Lost Art Press

Horses for Courses; Benches for Trenches

Posted on by Lost Art Press

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This morning at 11:48, I finished tuning the tail vise for the 1505 Holy Roman workbench and then John walked through the door of the storefront. His task: Help me build a rolling book display for Woodworking in America.

So after a month of being constructed using mostly traditional handwork, the first job for the 1505 workbench was to be a sanding station so we could process a ton of Dragonply for the shelves.

I don’t give this ironic situation a second thought. Once I complete a piece, I set it out into the wild without any emotional attachment about how it should be used. If I’ve done my job, the piece will survive the ordeal (i.e. children’s toy chests) and look better for the ordeal.

For me, furniture is like the Velveteen Rabbit:

“It doesn’t happen all at once. You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.”

— The Skin Horse in “The Velveteen Rabbit” by Margery Williams

— Christopher Schwarz

Happy Labor Day! Forum Update 9/5

Posted on by meghanlostartpress

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I hope that Labor Day means free time around your house and not “try to catch up day” like it it is here. I’m not complaining though. When catching up consists of picking up after a fun weekend and reading through a bunch of Lost Art Press folks sharing ideas and builds then life is good. Hopefully you are doing the same. Remember, if you have a question about our products, procedures in our books or anything related to Lost Art Press, the fastest way to get an answer is our forum. Check it out here.

Rehandling a Hammer
Jacob has a ball peen hammer that he loves using, but it has a crack in the handle right near the head that makes him a little nervous. (picture at right) He is looking for advice from anyone who has tried re-handling a hammer. Help him out here. And learn about a tool that can fix the problem.

Kitchen/dining Table Finish
Have any suggestions on a durable finish for a beech kitchen table? Martin wants the table to maintain its natural look but still be able to stand up to his family’s nightly dinners. Let him know what you think would work best.

Softwood Chop
Jason is building a knockdown Nicholson bench and is getting to the point where he needs to figure out his plan for the chop on the leg vise. He is thinking he will laminate 2×12 Douglas fir boards but hasn’t decided on the final method yet. Vote for one of his two proposed plans here.

Left-Handed Workbench
Are you a lefty? Are you a lefty who has a preference on whether your bench is built for a lefty or not? Perfect. Marvin wants to know what you think. He is building his own bench and can’t decide which route to take.

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Repair My Ash – Kerf on the Wrong Place
Nathan originally posted looking for help on how to repair a few dings to his bench build. As it turns out, the LAP community pretty much all suggested he leave them and and let the bench have the early battle scars that it has earned. I think it was the right move and the final product looks sweet (picture above). It gets my vote for best build of the week. See the story here.

— MB

This Saturday: A WIA Preview

Posted on by Lost Art Press

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The Lost Art Press storefront will be open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. this Saturday, Sept. 10, less than a week before Woodworking in America.

We’ll have all our books for sale, plus some new T-shirts for Lost Art Press and Crucible Tool for $20 each.

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In addition to commerce, we’ll have both Roman workbenches out in the shop and available for you to play with. And we’ll have a Crucible holdfast on the bench for you to hit as much as you please (sorry, we won’t start selling these until Sept. 15 – we still don’t have the retail pricing calculated).

I’ll also be finishing the construction of a mobile book cart we’re taking to the Marketplace at WIA. It will feature some of my finest craftsmanship (actually, plywood and pocket screws).

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So do stop by if you can. The storefront is located at 837 Willard St., Covington, Ky., 41011.

— Christopher Schwarz

P.S. If you come to town that day, check out the newly opened Covington Coffee three blocks away. They have outstanding pour-over coffee, they sell Lil’s Bagels and they make waffles on Saturday. Also worth drinking: Stop by Braxton Brewing and order a pint of Haven – the best weissbier I’ve had outside Bavaria. Finally, if you want to please your spouse, get brunch at Otto’s that morning. The Benedict Otto’s is fantastic.

Roman End Vise Installed (with a Frankenstein Assist)

Posted on by Lost Art Press

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The Holy Roman end vise is installed and functioning quite well, though at one point I thought I was going to curl under the bench and shed some Holy Roman tears.

After bashing out the slot and mortises for the end vise gear and then paring them true, I fit the two maple blocks that support the screw. One block is a vise nut. The other, at the end of the bench, acts like a bushing to support the screw. Both support the moving dog from below.

These had to be planed so everything was in the same plane, allowing the wooden screw to move without binding. The threaded vise nut is merely friction fit into its mortise. It needs to be easily adjustable so you can lower all the components after several flattenings of the benchtop.

The end block is lag bolted to the bench with two 5/16” x 5” Spax lags (I recommend you always pay the upcharge for Spax). When I need to lower the position of this block I’ll drill new holes for the Spax lags or make a new bushing.

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Then came the fun part (I use the word “fun” ironically): Installing the metal screw that mates the wooden screw to the movable dog. This had to be screwed into the end of the vise screw with a lot of fuss. It had to be centered, and the hole needed to be dang vertical.

So I spent about an hour fussily boring a perfect pilot hole. Then chasing a clearance hole for the unthreaded section of the screw that was going to be buried in the screw. I cut threads in the pilot hole with a regular old steel screw. Then I lubricated the vise screw with some paraffin and drove the screw in.

And snap. Literally. Not like the kids say “snap.” The screw snapped about 1” below the rim of the hole.

After weighing about 100 options, I decided to use a 5/16” x 1” lag and washer to do the job temporarily until I could devise a solution that didn’t look so Mary Shelley.

Tomorrow I’ll drill the dog holes, make some nicer nuts for the face vise and do the “make pretty” so it’s presentable for Woodworking in America. If I’m lucky I’ll get to replace the wooden tommy bar for the end vise with a crank that Peter Ross made me. But time is running out.

— Christopher Schwarz

A Big’un Showed Up

Posted on by fitz

I absolutely love to use wide boards in my projects. Wide stuff shows up quiet often in old  pieces of furniture, and I try to use the same whenever possible. It seems most folks these days think there is no way to get these wide boards anymore. They think there are simply no trees this big. And if they do find them, they are cost-prohibitive.

That’s not true; they are out there.

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Most really large trees are not in the forest; they come from people’s yards most of the time. The great majority are big shade trees that eventually get too big and have to be removed, or they finally come down in a storm. Most of the big commercial mills do not want timber like this because it is often too big for their equipment and there is the chance of iron, such as old nails in the wood.

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My advice is to find a small sawmill. Even if they do not have anything when you visit, leave your contact info for when something does show up. Smaller operations can and will deal with these kinds of logs. The biggest negative to lumber from sources such as this is that the lumber is usually fresh cut and green. Depending on the species and thickness, it can take months or years to air-dry. On the positive side, the lumber can be had a much lower cost than a lumber-supply house.

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A few days back, Lesley Caudle of Lesley’s Sawmill called me and said he had a big cherry log come in. I have done business with Lesley for several years and he knows the kind of stuff I am looking for. In my part of the world, cherry is a pretty common tree, but large ones are rare. This one had been growing on a property line between two tracts of land. Apparently it did not get cut because neither owner knew whose tree it was. We had some pretty rough storms pass through a few weeks back, and the big cherry blew down.

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The log that this tree yielded was 44′ long, 30″ in diameter on the butt end and 22″ on the small end. The tree was not perfectly straight, and the heart was out of center in a couple  places. Cherry is an easy wood to air-dry and not usually temperamental; the lumber should work out fine. Leslie made me a deal, and I bought the whole tree. The big logs yielded dozens of wide clear boards from 24″ wide down to 20″.

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This is one of three loads of wide boards from the big cherry.

If you are not looking, you won’t find anything. Get out and beat the bush. The big stuff will turn up.

— Will Myers