All Sweatshirt Sizes in Stock (Whew), But Wait…
At long last, we now have all sizes of our Lost Art Press USA-made sweatshirts in stock and ready to ship. Yes, there is still time to order one for Christmas – John is fulfilling these personally to make sure they get out.
That’s the good news. The bad news is that our current supplier has become unreliable. Why? We don’t know. But we know we can’t wait on them anymore.
So once this batch of sweatshirts is done we will be switching to a different supplier of USA-made sweatshirts: Royal Apparel of New York. These sweatshirts are a bit heavier, have a metal zipper and cost more. So prices will go up once this current batch is sold out, though I don’t know what the increase will be yet.
So if you want an USA-made Lost Art Press sweatshirt at $45 to $46, act now.
— Christopher Schwarz
How to Become Immortal (and Help the H.O. Studley Book)
Don Williams and I are deep into the guts of his book on H.O. Studley’s tool cabinet and workbench – doing everything we can to get the book out in March 2015 – just in time for the exhibit of the chest at Handworks.
We have found a hole in the visual record of the cabinet that we would like to fill. The cabinet was on display at the Smithsonian as part of the exhibit “Engines of Change: The American Industrial Revolution 1790-1860” in a vignette with several other tool chests for various trades. Though the exhibit lasted almost 20 years (late 1986 to mid-2006), the Studley tool cabinet was included for perhaps only a third of that time, probably 1994-1999.
We know that thousands of woodworkers saw the cabinet during this exhibit. But we do not have a photo of the cabinet in the display. Do you?
If so, please send an e-mail to Don Williams. If your photo fits the bill it could end up in our forthcoming book on the cabinet and workbench.
Thanks in advance for any help in this matter.
— Christopher Schwarz
You Aren’t Sharpening Enough (And I’m not, Either)
If a students shows me a tool during class and asks: “Should I s….”
I cut them off. “Yes.”
I have found that when you ask yourself if a tool is dull, the poor pathetic thing is way past being dull and is on its way to getting chipped and trashed. I think you need to sharpen an edge before it actually occurs to you to sharpen that edge. Sounds impossible, but it’s not.
I sharpen a lot, and it is part of the rhythm of my day. As I finishing planing up panels with a jointer plane, I stop to sharpen the tool before I take on the parts for the lid – even if the plane is performing well.
When I chop dovetails, I touch up the tool between each corner of a carcase – even if the chisel is keen and cutting well.
This is the opposite of the way I was taught to evaluate edges. I was told: “The surface of the wood will tell you how your edge is performing. If the wood looks bad, it’s time to sharpen.”
While that makes sense on one level, I don’t want the wood to ever look bruised or scraped or chunked out. So I sharpen the smoothing plane several times a day if this is the day I’m smoothing things.
This approach not only ensures my parts will look their best, it also removes most concerns about what steel your tool is made of. If you keep an edge wicked sharp (and nothing less) then it really doesn’t matter if A4 steel holds an edge longer than Q4.
So shut up and sharpen.
— Christopher Schwarz
Coming Soon: Build a Roorkee Chair DVD
After building 27 Roorkee chairs myself and teaching students to build 35 more, I’m ready to make a DVD to share the turning, joinery and leatherwork necessary to build one of these campaign-style chairs.
I’ll be filming the DVD at F+W in about a week. I don’t have a release date for the project, but the company is fast – very fast – at editing these videos and bringing them to market.
This weekend I’m prepping all the parts to make two chairs so we have parts to work on that are at all different stages of the construction process. This prep work is probably overkill because I can now build one of the these chairs in about two days. But I was a Boy Scout and we learned to “be prepared” (in my troop that meant “be prepared to have your tent urinated on by bullies”).
One of the fun aspects of this project is I’ve asked Jason Thigpen at Texas Heritage Woodworks to hand-stitch stitch the arms for this matched pair of chairs, which are going to a customer right after Thanksgiving. Jason makes a lot of cool stuff, including shop aprons and tool rolls. I plan to order an apron from his as soon as I wear out my current one.
The DVD will be aimed at the general woodworker who has never turned or done leatherwork. We’ll be using only one turning tool to make all the chair parts on a midi-size lathe. The leatherwork will be done with basic hand tools – mostly a utility knife and a rotary punch.
And we’re definitely going to cover finishing with shellac and wax – I’m going to make the case we should show how to do it with an inexpensive HVLP system.
If you can’t wait for the DVD, the complete instructions to build the chair are covered in my latest book, “Campaign Furniture.”
— Christopher Schwarz