Lost Art Press

You Didn’t Get This

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Sweet mother of mercy I have been waiting a long time to post this entry.

Question: Do you want a polissoir that looks and works exactly like the one shown in Roubo’s 18th-century masterwork?

Answer: Why yes, I do. Click here.

Lie-Nielsen Toolworks is offering a gorgeous and simple polissoir that is the twin of the one shown in A.J. Roubo’s “l’Art du Menuisier.” It matches the original in form, size and everything. And it’s only $36. Buy it now or you will regret it when they run out.

This polissoir is made by the same artisan who makes Don Williams’s polissoir. And these are provided to Lie-Nielsen by Don Williams. In other words, everyone wins. Including you.

— Christopher Schwarz

The One in Which I am Slapped by Someone

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Please don’t let your children (or your fetal acetates) read this blog entry.

I’m finishing up the interior of a traveling tool chest this weekend and put in the tool rack that’s affixed to the back wall of this particular chest.

The rack is on the back wall because the front wall will be consumed by a large crab lock. But that’s not what this entry is about. It’s about the details of building the rack.

Normally, the tool racks I make are a single piece of 1” x 1” stock that I pierce with 1/2” holes on 1-1/8” centers. This sort of rack appeals to my desire to keep my tools all upright and evenly spaced – I have a lot of German blood don’t you know.

But this rack does limit the ability of the rack to hold a lot of tools.

Two years ago when Megan Fitzpatrick built her chest, she didn’t care much for my arrangement and so she decided to do something different. One night when I dropped off some manuscripts for editing she showed me her rack. I was impressed.

It might be the most thoughtful and capacious rack I’ve encountered.

Instead of plunging a 1/2” bit into a stick of wood, Megan took a “negative space” approach to her rack. There’s a single wooden bar that is offset from the wall of her chest with small bits of wood. And the whole thing is screwed to the wall.

I took some measurements, filed the information away and went home.

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This morning I started playing with the variables to make a rack that would hold the maximum number of tools and place them at the right height so you could easily grab them, without stressing the parts of the rack and loosening the screws that hold it together.

So I gathered all the handled tools I could and started measuring them. I wanted the tools to wedge into the rack and keep their tops at a certain height so you could reach in there and finger them without too much fuss.

Here’s what I came up with: The wooden bar is 1/4” thick x 7/8” wide. The wooden bits that offset the bar are 9/16” thick x 7/8” wide. The 9/16” space between the wall and the bar was one magic dimension. The other important dimension was putting about 7” between the wooden bits. Any more than 7” and the wooden wall flexed in a way that made me uncomfortable and put a strain on my screws.

Then I positioned the rack so it was 5-1/2” from the top rim of the chest. I screwed it to the wall.

This setup accommodated every tool I could find. They dropped into the space without any trouble and the tops of the handles ended up in a grabbable place.

— Christopher Schwarz

With Stake Feet

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“This is such a familiar form of construction that a vocabulary of terms has hardly been found to describe it, but some early inventories seem to refer to it as ‘staked,’ or ‘with stake feet.’ Added to this is the fact that it has been largely ignored by serious furniture historians, though its place in the development of furniture design is so important that it is hard to account for this neglect.”

— Victor Chinnery, “Oak Furniture: The British Tradition,” Antique Collectors Club, (1979) p. 75

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The Book of Plates of Books

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I get asked a lot: Why is it called “The Book of Plates?” Couldn’t you have called it “Roubo’s Drawings” or something. What does the book have to do with dinnerware?

The drawings in “l’Art du menuisier” were produced by a copperplate engraving process, which is an intaglio method of making prints. The results of the intaglio process are called “plates” – that’s the word that Roubo uses in his books and is still used today when precision is appreciated.

I guarantee you will learn more about copperplate engraving and etching in the coming months; we are using the technique to illustrate “Furniture of Necessity” in an effort to make the project more awesome (and difficult to produce).

So until then, enjoy this plate made from images from “The Book of Plates” by Suzanne Ellison, our indexer and resident artist.

If this dinnerware existed, I’d buy six place settings.

— Christopher Schwarz