Lost Art Press

This Weekend: Lie-Nielsen Show in Cincinnati

Posted on by Lost Art Press

jkw_standing_behind_IMG_0308Lost Art Press will be at the Lie-Nielsen Hand Tool Event at Popular Woodworking Magazine this weekend (April 17-18), with books, T-shirts and even some furniture to show.

We’ll be bringing the just-released “Chairmaker’s Notebook,” plus all the other titles in our catalog.

In addition, I’m bringing a finished three-legged backstool and trestle table from my forthcoming book “Furniture of Necessity.” So come take a look at these designs and sit in the chair to see if it’s stable or not (drunkards welcome). We’re also happy to sign any books while we’re there – even if we didn’t write them.

This year, we’re planning a meet-up for Friday night at one of the local breweries. We’ll have details at the show on Friday (we haven’t finalized them, yet, or I’d post them here).

As always, the Lie-Nielsen show at Popular Woodworking has a good stable of exhibitors:

Juan Hovey of  Juan Vergara, Planemaker
Mark Hicks of  Plate 11 Bench Co.
Raney Nelson of  DAED Toolworks

And, of course, the staff of the magazine. They usually sell a whole bunch of books and DVDs at great prices at this show, so be sure to check that out.

— Christopher Schwarz

New Beehive T-shirts Coming Soon

Posted on by Lost Art Press

SkepFinal_black_lines

For the last couple months, I’ve been working on a new T-shirt design that combines the skep – a traditional beehive – with the tools of the woodworking artisan.

For many years, the skep was the symbol of the industrious joiner or cabinet-maker, and it shows up in woodworking books and on documents throughout the 18th and 19th centuries. (Read more about that here.) After fleshing out the idea with some preliminary sketches, I sent my ideas to Ohio artist Joshua Minnich, who designed our most recent shirt.

Joshua produced the fantastic logo you see above. In the coming weeks, we will offer this logo printed on T-shirts in a full range of sizes (XS to 3XL) and colors (gray, blue, red, black and orange). These will be available worldwide at a very reasonable shipping cost.

We are using American Apparel shirts, which are made in California, and the shirts will be printed in California. These shirts run a little tight, so we strongly recommend you order one size larger than typical. (Doing this does not mean you are fat; it just means you aren’t a skinny hipster.)

We’ll start selling these shirts as soon as we have our final printed samples in hand for photography.

— Christopher Schwarz

Making Chopsticks at Bridge City Toolworks

Posted on by Lost Art Press

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In preparation for a recent trade show in China, John Economaki of Bridge City Toolworks had a nutty idea for a gimmick in his booth: a planing jig for making chopsticks.

As it turned out, people lined up at the show for a chance to make perfectly planed chopsticks at the show.

“I hit on something very deep in the Chinese culture,” John says during a chat in his office. “I have never seen so much joy in my entire life.”

Kids, women and adults of all ages used his little tabletop jigs to make the perfect tapering sticks that end in a petite tapered octagon. Then they used one of the Bridge City Jointmaker Pros to saw a pyramid shape at the top.

What started as a fun idea – almost a bit of a joke – is headed into production. The Chopstick Master is, like all Bridge City tools, a cunning invention from Economaki’s restless mind. And after he told me about the jig over dinner last week, I knew I had to stop at his Portland, Ore., office on my way to the airport to make a pair of chopsticks.

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The chopsticks start as a pair of straight, square-section sticks, padauk in this case. Then they are wedged into the jig to bend the wood on a diagonal into a shallow S-shape.

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Why? Because of the block plane used in the jig. Thanks to the skewed, slightly bent chopstick you can use the entire width of the iron while planing the chopstick to its initial tapered shape. That reduces sharpening.

Also cool are the plane’s two depth skids that poke out from the side of the plane like a catamaran. The skids capture the plane on a track and control the cutting action. When the plane stops cutting, you are done with that operation.

It is very difficult to mess up the process. Here’s what it’s like:

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You number each face of the stick one through four and wedge the stick in the jig with No. 1 facing up. Plane face No. 1 and then plane face No. 2 in the same manner.

Then you turn a knob on the side of the jig to change the pitch of its bed and plane sides No. 3 and 4. You have just created a perfect tapered stick.

Then you drop the stick into the V-shaped notch in the jig, which then shows the four corners of the chopstick to the plane. Then you plane away and create a tiny, perfect octagon on the last four inches or so of the chopstick.

You are done. Time elapsed (with instruction from the maker) about 5 minutes. I then cut a small pyramid shape on the top of each chopstick using the Jointmaker Pro and broke the edges with a small piece of fine sandpaper.

Totally brilliant.

If you are interested in being notified about the development of the Chopstick Master, go to ChopstickMaster.com. Economaki is working out the details of manufacturing and pricing – but I think you are going to be amazed at the price (including the plane). I’ll get one –to have it at my next dinner party and try to hook a few people into woodworking.

— Christopher Schwarz

Planing Mill Owners’ Tribulations

Posted on by fitz

planing_mill

Talking with a lumber dealer, a short time ago, about dressed flooring, ceiling, etc., and the awful time he had to get his lumber planed right, set me to thinking of the time when as foreman of a planing mill in New York City I used to smile and look pleasant, when receiving some such message as this, delivered at the same time as the lumber, either by the truck driver or as an N. B. on the mill ticket:

“Please run this lot with very slow feed, as the customer is very particular;” or, “put on new, sharp knives so as to run this maple or oak very, very smooth, as any defects in planing will have to be thrown out;” or, “any piece of lumber in this lot that you think is not good or will not plane perfectly smooth, please lay out, and send word to the office so we can send others to replace them,” or, “if any piece is too thin to hold the thickness, lay it out,” and other requests of like nature.
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Pleasant Pursuits

Posted on by fitz

moseley_simpson

Perhaps in no branch of our manufactures has England become more famous than in that of those prime necessaries of the workman—his tools. According to an old-fashioned saying—we were almost saying saw—”Tools are half the battle.” It might be said three-fourths.

And from the earliest days, when one in boyhood frequented workshops and watched with insatiable curiosity the carpenter turning off those beautiful silky-looking curls, the shavings, it used to be with pride that the men compared their planes, saws, and chisels—talked of their merits; how this or that was a capital bit of stuff; and almost invariably one saw stamped in on the blades of these tools the word “Moseley,” or “Moseley and Simpson.”
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