Lost Art Press

Summer School with David Savage

Posted on by Lost Art Press

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If I have only one complaint about my life, it is that with all the teaching, writing and building that I do, I have no time left to take woodworking courses for myself.

I don’t drool over tool catalogs. My personal pornographic publications are the brochures and web sites from woodworking schools that teach skills that I want to master.

So when I had dinner with David Savage last summer, you can imagine how long it took me to say “yes” to his following proposition: I teach a class in building a tool chest at his school in Rowden, then stay on for a second week to assist and take a class in sunburst veneering.

Savage has long been one of those woodworkers I wanted to learn from. He does amazing work. And, equally important to me, he is one of the most daring woodworking writers alive today. He is, simply put, nobody’s tool. He is fearless in exploring the craft and his own human failings. Check out some of his articles here.

So this summer I head to Rowden to lead a class in building a dead-nuts traditional tool chest, one I have specially designed for this course. During the first week, Aug. 24-28, we’ll build the chest using hand tools and traditional production methods and joints – dovetails, tongue-and-groove, miters, breadboards etc.

The second week (Aug. 31-Sept. 4) we will embellish the interior lid of the chest with a sunburst veneer pattern designed for the course, plus traditional veneer and crossbanding on the lid of the top till. The goal is for all of the students to walk away with a finished chest, a boatload of newfound skills and a slightly swollen liver.

When David announced the course last week, it filled up immediately. But the wait list is very short right now and these classes always have a certain amount of churn. If you’d like to read more details about Rowden, David’s crack team of instructors and the course, check out these pages here and here. You can sign up for the course’s wait list here.

I’ll be writing more about the chest design in the coming months. It is based off a number of historical examples that have survived quite well and has some features you might consider for your tool chest.

— Christopher Schwarz

An Improved ‘Doe’s Foot’ Appliance

Posted on by Lost Art Press

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After writing last month about the “doe’s foot” appliance in A.-J. Roubo’s plate 14, I decided to make a couple of these devices that resembled the ones shown in the plate.

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For the last couple years, I’ve been using a doe’s foot that is about 1/4” x 2” x 24”. Roubo’s looks shorter and wider. So today I made two doe’s feet that were 3/8” x 5” x 14” and tried them out on the bench.

The big advantage of the ones shown in Roubo is that their increased size makes it easier for them to be positioned anywhere on the bench. Because they are wider, a holdfast is much more likely to find them.

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Its shorter length makes it easier to secure the doe’s foot without hitting the shop wall – assuming your bench is up against a wall.

Because I am a woodworker, I couldn’t help trying to improve the doe’s foot a bit. While it works fine as-is, I added stick-on sandpaper (#150-grit) to the underside of one of the appliances and tried the two side-by-side to compare, naked vs. grippy.

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The one with the sandpaper was almost impossible to slide laterally. The one without sandpaper was secure enough, but I could rotate it with the pad of the holdfast serving as the centerpoint. So I like the addition of the sandpaper.

— Christopher Schwarz

Plate 14 and 384 more plates are all shown in our forthcoming “l’Art du Menuisier: The Book of Plates.” You can still order this book with free domestic shipping until Nov. 19, 2014. The book ships on Nov. 19.

Introducing ‘The Naked Lady Saw’

Posted on by Lost Art Press

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The following blog post contains artistic (no, that’s too strong a word), um, renderings of the female human body that might offend if you are the kind of person who blushes while visiting the Metropolitan Museum of Art or viewing other high art, such as “Porky’s II: The Next Day.”

Click at your own peril.

(more…)

First Review of ‘Calvin Cobb: Radio Woodworker’

Posted on by fitz

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J. Norman Reid of Wood News Online reviewed Roy Underhill’s “Calvin Cobb: Radio Woodworker! – A Novel with Measured Drawings” for the most recent issue. Here’s a short excerpt:

“Fun, fast-moving and filled with vivid though sometimes arcane period details about farm machinery, computing and radio equipment, government agencies and cat faces staring out from marble walls, Roy creates unique and engaging characters whose fate propels the reader’s interest from one chapter to the next. Yet despite the heavy overlay of humor that pervades the story line and many of its details, the novel also bears a valuable social message as Calvin confronts the racism and anti-Semitism of the day.

“The ending, which I won’t reveal here, is both dramatic and—like the rest of the book—absurdly humorous. A wild ride indeed!”

You can read the full review here. The entire November 2014 issue of Wood News Online can be read here.

— Megan Fitzpatrick

p.s. Order before Nov. 29, 2014, for free domestic shipping; the book will start shipping on or around Nov. 10.

p.p.s. Not to be outdone by Chris (in this, anyway), here’s another short excerpt from the novel to tempt you:

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He’s Mighty Heavy for a Scrawny, 171-year-old Dead Man

Posted on by Lost Art Press

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About 48 hours to go.

As I write this, that is my estimate of when I get to pass off the 40,000 words and 500 pictures of the manuscript for “VIRTUOSO: The Tool Cabinet and Workbench of Henry O. Studley” into the custody of Chris Schwarz and Narayan Nayar, who will respectively edit and illustrate it with sumptuous photographs.

It could not come soon enough, as for the past five months (with the major exception of chopping firewood) I have been pretty much All-Studley-All-The-Time, including the past two months of 16-hour days in Studley-ville. Before that it was five years of Some-Studley-Much-Of-The-Time.

And for a scrawny dead guy, old Henry was getting pretty heavy on my neck.

Despite some unavoidable lacunae (look it up, people, it is a fine and honorable word) in the manuscript because of information I simply have not been able to find yet, as I review the book-in-waiting for the last time it is not an outcome with which I am displeased.

Over to you, Chris and Narayan.

— Don Williams
www.donsbarn.com
www.studleytoolchestexhibit.com

Editor’s note: “VIRTUOSO: The Tool Cabinet and Workbench of Henry O. Studley” will be available in March 2015.