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.
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:
I use a lot of construction lumber in my projects – not only for workbenches but for furniture projects as well. If you carefully select your lumber you can end up with very nice wood for little money.
I’ve written about how I select my construction lumber from the racks here, but the following is the other half of the story.
As much as I like my local independent hardware store, I end up visiting my home center about twice a week for odds and ends. No matter how much of a hurry I’m in that day, my first stop is the framing lumber. I don’t always buy something, but I always watch the pile of 2 x 12 x 8’s. And I look at the rack of lumber at the roof.
At my store, they usually have a Saturday-night cull. The employees pull all the junk from the racks that won’t sell because it’s too distorted or nasty. They band the culls and sell them for something real cheap. But I ignore the cull pile.
After they cull the racks they open up new bunks of fresh wood to replenish the racks that look skimpy. So Sunday morning is a great time to go to my home center.
Today I stopped by for lightbulbs and saw they had just opened a new bunk of 2 x 12 x 8’s. The employees had removed only two of the restraining straps, so I did them a favor and cut the third free. Then I spent the next hour sorting through the entire bunk (then restacking it perfectly). I found nine beautiful, straight and clear 2 x 12s. And because this bunk had been sitting at the top of the rack for months, the stuff is dry – between 5 and 7 percent moisture content.
These 2 x 12s will be the next project in “The Furniture of Necessity,” one that I have been itching to build for two years.
The only problem is I have to head back to the home center today. In my excited state I forgot the lightbulbs.
I don’t give names to my pieces of furniture. I have nothing against people who do, but it’s just not my thing. But sometimes a piece of furniture reminds me of someone as I’m building it. When I look at this backstool I can think only of Joe Kent Wagg.
For three years I attended a Lutheran school that was populated by a volatile mix of smart kids, token charity cases and trouble-makers. In fourth grade, our resident bully was Joe, who was older, bigger and had questionable dental hygiene.
I was the kid with a bowl haircut, glasses and a smart mouth, so naturally Joe had it in for me on the playground. Thanks to Joe I learned a lot about scuffling, chewing dirt and hiding in the bushes – all valuable skills in the corporate world.
While Joe ruled recess, he struggled in school. He would get out of his seat several times a day and sprint around the classroom. Eventually the teacher brought a roll of duct tape to class and adhered him to his chair by wrapping his midsection to the chair’s back.
This did not stop him. Partially mummified, he would tip backward in his chair all day, a clear violation of school rules.
So the teacher taped him to a chair that with casters on the feet. When Joe tipped back, he would fall on the floor like a crippled turtle unable to get upright.
We were commanded to ignore him, and Joe was left on the floor for what seemed like hours.
I think it was that day that I started to have a problem with authority.
