Lost Art Press

‘The Book of Plates’ and ‘The Custom Box’

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At long last (thank you USPS), I received a box of the production-bound copies of “The Book of Plates.” Like many readers on Twitter and Instagram, I was smitten. It is a bit intoxicating to hold, page through and examine.

We have had several customers who – having received “The Book of Plates” – have asked the following question: “Where the %$#^ is the custom wooden box you promised?”

So if you are wondering the same thing, here’s the answer: “The Book of Plates” ships in a custom cardboard box made in Indianapolis (and at great expense). We said it shipped in a custom box, and I showed it to you here in this video. It’s cardboard, which is termite barf, which was then eaten by a nearby drunken termite and pooped out into a flat, corrugated format (termite sphincters are amazing).

That’s your custom wooden box.

There is no custom wooden box, and we apologize if you read “custom box” as “custom wooden box.” If we did ship “The Book of Plates” in a custom wooden box, then John and I would be wearing custom wooden barrels as we shuffled into the poorhouse.

As always, if you are dissatisfied in any way with our products, send them back to us and we will gladly refund your money.

— Christopher Schwarz

But What was on H.O. Studley’s Shop Wall?

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Tens of thousands of woodworkers have a poster of the famed H.O. Studley tool chest on their shop walls. Studley, however, didn’t need the poster – he had the real thing. So what poster did he tack to his shop wall?

1ce265da2cfc9537f4b93870f41544f9A circa 1917 advertisement for U.S. Government bonds that was painted by Eugenie DeLand and features the Statue of Liberty.

Reader Lynn Bradford pointed out that you can buy this poster through a variety of sources, including here at allposters.com. So if you want to go full meta on the Studley experience, get the poster, some suspenders and a skinny tie.

— Christopher Schwarz

A Machine Heart

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“I’ve heard my teacher say, where there are machines, there are bound to be machine worries; where there are machine worries, there are bound to be machine hearts. With a machine heart in your breast, you’ve spoiled what was pure and simple; and without the pure and simple, the life of the spirit knows no rest. Where the life of the spirit knows no rest, the Way will cease to buoy you up. It’s not that I don’t know about your machine – I would be ashamed to use it!”

— From The Chuang Tzu, Section 12, tr. Burton Watson

Invent Nothing: Volume II

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In my early days at Popular Woodworking magazine, we would draw up the projects we wanted to build for an upcoming issue and present them to the other editors for review and comment.

On the one hand, it was a great idea. After years of the process I learned to receive criticism with grace and now look forward to it.

On the other hand, there are cupholders.

When presented with a design, a group of woodworkers will complicate it until it is unbuildable, unsittable and will require custom titanium hardware made by a water-jet cutter.

And that’s just for the birdhouses.

So I also learned to keep things simple. I’m always trying to take things away from a design instead of adding them. But last week I forgot that lesson.

Right now I’m building a traveling tool chest for an upcoming article that’s also a prototype for future classes. I spent two days designing the thing in SketchUp and was convinced I had created the Tardis of tool chests. It was a traveling chest that could hold a full set of tools, including full-size handsaws instead of the shorter panel saws. Plus a full working set of full-size planes.

On Saturday night I glued up the dovetailed carcase and I saw the folly of my design. While it might hold all these tools, I could see that the chest’s proportions were going to be totally wrong at the end. Ugly even.

I walked outside and stared at a tree for a good five minutes.

Then I came back inside and redrew the chest using the same proportions and principles I’ve used since I built my first tool chest in 1997. And these are the same proportions used since tool chests first emerged in the furniture record. I pulled some more rough pine from the woodpile and fetched my jack plane.

Anyone need a dovetailed pine casket for an Oompa Loompa? Cause I’ve got a nice one right here.

— Christopher Schwarz

I Don’t Need No Stinking Lighter

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For the past couple weeks, I’ve been hunkered in the bunker out here in the Virginia Highlands, only partly because a) it was Thanksgiving week and b) we got a foot-and-a-half of snow earlier in the week. No, the culprit behind the current spate of sedentary-ness has been the tasks of c) reviewing and revising the completed text, and d) selecting, editing and captioning the approximately 450 images that will impart great richness to “Virtuoso: The Tool Cabinet and Workbench of Henry O. Studley.”

The chapter inventorying the tool cabinet and its contents is slated for – at this point – more than 275 photographs! Because I will be sending the FINAL version to Chris a week from Monday I will be “nose to the grindstone” until that occurrence.

Some weeks ago, as I had the written manuscript in its final stages, I confessed to Chris that my enthusiasm for the project was flagging a bit and I was frankly pretty tired. His reply took me by surprise. Paraphrased, he exhorted me with the dictum that no book project is really finished until some time after the point where its contributors want to put it on the table, pile manure on it, whip out the butane lighter and set it on fire.

Given the current usage of the wood stove here in the cabin, I don’t need no stinking lighter.

— Don Williams, www.donsbarn.com & www.studleytoolchest.com