Lost Art Press

Roman Bench Legged Up

Posted on by Lost Art Press

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Building this bench has been a lot more like building a daybed for a giant snake than a typical workbench.

After drilling the mortises last Thursday, I got some time yesterday to cut the wedges for the legs, to kerf the tenons (to make it easier for the wedges to do their job) and assemble the entire thing with hide glue.

The wedges are made from an ash plank I’ve kept around since 2007, believe it or not. It’s an offcut from making the benchtop to my first Holtzapffel workbench that year. It is the most springy and resilient ash I’ve ever worked with. And as I wanted to wail on these wedges, that ash was just the ticket.

After getting all the mortises and tenons painted with glue, I put all the joints together and flipped the bench onto its feet. Then came the fun part with a small sledgehammer.

When building chairs, I have to be careful not to split the seat when driving in the legs or wedges. I try to stop beating the parts exactly one blow before splitting the seat.

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With these enormous 1-3/4”-diameter tenons and the 3-1/2”-thick oak top, however, splitting was not going to be a problem. So I knocked the wedges in like I was playing Whack-a-Mole, Deathmatch Edition. When each wedge seated fully, it made a Biblical thunk.

Today I’ll clean up the assembled benchtop, level the legs and start drilling the holes for holdfasts and wooden stakes.

— Christopher Schwarz

About Our New Canadian Distributors

Posted on by Lost Art Press

LAP_logo2_940We now sell our books in Canada with all the same benefits that U.S. customers receive – shipping is included in the price, and all books that I’ve written include a letterpress bookplate personally signed by me.

Canadian customers check out in our store just like U.S. customers. You’ll be charged in U.S. dollars on your credit card plus the Canadian goods and services tax (GST). Then your order will be mailed via Canada Post from Kingston, Ontario. Customers will not encounter duty charges or any other international transaction fees.

Our Canadian operation is run by Michael and John Sinclair, two brothers who run Swede Paint Enterprises. Swede Paint sells a number of remarkable products that I’ve been using since April with great success. Many of these products are solvent-free and extremely easy to use.

Though I’ll be writing more specifically about these products in the future, here are a couple that I have become totally enamored with:

Allback Organic Linseed Oil. This linseed oil does not contain metallic driers. It’s just flaxseed oil that has been treated with oxygen so it will dry readily. I’ve used this on five projects now and it is a pleasure to use. It smells a lot less than the stuff from the home center and dries quickly.

Linseed Oil Wax. This soft wax is made using organic linseed oil and beeswax. It has the consistency of a gel stain and makes an excellent topcoat over any finish. I’ve been using it over milk paint, shellac and even on raw wood. It goes on very easily and gives a little more lustre than the straight oil.

I’m eager to experiment with their varnish and their linseed oil paint, too.

We decided to work with Michael and John after meeting them personally in March. They have the same approach to treating their customers (and the planet) that we do. They deal in only high-quality stuff and treat their customers with great care. We highly recommend them (otherwise we wouldn’t have gotten into business with them).

So Canadians, please do check out our store and know that you are helping a family-run Canadian firm (and us!) to thrive.

— Christopher Schwarz

Introduction to Punctuation

Posted on by meghanlostartpress
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Palladio suggested a rule of thumb for establishing the casing around a window opening. Divide the space into five or six equal parts, and use one-fifth or one-sixth as the casing.

This is an excerpt from “By Hand and Eye” by Geo R. Walker and Jim Tolpin.

Punctuation to Establish a Border
Punctuation acts like a visual warning track in a baseball outfield. As the outfielder races to catch a fly ball, the warning track signals that the field is about to end and the home-run fence is fast approaching. Punctuation tells the eye that one part is ending and another is beginning. Our eye doesn’t like to suddenly hit a wall or slip over a cliff. That’s why printers format a text with margins to make words easier to read. Borders help us locate transitions and play an important role. A door frame is a good example. It plays no functional role yet plays a vital visual role of highlighting the opening. Note that on a tall vertical space such as a window or door frame, we don’t use the height to establish our punctuation. That could result in a heavy band if wrapped all the way around. Tall vertical shapes (doors) are punctuated across the width (east and west), while long horizontal shapes (drawer fronts) are punctuated along the height (north and south).

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We selected the border for one of the smaller drawers to punctuate all. That border ties all the others together in a unity.

This brings up another practical issue. A series of drawers, doors or spaces in the same composition with multiple sizes would call for different-sized banding or border elements for each space. Yet that’s seldom the case in built work. Select one door or drawer front from the mid-range and use it for all. It’s more important for all the composition to display a unity through similar borders. Graduated drawers that get larger toward the bottom of a case are a good example. If you choose to incorporate a punctuation with banding or inlay, work up a border for several of the smaller drawers and trust your eye to select which border will complement all.

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Adding 1/6 to the height or width of a door opening is a way to tweak it to your eye. This double square was tweaked taller by adding 1/6 the width to the height. Period guide books described this as “two squares and a sixth.”

Tweaking a Design Using Punctuating Ratios
It used to frustrate me to hear someone with a creative bent opine about making the smallest tweak to hit some mythical sweet spot. Somehow they seemed to magically know that adding 1⁄4″ to the width of a door frame would spell Nirvana. I might agree that the door frame did seem to look better, but it all seemed like magical guesswork or voodoo. Part of clearing through the fog is to gain some understanding of how elements harmonize or punctuate. Using these principles, we can unpack examples to help develop that inner sense. Secondly, we need a practical approach to make small adjustments to an element or shape. We already established that a small series of simple ratios (1:2, 3:5, etc.) can cover a range of simple shapes to define a form. Classical designers often used punctuating ratios to make a small tweak. These are large enough to make a visual difference without looking forced. The top diameter of a column shaft is one-sixth smaller than the shaft diameter at the base. If we want to bump a square just a bit wider without making too dramatic a shift, we bump it just a little wider by one-sixth. A long 2:1 rectangle can be tweaked just a bit longer using a sixth of the width.

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This principle applies to tweaking border elements. If 1:5 seems too bold, try 1:6, 1:7 or 1:8. We are always concerned that the border element has a relationship with element it’s linked with.

— MB

100 More ‘Anarchist’s Tool Chest’ Posters in Stock

Posted on by Lost Art Press

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We have finally figured out how many letterpress “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest” posters we have left in stock after shipping out all of the last batch. And after replacing damaged ones. And replacing the damaged replacements.

We have 100 we can sell. They are now in our store for $25, which includes packaging and shipping in the United States. (I apologize that our Canadian warehouse does not have stock on this poster. If we have any left after this round, we will send some to Canada.)

All of the posters have been personally signed by me. The image was hand drawn by Randall Wilkins and converted to a polymer plate that Steamwhistle Letter Press used to make these old-school posters. They are printed on heavy #100 stock and, unlike on an offset printing job, you can feel the impressions left by the printing process.

Every poster is just a little different. Different ink spread. Different register on where the impression hit the page. Different signature!

You can order yours here.

— Christopher Schwarz, who is praying to the poster goddess (Cheryl Tiegs) right now.

The Roman Bench – 3 Legs Away from 11

Posted on by Lost Art Press

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The legs of this Roman workbench are on a sightline of about 30° with a resultant angle of 15°, numbers which I created by using a square with a protractor head and a long blade. Once the blade of the square looked right to my eyes – not too splayed and not too vertical, I measured the compound angles right off the square.

(A full treatise on working with sightlines and resultant angles is in “The Anarchist’s Design Book.”)

Then I drilled four 1-3/4”-diameter mortises to see how solid the bench felt with just four legs.

I don’t have an auger bit that’s 1-3/4”, so I cut the mortises with a Forstner and a corded drill. Megan Fitzpatrick spotted me during the process, and I showed her how you can use two inexpensive laser levels to monitor your progress as you bore.

Even with Megan’s sharp eye and the assistance of the lasers, it was a challenge to bore the mortises without the Forstner bit or its angle wandering a tad. Right now the legs look a bit cattywampus, but once they are level to the floor some of that will disappear, just as it does with chairmaking.

After boring four mortises, we inserted the legs and turned the bench on its feet. It felt completely solid, even when we jumped on the benchtop. I think four legs is definitely enough.

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But I wanted to be the first boy on my block with an eight-legged workbench. So I bored four more mortises, and today I fit the additional legs. The bench looks fairly unusual, all in all, but I like it.

— Christopher Schwarz