mitchell and the shop being in Covington. I miss going to the shop at night and doing some fussy detail work. Or machine maintenance. Or just staring at my current project and plotting my next move.
While the projects and techniques in “The Anarchist’s Design Book” are the backbone of the work, I quite enjoy writing the chapters that are woven between the projects. For the forthcoming expansion of the book I’ve written a bushel of these interstitial essays on design, self-doubt and chair comfort.
My guess is about half of these peckings will make it into the book and half will end up in the ether.
That’s typical for the way I write. I might tap out 2,000 words in a typical day; about half are usable. The other half are misfires, exercises in self-loathing or quarter-baked ideas. But they’re all saved in the cloud so that when I die, Lucy can read them and be reminded of what an odd dufus I was. Before deleting them.
This essay, however, will make it in the book so I thought I’d share it here. It’s about the crappy prototypes that led to the finished designs in the book. There were hundreds of sketches (two sketchbooks full). Dozens of prototypes. And a lot of staring, trying to figure out how to improve the next iteration.
The point of the chapter is to show you how bad or misguided designs can lead to good designs. You just have to study them a bit, instead of destroying them immediately.
As with the other advance chapters for the expanded edition, this download is offered on the honor system to people who have already purchased “The Anarchist’s Design Book.” If you haven’t purchased the book, don’t download the file. Simple.
This is a rough draft that will get edited by professionals. There are typos in the pdf. If you see one, feel free to point it out in the comments.
If you feel compelled to rip the designs shown in the chapter, then you have missed the point of the chapter. Think again.
There are stool jokes in this chapter. And a dancing frog simile. I know some of you are sensitive to the occasional playground jest. If this is you, I’d absolutely positively avoid this chapter.
Editor’s note: This book is available for immediate shipment and is $29. You can place an order through our store.
No matter what sort of handplane you use, “Making & Mastering Wood Planes” is perhaps the best guide available to understanding, tuning and using these tools at a high level.
Written by a graduate of the College of the Redwoods (now The Krenov School), “Making & Mastering Wood Planes” is ostensibly about the laminated handplanes that James Krenov made famous in the 20th century. But author David Finck decided to probe far deeper into the topic – so much so that this book is actually an excellent primer on handwork itself.
It begins with a discussion of wood as a material – both for making a plane and for working it with a plane. Then he delves into the basic tools and techniques one needs to begin making a plane and making furniture. And the reader is instructed on how to tune up a metal plane, plus how to grind and sharpen its iron before building a laminated wooden plane.
The building of planes is, of course, covered in immense detail. Even though laminated planes are simpler than traditional wooden planes, there are many fine points to understand and master. Most helpful is the section on troubleshooting a wooden plane and the steps required to get it back in perfect tune.
Finck then proceeds to discuss how to use planes to dress the edges, faces and ends of boards, plus he addresses a variety of specialty techniques – planing thin stock, shooting ends, planing large surfaces and curved edges.
Finally, Finck covers scraping, both with a cabinet scraper and scraper planes.
“Making & Mastering Wood Planes” is in its fifth printing and has sold thousands of copies worldwide. When the author considered letting it go out of print, we offered to keep it available. We also sought to upgrade the book’s mechanical characteristics. The book’s pages are sewn for durability. The paper is slightly thicker and whiter. We upgraded the binding to a hardback. And we moved production from overseas to the United States.
This book has been in our personal library for almost 20 years – we wore out our first copy. And now we are pleased to offer it to you under the Lost Art Press imprint.
With only two weeks until we move above the storefront, we are both excited and desperate to unload stuff that will simply not fit into our small apartment upstairs.
We have given a lot of stuff away to charity and family. Some stuff – prototypes mostly – are simply too unusual. So I’m going to offer them here for free pickup. The first one who says they will come get it before Aug. 1 gets it. We don’t have time to crate and ship these. Sorry. The best we can do is help you load it into your vehicle.
Dugout Chair This experiment was made with a huge silver maple tree. Pine seat. Deer antlers (these were shed by the deer – no deer were upset or inconvenienced or shot). The chair is 46” wide at the base, 32” deep and 48” tall. It weighs about 250 lbs.
If you are planning on establishing your own kingdom, we’ve got your bargain-basement throne.
Worktable This was a prototype for “The Anarchist’s Design Book.” Poplar base with a white pine top. The top is finished with soap. The base is finished with milk paint with a coat of protective lacquer. Measures 48” square x 30” tall.
