Lost Art Press

LAP Chore Coats to be Made by Sew Valley

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I am pleased (very nearly thrilled) to announce that the next round of our Chore Coats will be made by Sew Valley, a small Cincinnati company that seeks to bring manufacturing (and its skills) back to the Midwest.

We found Sew Valley in a funny way. My wife, Lucy May, wrote a story about them for WCPO-TV in May 2018 and told me all about her visit there. At the time I was interested because Sew Valley was co-founded by Rosie Kovacs, who also founded the Brush Factory, a design/build furniture shop in Cincinnati. I’ve been a big fan of her work for some time.

Then our manufacturing facility for Chore Coats flaked on us this summer. So Tom Bonamici and I began searching for a new facility to make our coats. I found one in Tennessee. Then Tom called me and said: “Have you ever heard of Rosie Kovacs?”

Within a week I toured Sew Valley’s facility on Cincinnati’s West End, which is on the ground floor of the National Flag Co. It’s an old facility. The huge Sew Valley space is filled with restored vintage sewing machinery. And I got to meet Rosie in person for the first time.

I think it’s a perfect fit. Sew Valley is dedicated to reviving nearly lost production sewing skills. They do excellent work. And Rosie is a force of nature here in Cincinnati.

Right now we’re moving all our patterns, materials and buttons (how is it we own thousands of buttons?) to Sew Valley this week so they can begin production within the next couple weeks. If all goes well, we should open pre-production ordering in a week or so. And – I saved the best part for last – I think we are going to be able to keep the price the same as on our previous runs of chore coats.

When production cranks up, we’ll shoot some photos and video. In the meantime, here’s an Instagram post of them working on our chore coat sample.

— Christopher Schwarz

This Weekend: Stop by DesignBuildCincy

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Instead of reveling in my dotage, today I assembled this staked stool.

I’ll be doing a demonstration of staked joinery at 3 p.m. this Saturday at the DesignBuildCincy show at Music Hall. So if you’d like to see me build a stool in an hour (or less) please stop by.

The DesignBuildCincy show is an interesting affair, bringing together furniture makers, home remodelers, architects, artists and suppliers in a show for customers who appreciate craftsmanship and good design. (Here’s a list of vendors.)

I was asked to exhibit my work at the show, but I simply don’t have enough furniture in stock to manage a booth. So instead, they asked if I would give a short talk.

The show is located in the beautiful and newly restored Music Hall in Over the Rhine. I have been aching to see the completed work, which sought to restore many of the details of the hall when it was constructed in 1878. Plus, if you know anything about Over the Rhine, it’s a great place to get a meal or just stroll around the historic buildings.

Hope to see you there. Hope to see someone there – there’s nothing sadder than making a stool for an audience of none.

— Christopher Schwarz

Into the Belly of the Beast

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On our way to the lumberyard this morning, Brendan and I stopped at the local IKEA to check out an interesting joint used on some of IKEA’s more expensive tables. Also, Brendan likes the meatballs there.

The joint is used on the company’s Lisabo tables and is a prime example of how CNC can be used to improve the craft. Instead of using a CNC to cut an ancient joint, the designers created an entirely new knockdown joint. It’s a self-wedging tapered tenon that locks with a single screw.

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Check out the video here. More fascinating details are here at Core77. Here’s IKEA’s nice video on the joint the company calls the “wedge dowel.”

We were both impressed by the joint’s rigidity and simplicity. Still, I wasn’t there to buy an IKEA table. We also checked out several of IKEA’s other semi-staked designs. One used a threaded tenon to attach the leg – nice but the lack of rake and splay killed the look.

We also checked out a table with a flying saucer design. The legs use machine screws and a threaded plate to attach them to the top. Very clever, but it is inherently a weak design as the machine screw is embedded in end grain. These tables are $30 and are not expected to last long.

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There also was a fascinating staked sitting bench that used a clever way to introduce rake and splay to the bench. The rake was drilled into the cross battens. The splay was introduced by insetting the batten at an angle. Again, a great application of CNC.

The bench was pretty comfortable. Not comfortable enough to purchase, however.

IKEA scored only two sales from us today. First was the meatballs with gravy (yum, gray food), which Brendan snarfed down in a few minutes.

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The second purchase was a couple sheepskins for my Welsh chairs. While in Wales, I noticed that John Brown’s extended family used sheepskins on their chairs to add comfort and warmth. These skins were a shocking $29.99. I bought two and we tried them out at dinner tonight (which was also not meatballs).

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My daughter Katy reports: “They make me feel like royalty.”

— Christopher Schwarz

The Exit Interview

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When I started at Popular Woodworking, we were located in the syrup room of the old Coca-Cola bottling plant in Evanston, Ohio.

My blog at Popular Woodworking Magazine will end on Dec. 31, 2018 (backstory here), and I am posting some things there during these last two months that might be of interest.

The 2018 Anarchist’s Gift Guide will begin on Nov. 1. I have 11 items picked out (so far) that I’ve been working with this year. As always, the gift guide is focused on small items that are quite useful. And they aren’t hard to find or expensive. Starting in 2019, the Anarchist Gift Guide will be posted here on the Lost Art Press blog.

I’m also posting a series of essays that are not directly woodworking related. They are, instead, my thoughts on woodworking magazines, tool reviews and the woodworking internet. They are a bit rant-y. But I figure that after 22 years of working there, I have the right to spout off a few times. Note that some of the comments seem to have disappeared due to a technical problem there. Also, one of my posts was sent to another part of the site and I cannot get it posted back on the blog for some reason. I suspect something went wrong when they altered the template on the site. Anyway, it’s not malfeasance, it’s stupidity. Here are the posts I’ve put up so far:

The Beginning of the End (of this Weblog)

Tool Reviews: You Are Not Your Toolbox

On Woodworking Magazines

I have a fourth entry in this series on social media advertising that will go up this week.

Please note that I am not ceasing my blogging efforts. Far from it. I’m just not blogging at PWM anymore. I’m not moving to another magazine. And I haven’t gotten a corporate sugar daddy. Instead, all my efforts will be here. Blog entries that I would have written for PWM will be posted here instead.

Finally, I don’t know what PWM will do with my 13 years of blog entries (there are several thousand). Those entries belong entirely to them – it was work for hire. So you’ll have to ask them.

— Christopher Schwarz

2019 Classes in London (not Kentucky – England)

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I’m not teaching much in 2019, just a few classes here and there. But I couldn’t turn down an offer to teach in London. Yes, the famous London, with the clock. Derek Jones (aka LowFatRoubo) has arranged to run some courses at London Design & Engineering UTC, which has an excellent shop.

Here are the classes and the links. If a class is sold out, you can get on the waiting list here. There is always churn in woodworking classes.

Welsh Stick Armchair — Oct. 21-25, 2019
I probably wouldn’t call this a true Welsh chair; it is more Welsh-ish than anything else. We’ll be building this chair from materials available to a city-dweller, as opposed to a sheep farmer. You don’t need a lot of tools to make this chair, just a few magic tricks.

Staked High Stool — Oct. 28-30, 2019
This class is an excellent introduction to chairmaking principles, including learning to drill compound angles without trigonometry (or even numbers). These stools are built entirely by hand and will introduce you to tapered-tenon construction. You’ll walk away with a completely finished stool and the skills to make 100 more.

— Christopher Schwarz