Lost Art Press

Roman Workbenches. In Spain. In a Japanese Book

Posted on by Lost Art Press

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Furniture conservator and cabinetmaker Martin O’Brien sent us these intriguing images of low workbenches being used by Spanish woodworkers to build ladderback chairs. And, to add to the multicultural mix, it comes from a book in Japanese.

To me it looks like there are two benches at work here. In the foreground, the guy with the nifty hat is working on spindles. On the bench on the left, the other woodworker is assembling the chair frames.

And it looks like it’s all taking place in a cave.

O’Brien writes:

“One could almost say that it is a cross between a Roman workbench and shave horse. This shop could very well be a cave in Southern Spain. Makes sense that Roman traditions would still have a serious toehold in this region.

“If you need anymore information, I can get the Japanese person who gave me this book to provide some translations. Next time I go to Spain, I’m gonna find these guys.”

I’d love to learn more about these benches. Thanks Martin. It’s fascinating to see these benches in use in southern Europe and northern Europe (Estonia).

— Christopher Schwarz

Boarded Bookshelf

Posted on by meghanlostartpress

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This is an excerpt from “The Anarchist’s Design Book” by Christopher Schwarz. 

Trying to improve a simple set of bookshelves might seem ridiculous. But I think there are significant things to say about the warped state of bookshelf construction in the modern age.

What could be wrong about horizontal surfaces fastened to vertical ones? Plenty.

For starters, I’m not a fan of adjustable shelving. I think that if you gave enough monkeys enough mescaline, you might be able to come up with a plastic jig to drill the right number of holes for adjustable shelf pins that weren’t a waste of time or space. But that’s a lot of mescaline. Adjustable shelving is, in my opinion, mostly a cop-out.

Books come in fairly standard sizes. Heck, they once came in sizes that were based simply on how many times you folded a large sheet of paper. But thanks to the miracle and wastefulness of modern book manufacturing, we now have some bizarre sizes to deal with.

These odd books are at the extreme ends of a bell curve of book shapes (called “form factors” or “formats” in the design world). You can find books out there that are 18″ wide and 10″ high (yup, a book on billboards). But if you are someone who reads woodworking books, novels and non-fiction (and not art books on Estonian midget nudist wrestlers), then trying to accommodate whack-doodle form factors isn’t necessary.

So I’ve always viewed adjustable shelving with great suspicion. Do we need to adjust every shelf in a carcase 1″ up or down? I don’t.

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What Sizes are Important?
Go to any bookstore and you’ll find that most books come in roughly three sizes: small, medium and large.

Small books are 6″ x 9″ or smaller – these are the novels and standard woodworking books of the 19th and 20th centuries. It’s a convenient size for reading in the subway or the park. And they fit easily into a knapsack or shoulder bag.

The medium size is about 8-1/2″ x 11″ (slightly more if it’s a hardback). This became a fairly standard size for how-to books in the latter 20th century and is economical to print. So you will encounter a lot of these books as you build your library. I find them to be a stepchild size. They are too big to travel with easily. Yet when I am reading them at home I always wish they were bigger.

The large size of book is 11″ x 17″ or some close variant. These books are uncommon in the modern age, unless you are into art books or old books. But when I find them they are worth the extra expense.

Many excellent old books on woodworking, including the 18th-century pattern books, were oversized folios. So I think it’s worth making a place for them in a bookshelf. It might be wishful thinking, but so what?

So this bookshelf has shelf openings of three sizes: 18″ high for big books, 12″ for the medium books and 9-3/8″ for the small ones. (However, the top shelf has no top, so you can fit taller books up there if you dare.)

Other Advantages of this Form
So now that you know the typical book sizes, wouldn’t it be sweet to provide just a wee bit of adjustability – up and down – for odd sizes?

No, it wouldn’t.

Fixed shelves are far stiffer than adjustable ones. You can nail a fixed shelf in place though the back of the carcase. This adds immense stiffness so the shelf won’t sag. (And if you think that sagging shelves aren’t a problem then you don’t own enough books.)

The other advantage to fixed shelves is they add to the overall soundness of the carcase. If you have only two fixed shelves – which is typical in a commercial bookcase – the carcase is more likely to rack compared to a carcase that has multiple shelves that are nailed through both the back and the bookcase’s vertical uprights.

One last thing I like about fixed shelves: They don’t ever collapse or slide off their adjustable shelf pins.

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Dropped Edge on a Shelf

How to Cheat
So let’s say you think I’m full of crap or you pine desperately for adjustable shelves. Can you make a shelf unit that is stiff enough? Yup. Do these two things: Use a plywood back that is glued and screwed in place. That will stiffen the carcase. To make the shelves stiff, use what is called a “dropped edge” on every adjustable shelf. This is when you attach a strip of solid wood to the front and/or rear of the shelf to stiffen it.

A typical dropped edge is 1-1/4″ wide and is attached to the front of the shelf. Note that the dropped edge can also be used to hide the fact that you used plywood for the shelves. (Naughty, naughty. Plywood isn’t as stiff as solid wood – hence the name “solid” wood.)

If you look at the bookcase in this book, the “kick” (the horizontal strip affixed to the lower shelf ) works exactly like a dropped edge. There’s good reason for it to be attached to the lower shelf because it’s designed to hold the heaviest books.

— MB

A Chair from Hall’s Croft in Stratford-upon-Avon

Posted on by Lost Art Press

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While teaching in England in the summer of 2015, Roy Underhill and I had a day off together and headed to Stratford-upon-Avon with his wife, Jane, to check out all things William Shakespeare.

While touring Hall’s Croft, where Shakespear’s daughter lived, both Roy and I became fascinated with a small primitive chair in a corner by some stairs. There was no evidence the chair was anything important, that it had been owned by the family or was even from the 17th century. But it was charming, and Roy and I took lots of photos of it.

We both got the bug to build a reproduction. But Roy beat me to it for this season of “The Woodwright’s Shop.” Check out the two-part episodes here:

Episode One on the Welsh Stick Chair.

Episode Two on the Welsh Stick Chair.

While visiting Roy this fall I got to sit in the chair. It is tiny – good thing I don’t have much of a butt. And the visit only strengthened my resolve to build one myself.

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With all my furniture commissions complete for the year and all my editing under control (thanks Kara!), I started making the Hall’s Croft chair this morning. I won’t be able to make it out of elm, but I am going to stay true to the size and rough spirit of the original.

It’s an odd feeling to get to start a project without a customer, article or need to satisfy (other than my curiosity). But here we go.

— Christopher Schwarz

Cool Bow Saw

Posted on by fitz

A bow saw is a handy tool to have around. There are so many operations they can perform that it makes them an almost indispensable tool.

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Bill Anderson has been teaching a class at the  Woodwright’s School for several years on making an elegant little bow saw he calls the Howarth bow saw. It is patterned off an original saw Bill found at a tool sale.

If you have ever taken a class from Bill you know he is a guy who likes details. He even took some of the parts of the original saw to his local veterinarian’s office and had X-rays taken to see how they were made. If I walked into my vet’s office with saw parts wanting X-rays taken it would be me they want to do the X-rays on. Bill though, he makes it happen.

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Bill, in conjunction with Josh Farnsworth at Wood and Shop, have released a new DVD called “Building the Historic Howarth Bow Saw”. It is an excellent, very detailed video on how to reproduce this very shapely saw.

— Will Myers

We Won’t Run Out of Stickers – Promise

Posted on by Lost Art Press

My daughter Maddy is fulfilling your sticker orders every day after classes, and she reports we still have plenty on hand.

While several customers have been worried she would run out, she won’t. When her stock gets low we’ll order a new batch of stickers. So if you send in your $5, you will get stickers.

Also, Maddy is enjoying all the notes that woodworkers have been sending, including photos of their dogs and their own company’s stickers. She’s started displaying them on a wall in her bedroom.

If you’d like a set of Lost Art Press stickers, send an SASE and a $5 bill to:

Stick it to the Man
P.O. Box 3284
Columbus, OH 43210

Maddy will take your SASE and put three high-quality vinyl stickers – one of each design – in your envelope and mail it to you immediately. (If you send $10, she’ll send two sets; $15 will get you three sets). These are the nicest die-cut stickers we could find and should even be suitable for outdoor use, according to the manufacturer. The stickers are made in the United States, of course.

One note: Maddy’s sticker business will be closed from Dec. 18 until the end of the year for her Christmas break. Orders received during that time will be fulfilled as soon as she gets back to campus.

— Christopher Schwarz