Lost Art Press

Revising my First Book, ‘Workbenches’

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For the last month, I’ve been revising and expanding my first book “Workbenches: From Design & Theory to Construction & Use” for F+W Media. The revised book is scheduled to be out by the end of 2015 and printed in the United States.

I started writing that book in 2005, and a lot has changed in the last 10 years – not in workbench design, but in workholding. Plus, after teaching 15 or so classes on building workbenches (and building another dozen benches myself), I have learned a few things about bench building that have made my life easier.

Oh, and there are a few small errors in the original edition, including one line that people give me inordinate amounts of crap for. I wrote that I added a coat of wax to a benchtop, and then in a later photo caption discuss how that’s stupid for handwork. So I gave bad advice and then I contradicted myself. Sigh.

So I’ve been nipping and tucking the text throughout the entire book. Most of my edits are to reflect changes in what’s available. When I wrote that book, there weren’t any commercial benches that I would buy, there weren’t any manufactured holdfasts that I’d buy and wood vise screws were extremely difficult to find. Today we have an almost-embarrassing array of benches and accessories to choose from.

It’s weird revising your own work. It’s like having a conversation with a younger version of yourself. As I make small changes I mutter to myself: “Yeah, you’re right. But you could have said it in a nicer way.” Good thing I work alone.

I also decided to add two benches to the book.

In the original edition I show how to build an English bench and a French bench, both from construction lumber. They are great benches, and are still in daily service today. But after much thought, I decided to add plans for a knockdown English bench and a no-compromises French bench with all the crazy sliding-dovetail joinery.

As I sat down to write these chapters, I didn’t think I had anything more to say about workbenches. About 10,000 words later, I proved myself wrong.

I’ll have more details on the revised edition as they are available. Because this book will be printed in the United States, Lost Art Press will carry it. We will have 500 copies, and all will be personally signed by me before going to our warehouse.

— Christopher Schwarz

Ball-and-socket Campaign Stool

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Jeff Burks turned up an interesting patent for a camp stool that seems genius, and yet I’ve never seen an example in the wild.

Nathaniel Johnson of New York was granted patent 32,698 on July 2, 1861, for using a curious metallic (or wooden) orb as the centerpiece of a folding camp stool. In essence, Johnson calls for using an iron orb that is pierced by three rods as the folding mechanism for the stool.

In and of itself, using a sphere isn’t an improvement. But what Johnson shows is that each of the three legs of the stool has a sympathetic spherical recess. This small detail allows the legs to close tighter without significantly reducing the strength of the legs.

It’s a pretty smart idea.

The challenge, of course, is in implementing it. I’ll grant that a machinist of average intelligence could create the orb with the three threaded posts. But creating the spherical recess in the legs would be a trick with off-the rack tooling. I don’t know of many drill bits that have a spherical cutting surface. Some router bits do. But then you’d have to follow that tricky operation by drilling a perfectly placed hole for the rod of the hardware.

I can visualize a drill bit that would cut the hole and sphere in one go, but that bit doesn’t exist (as far as I know).

So this one gets filed in the “cool, someday” folder.

This has inflamed my lust to build some more campaign stools from the leather and wood scraps in my basement. And to dream of perfect spheres.

— Christopher Schwarz

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Hand-bound Edition of ‘Chairmaker’s Notebook’

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Johanna Smick of Monkfish Bindery is offering 45 hand-bound copies of Peter Galbert’s “Chairmaker’s Notebook” for pre-order on her website.

Lost Art Press is supplying the loose signatures for the book, which will be printed on the same #80-matte paper as our standard edition. Johanna will take it from there, stitching the signatures and assembling the book into a quarter leather binding – leather on the spine and paper over boards for the remainder of the cover.

What will be particularly spectacular will be the printing on the cover paper and leather using one of Peter’s images of a bow-back chair. Each book will be numbered and signed by the author. All-in-all it will be an impressive piece of work.

Johanna completed the hand bookbinding program at North Bennett Street, has an BFA in printmaking from Washington University and is an established bookbinder in Asheville, N.C. You can read her full biography here.

Complete details on the ordering process and shipping schedule are available on her site. The book will be $285. You can also order a matching clamshell case for an additional $100.

— Christopher Schwarz

P.S. The standard edition of “Chairmaker’s Notebook” is available with free domestic shipping for only 15 more days. After the book ships on March 20, domestic shipping will be $8.

‘The Woodworker: The Charles H. Hayward Years’

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After six years and hundreds of hours of work, our biggest publishing project is finally coming together.

“The Woodworker: The Charles H. Hayward Years” is a massive compilation of the best writing at The Woodworker magazine while Charles H. Hayward was editor, from 1936 to 1966. Many of the articles were written and illustrated by Hayward himself, but this authorized compilation also features stories from other great workshop writers such as Robert Wearing and W.L. Goodman.

When we say this project is big, we mean it. This 8-1/2” x 11” hardbound book will easily be more than 1,200 pages long and feature articles on all aspects of hand tool use, joinery, furniture styles and workshop philosophy.

The book has taken a team of people including myself, Megan Fitzpatrick, Phil Hirz, Ty Black, John Hoffman and Linda Watts years to put together. It started with us purchasing every single annual edition of The Woodworker from Hayward’s tenure, a $2,000 bill.

Then we spent many beer- and wine-soaked evenings sorting through all of the annuals, culling out the best articles, weeding out duplicates and trying to make a cohesive book that included a fair sample of Hayward’s pioneering publishing work.

That was the easy part.

Ty Black scanned all of the articles and wrote a program that would process the images and turn the stories into editable text, which then had to be compared against the originals.

And now Linda Watts is laying out the entire book in a cohesive, vintage-looking package that will present Hayward’s work to a new generation of hand-tool users.

I will be honest: We bit off more than we could chew with this book. It would have been easy to scan all the articles and reprint them as-is. We took the hardest and most expensive road possible in resetting all the text, reprocessing each image and creating new page layouts.

“The Woodworker: The Charles H. Hayward Years” will be published this fall. We don’t have pricing information. But you might want to start saving your dimes and English pesos now. It will be worth it.

As a small taste, here are all of the sections of the book:

1-Tools & Techniques
Sharpening
Setting-out Tools
Handplanes
Saws
Boring Tools
Carving
Turning
Veneering & Inlay
General Techniques
Miscellaneous Tools

2- Joinery
Panel Joints
Frame Joints
Dovetail and Carcass Joints
Miscellaneous Joints

3-Workshop Appliances & Storage
Workbenches & Workholding
Tool Chests & Storage
Appliances

4-Furniture & Details
Furniture Styles Styles
Projects & Drawings
Miscellaneous Details

5-Chips from the Chisel

And below is a bigger taste: The full table of contents for the book.

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More details as they become available.

— Christopher Schwarz