We’re done tinkering with the LostArtPress.com website, and we still don’t have annoying pop-up and vibrating windows that urge you to join a newsletter or to save 10 percent on your first order or whatever.
Merchants use those irritating windows because they work. But we decided at the outset of this company that we’d rather use our “inside voice” when talking to customers. No yelling, hyperbole or multiple exclamation marks. Because that’s how we prefer to be treated.
Some of the website changes I’ve mentioned before: Easier navigation windows and “social proof,” a phrase I only use ironically, with quote marks around it.
We just added two more functions: a simple wishlist, and a still-not-using-our-outside-voice reminder of our free shipping offer for orders $100 and over.
First the wishlist. Log into your account with us. Navigate to the product you want to add to your list. Click “Add to Wishlist,” which is below “Add to Cart.” Done. (See above.)
To see your wishlist, click on the heart at the top-right of your screen. You’ll see all the items you’ve added. You can then send that list to anyone via email.
The other function tells you how much more you need to spend to receive free shipping. Many times customers can add a bottle of glue or a box of pencils and get free shipping (basically making the glue or pencils free….).
OK, that’s it. I know these posts are boring, but we’re a little boring at times.
Now you can brand almost any garment with Lost Art Press using our iron-on applique. All you need is a household clothes iron, plus a cotton or cotton/poly sweatshirt or shirt.
The applique letters are vinyl with a soft “flocked” coating, so they are nice and fuzzy, and they recall the T-shirt kiosks of 1980s shopping mall culture.
1. Select a clean and dry garment and lay it flat on an ironing board or a folded towel on your workbench.
2. Set your iron on “high” – you need a minimum of 315° F to activate the glue. (Most irons easily go to 345° when on high.) When the iron is heated, iron the area where the applique will go to flatten it and warm it up.
3. If desired, cut the applique so the logo will cross a zipper. Or to rearrange the words to your liking.
4. Put the applique in place on the garment and put a sheet of parchment paper between the iron and the transfer sheet.
5. Press the iron against half the sheet. Shift the iron a bit as you press for 30 seconds. Then press the iron against the other half of the sheet for 30 seconds.
6. Remove the iron and let things cool for a couple minutes. Carefully peel the plastic backing from the letters. Wait 12 hours, then garment can be laundered and dried as you normally would.
If the letters ever come loose, you can glue them down with a fabric adhesive (we use Aleene’s Fabric Fusion for repairs).
This comb-back looks appropriate in vintage or modern settings.
This chair is built using Honduran mahogany that is at least 50 years old that I purchased from a millwork and furniture shop in Norwood that was going out of business. I bought every scrap I could afford, and I used most of my stash to build the projects in “Campaign Furniture.”
The rest, I have decided, I will use to make stick chairs. I probably have enough wood for four or five more chairs. (Note that most true mahogany today is illegally harvested. If you are interested in working with it, I recommend you seek out old stock or recycle it from broken or discarded antiques.)
About the Chair
Because I don’t have a lot of thick mahogany, the seat is thin (about 1”) and the leg tenons are reinforced with battens below the seat that are attached with sliding dovetails. This makes the chair lighter in weight and in appearance. The seat is a single board of 16”-wide mahogany.
The seat is 16” off the floor, and the chair is set up for dining or office work. The seat is tilted 4°, and the back is tilted 14° off the seat. The overall height of the chair is 39-1/2”, with an overall width of 22-1/2” and depth of 22”. The splayed-out back sticks provide plenty of shoulder support. This is a quite comfortable chair.
All the joints are assembled with hide glue (that we make here). This means the chair will be easy to repair in the far-off future as the glue is reversible. The finish is blonde shellac with a coat of black wax.
All the through-tenons in the undercarriage and arms are left slightly proud. They add texture (and a little strength) but they won’t snag your hands. I polished them and slightly rounded them over so they feel like a river pebble. All the short sticks are wedged into the arm above and below in the seat.
It might seem odd to make a folk chair from mahogany, but it is historically appropriate. Many seaside villages would build their furniture from cargo that washed up after shipwrecks (even though that was illegal to do).
How to Buy the Chair
I’m selling the chair via a silent auction. Crating and shipping are included in your price. As this is a private auction, there is no dealer fee. Your bid is what you pay to acquire the chair and have it shipped to you.
Bids start at $500. My chairs typically sell at auction for anywhere from $1,200 to $5,000, with most of them ending up in the $2,500 range.
If you wish to buy the chair, send an email to lapdrawing@lostartpress.com before 3 p.m. (Eastern) on Friday, Aug 23. Please use the subject line: “Comb Back” In the email please include your:
Bid
U.S. shipping address
Daytime phone number (this is for the trucking quote only)
If you have the highest bid, we will notify you. Alternatively, the chair can be picked up at our storefront. (I’m sorry but the chair cannot be shipped outside the U.S.)
It’s a crude and obvious joke, but what do you do with all the extra kinda-crappy chair parts and chunks of waste that are piling up in your shop? Make stools.
Ever since I began making chairs, I also began designing and making a lot of stools using the leftover chair parts. While simple vernacular stools get little love in the woodworking literature, they are one of the most common pieces of peasant/farmer furniture out there. Sometimes called “creepies” or “milking stools,” these low perches are a great way to hold your butt off the ground while you are working.
While working on “The Anarchist’s Design Book,” I developed a three-legged staked creepie that had been kicking around in the back of my mind for a few years. That stool ended up in the chapter titled: “The Island of Misfit Designs.”
Yet I keep making these stools using leftover chair parts (they take only a couple hours to make), and people are delighted by them. So here is how I make them.
The seat is made from chunks of leftover 8/4 material. When making chair seats or combs, I usually end up with short chunks of wood that are no good for chairs. Rather than throw them away, I make them into stool seats.
Glue the two pieces of 8/4 stock face to face.
The seat is two chunks of 8/4 stock, about 11-1/2″ x 11-1/2″ that are face-glued to make a blank that is about 3-1/2″ thick. The exact thickness isn’t important.
After the glue dries, I cut the square blank into an 11″-diameter circle using the band saw. I rasp off any big lumps or bumps on its rim. Then I tilt the band saw’s table to 30° and saw an underbevel on the blank. I saw right on the seam between the two layers of wood. This helps hide the glue line.
Then I clean up the edges of the seat with rasps, sandpaper and a scraper.
I use 30° here. Try other angles.
To lay out the mortises on the underside of the seat, I first draw a diameter that is 1″ less than the diameter of the underside of the seat. After cutting the underbevel, the seat is about 9″ in diameter. So set your compass to make an 8″-diameter circle.
Now lay out the location of the mortises using the compass. Its current radius (4″) can easily lay out the three mortise locations. Choose a location for one of the legs on the 8″-diameter circle. With the compass, step off twice around the circle. That’s where the second mortise goes. Step off two more times. That’s where the third mortise goes.
Connect these mortise locations with the center of the circle. These three lines are your sightlines for drilling.
Draw the 8″ diameter circle on the underside of the seat.
Choose a mortise location. Step off twice to find the second mortise location. And twice more for the third.
Now drill the mortises with a 1″ auger. Set a sliding bevel for 18°. (This is called the “resultant angle” in chairmaking.) Put the sliding bevel on one of your sightlines. Line up your drill bit in line with the sightline. Tilt the auger bit back toward you to match the 18° bevel. Drill. The mortises should be about 2-1/2″ deep.
The legs are usually leftover 1-3/4″ octagonal sticks that didn’t make the cut to be used in a chair. Usually because of some small defect or color problem. I also have a lot of extra legs sitting around in case I mess up a leg or two while building a chair.
The legs should be 1-3/4″ x 1-3/4″ x 18″-long octagons with straight grain. Cut a 1″ x 2-1/2″-long tenon on the end of each leg. Sometimes I use a 1″ plug/tenon cutter in my drill. Other times I make the tenon on the lathe. Sometimes I taper the legs. Sometimes I do a double-taper. It all depends on what the legs look like and how late in the day it is.
Cut the tenons. I used a plug/tenon cutter in a cordless drill for these.
Before assembling the stool, clean up all the show surfaces. Then glue the legs into their mortises with hide glue. I don’t fox-wedge the mortises. If the legs ever come out, I’ll just glue them back in.
Then level the legs and cut them to length. I like my stools to be between 16″ and 20″ in height. Lower stools for around the fire. Taller stools for work.
These days I usually engrave a spell on the seat as well.
“Please almighty beings, protect this rumpus from harm.”
— Christopher Schwarz
A witch’s mark engraved on this example.
Another finished stool. With leveled legs. A little wonky.
A profile view of the jaws (with stripped screw holes) in the original pine jaw of this “carver’s vise” (this one is from StewMac, where it’s called a “Guitar Repair Vise.”)
Every chair class Chris teaches seems to develop its own gravitational pull. It’s inevitable – if you orbit within 50 feet of a class taught by Chris Schwarz you will get sucked in.
Now getting sucked into a class can mean many different things: Perhaps it means assisting students taper chair legs by hand until your shirt starts sticking to you; or remaking an arm in record time due to a irreparable and untimely break; or sometimes becoming the designated lunch fetcher of the day (this task can quickly make you popular among the students).
I of course am speaking from experience. I’ve completed all of these tasks at least once and am in no way complaining about it. I openly love the infectious energy of a class week – it’s chaotic and exhausting at times and I live for it. I love walking into work unsure of what the day will hold.
While the palpable energy from last week’s class was no different, one of the tasks I was given was new to me.
With how often we use our tools here, on top of student usage, shop maintenance is a constant. Planes and chisels need sharpening, floors need sweeping and carver’s vises need new jaws.
This is nothing against our beloved carver’s vises; we use them daily here. There is, however, one fault we’ve found with most of them – the softwood jaws that come standard on the vises have a tendency to lose their heartiness over time. (The newly recast Grizzly vise comes with hardwood jaws.)
Either the constant use causes the screw holes of the jaws to strip (which is what happened in this case) or the soft pine cracks. Or both (which is what happened in this case). When these things happen, either oak or hickory are what we typically use for new jaws.
After Chris gave me a quick lesson on how to replace the old jaws, I got to work.
Below is a visual step-by-step of how I made this repair.
First things first: Unscrew the old jaws from the vise.
New adhesive-baked urethane is pricey. So I sawed off the old urethane, leaving about 1/8″ of pine backing.
A close-up of the cut.
The thin layer of pine must be planed flat for good adhesion to the new hardwood jaws. How to plane a piece less than 1/4″ thick? I used double-sided tape.
The double-sided tape held the pieces firm to the bench as I planed.
I traced new hickory jaws from the pine ones and cut them out on the band saw then planed them flat to prepare for glue-up. (Notice the crack in the old pine jaw on the lower left.)
After clamping the urethane to the hickory (which was a chore – it was slippery!), I used a toothbrush to clean up excess glue then let them clamped-up jaws dry for an hour.
After tracing the screw holes on the backs of the new jaws, I drilled pilot holes, which made screwing the new jaws in place a snap.
