Lost Art Press

Copperplate Prints Now Available for Ordering

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It took only 10 months (all my fault), but we are now taking orders for handmade copperplate prints from “The Anarchist’s Design Book.”

The prints will be made individually by Briony Morrow-Cribbs, the artist who created the etchings and original set of prints used in the book. Prints measure 11” x 15-3/4” and are printed on a cotton rag paper called Hahnemuhle Copperplate – the same paper used for the prints reproduced in the book.

Individual prints are $110. If you order the entire set for $1,300 they’ll come in a handmade clamshell box constructed by Mike Fallon at Ohio Book. Ordering information is here.

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We’ll be taking orders for the plates until early April. After we close the ordering, Briony will make the prints, Mike will make the boxes and we will ship your prints in protective packaging (recommended by the artist) when they are done.

Copperplate prints are rare today, but they were the primary way that woodworking and other technical information was transmitted in the 18th century. A.-J. Roubo made his own copperplate engravings for “l’Art du menuisier,” which is one of the reasons his book is such a classic.

Inspired by Roubo’s copperplate engravings, I convinced Briony to make the plates for “The Anarchist’s Design Book.” She makes etchings, not engravings, but it’s a similar intaglio process. Each plate began as a CAD sketch which I then redrew to make it more human. Then Briony made her own drawings based on mine and we went back and forth to balance the technical with the artistic aspects of each plate.

In the end, every line and stipple was etched into copper, the plates were hand inked and then embossed into the paper.

The result is unlike anything you’ll find printed today.

If you’d like to see the plates and box in person, I’ll have them at our storefront for the next two open days: Feb. 11 and March 11.

Last note: This is the only time we’ll be offering these plates for sale. We don’t seek to become an art dealer, but these prints are special and offer you a personal link to the great woodworking book traditions of the 18th century.

— Christopher Schwarz

The Cover Cloth on ‘Roubo on Furniture’

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r2_blue_twine“Roubo on Furniture” will forever be known as one of our children that had a difficult birth. The cover cloth we ordered for the book has been discontinued. As was our backup color.

And so we have switched gears and the cover cloth will be the greenish blue shown at right.

If you ordered the book for the color of the cover only, please send a message to help@lostartpress.com and we’ll dispatch a psychiatrist to your home immediately.

— Christopher Schwarz

Important Update: ‘Roman Workbenches’

Posted on by Lost Art Press
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A mock-up of the two-part cover for the book with navy blue cloth on the spine over a wheat-colored tweed on the boards.

John and I have decided to make significant changes to the manufacturing specifications of the letterpress version of “Roman Workbenches.” So much so that I’ve taken the unprecedented step of deleting my post from Jan. 29 to avoid confusion.

After much research, we’ve decided to offer “Roman Workbenches” fully bound with a two-part cloth cover, sewn binding, heavy endsheets and headbands. The binding will easily meet (and likely exceed) what we offer on typical Lost Art Press Books.

The price (including domestic shipping) will be $87 – still less than the $100 we promised. The book will go on sale at noon Eastern time on Sunday, Feb. 5. There will be 500 copies available.

Why make the change to the binding? Well, once I started pricing sewing and taping the binding, it was only a little bit more money to simply complete the binding. So John and I decided to go all the way (with the book binding).

If you are like me and really really want to bind your own book, we will have some unbound book blocks and will put those up for sale once the 500 are bound. I suspect the price for the unbound book blocks will be $77 (I know, it’s not a big savings; hence, our decision).

I am sorry (and a bit embarrassed) at this change. We try not to alter manufacturing specs like this in midstream. But I know it’s the correct thing to do.

See you Sunday (I hope, or we will flush away many thousands of American dollars).

— Christopher Schwarz

Undercarriage Assembly

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Gluing and wedging the legs into the seat is pretty easy if you don’t have stretchers between the legs. But there are still lots of opportunities to mess things up and get into a bind when you open the glue bottle.

Here’s how I prepare for the glue up so I don’t have many surprises.

First I knock the legs into the seat and pencil around all the tenons – both above the seat and below the seat. The mark around the tenon above the seat tells me about where I should crosscut the tenon before assembly. The mark around the tenon below the seat tells me at what point I should stop sawing a kerf for the wedges.

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With the legs still in the seat, I also number each one and mark its position in the seat so the leg’s annular rings run parallel to the grain in the seat. I know that this runs contrary to some sound advice out there. Here’s my rationale:

If the legs are going to shrink, they are going to shrink more in the direction parallel to the rings than they will shrink perpendicular to the rings (that’s the way trees work). So I want to apply a wedge against the annular rings to resist this shrinkage. So the annular rings in my legs run front to back, the grain in the seat runs front to back and the wedge cuts across the legs’ annular rings.

Honest: I am not trying to talk anyone into doing it this way, and I am certain other tactics work. But this is what suits my head at this time.

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Then I kerf the tenons with a tenon saw, stopping short of the pencil line representing the underside of the seat.

I gather all the materials I need for assembly and lay them out on the bench. This includes extra wedges, rags, a toothbrush for cleaning up the glue, a cup of hot water, several mallets and hammers and a 1/2″ chisel.

To assemble, I paint hide glue on the inside of one mortise. Then I paint glue on its tenon and drive the leg home. I strike the leg with a 2-1/2 lb. sledge until its stops moving into the seat when I strike it. Repeat for the other three legs.

I clean up any glue on the underside of the seat then flip it over.

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Usually, driving the legs into the seat will close up the kerfs I just sawed in the tenons. Instead of trying to wedge the closed kerf and risk destroying some wedges, I open up each kerf with a 1/2″ chisel and a few mallet blows. This reduces wedge failure by about 345 percent.

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I paint glue on a wedge and drive it in with my hand sledge. When the wedge stops moving, I stop hitting it.

Finally I clean up all the glue I can find with rags and a toothbrush. I put the chair on a bench and walk away, resisting the urge to fiddle with it too much and make it worse.

— Christopher Schwarz

Saddling a Seat

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There’s almost certainly a sort of Reinheitsgebot for chairmakers. If you don’t use hand tools at every stage, you receive one evil eye.

Truth is, lots of chairmakers I know use power tools at some stage of the process. Many use a band saw. Others use an angle grinder to roughly shape their seats. Many use electric lathes. And a few – gasp – use sandpaper.

Me, I’m indifferent to this claptrap. I like to use the tools I like to use. I avoid the tools I dislike. Simple.

So this is how I saddle my seats.

I don’t have an adze. Why? I don’t know; it just never happened. Sure, I’ve tried a few adzes here and there at woodworking shows, but I’ve always started saddling my seats with a scorp (mine is from Barr Specialty Tools). It takes longer than if I had an adze, but I’m happy I don’t have to take care of an additional tool.

So after marking out the saddle I begin by traversing the seat with the scorp. Traversing in chairmaking is not like traversing with a jack plane. You don’t work with the cutter 90° to the grain.

Instead you pull the tool directly across the grain, but you angle its cutter in the direction the grain is flowing in the board. If this sounds odd to you, try it with a jack plane. Say you are traversing a board where the grain directions runs from right to left. The best plan is to push the tool directly across the grain of the board but angle it 30° to the left.

Try it and it will click.

I usually bottom my seats to be about 5/8” deep at the deepest point near the back of the seat. Then I saddle it about 3/8” near the front of the seat.

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After I get it as clean as possible with a scorp, I switch to a travisher (mine is from Claire Minihan). Again, I work across the grain with the tool angled in the direction of the grain. I take lighter and lighter cuts as I work. When I can’t refine the surface any more, I switch to a card scraper.

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I scrape out the tops of the dawks and try to remove any high spots my fingers can feel. I scrape and scrape until I can’t get it looking any better.

Then, finally, I wrap a piece of #180-grit sandpaper around a cork sanding block and try to refine the surface even more. After I scuff up the surface entirely with the sandpaper, I come back with a scraper and remove the sanding scratches.

The last 15 minutes of the process is me switching back and forth between a scraper and sandpaper, trying to get it as perfect as possible.

Eventually I give up – never satisfied with the final surface. But that’s typical.

— Christopher Schwarz