Lost Art Press

Kitchen Table Workbench from The Woodworker

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Bench_top_for_the_kitchen_table

There are many ways to get around not having a dedicated workbench. Here are a few:

  1. Some Victorian-era books recommend using a chest of drawers as a bench. Work on the top, store your tools in the top drawers and use the lower drawer to collect shavings.
  2. Last year I built the “Milkman’s Workbench,” a copy of a European commercial bench for the benchless woodworker.
  3. Build a knockdown bench, like the Nicholson-style bench I built this summer using framing lumber.

In 20th-century magazines, one common project was a workbench that was designed to affix to your kitchen table, and here is one from The Woodworker magazine. This version is secured to the table with two clamps that are embedded in the tool tray. Plus it offers an adjustable planing stop.

You can download the article with the link below:

Bench_top for the Kitchen

— Christopher Schwarz

P.S. If someone sees a cute glue pot like the one shown in the drawing above, you can sell it to Megan Fitzpatrick, who has a thing for petite glue pots.

Inside Roubo’s ‘The Book of Plates’

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plate99_IMG_0351

This week we will put the finishing touches on “l’Art du menuisier: The Book of Plates” and send it to the printer.

It is astonishing to look at all 383 plates (or 382, depending on how you count them). From a woodworker’s perspective, the plates are enjoyable to stare at for hours. André Roubo drew the majority of them himself, so the drawings show the details that a woodworker wants.

(Many times it’s easy to tell when an artist had no woodworking training – the small bits are slightly wrong. Not so with Roubo. Even the screw threads are drawn correctly.)

We have created “The Book of Plates” so everyone can enjoy Roubo’s plates as he intended – printed full-size and on beautiful paper. No matter how you read the text – on your computer screen, in one of our books or even in a translation in a different language – there is nothing like seeing the plates in full-size and at a resolution approaching the 18th-century originals.

In addition to the plates, this new book will contain the first English-language translation of André Roubo’s table of contents for “l’art du Menuisier.” This document is 10 pages long and is a guide to what is shown in the 383 plates. This document has been a guiding light in the translation of these massive woodworking books.

“l’Art du menuisier: The Book of Plates” will feature all of the plates printed full-size on #100 Mohawk Superfine paper, which is manufactured in Upstate New York. After being printed in Michigan, the pages will be sewn and hardbound. This will be a permanent book, even if your dog takes a liking to it.

The book will be $100 and will be available in November. We will offer this book to our retailers, though it is up to each retailer to decide to carry the book.

We hope you will enjoy the book (and we hope a lot of you enjoy the book – we just wrote a check to the printer for more than the value of my first house).

— Christopher Schwarz

Wooden Spoons in The Woodworker Magazine

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wooden_spoons

Now that spoon carving has supplanted pen turning as the latest woodworking craze (and it’s about time), you might enjoy this article from The Woodworker magazine, which was likely written and illustrated by Charles H. Hayward.

Hayward had excellent contacts among British museums, especially the Victoria and Albert Museum. So the magazine is peppered with his drawings of early work, including this collection of interesting wooden spoons.

I’ve not been bitten by the spoon-carving bug, likely because of a psychic scar.

During my first few months at Popular Woodworking in 1996, one of the other editors was carving Celtic love spoons; I decided I would like to learn to make one, too. After half a day of work on my love spoon, I showed it to him to get some feedback and tips.

“Oh wow,” he said, holding my spoon. “I really am a good carver. Your spoon sucks. You’re fired.”

He gave the spoon back to me and walked away. I threw my spoon in the garbage.

You can download the one-page article in pdf format using the link below.

Wooden_spoon_article

— Christopher Schwarz

Still Spots Available in the San Diego Presentation

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SDFMA_bench_IMG_1915

Got two days free in Southern California? Wanna see a guy make a campaign trunk by hand?

There are still seats available in my two-day presentation for the San Diego Fine Woodworkers Association seminar this Saturday and Sunday.

I’m building a dovetailed campaign trunk from start to finish – including all the hardware – and talking about a wide variety of hand-tool topics, everything from sharpening to hand joinery to not bleeding on the wood.

The seminar is Saturday and Sunday at Francis Parker School, 6501 Linda Vista Rd. San Diego, CA 92111. The seminar starts at 8 a.m. Saturday. You can still register here online.

All attendees receive a copy of “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest” (signed in thumb blood) and the book’s companion DVD.

— Christopher Schwarz

Charles Hayward, Coffins & a Tribute

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coffin_kerfing

While scanning more than 350 old magazines edited by Charles Hayward, we kept running into articles that were made us pause because they were so interesting, yet we didn’t have a place for them in our forthcoming book.

We clipped them anyway, and I’ll be posting many of them here for you to enjoy.

Today is an article from the fantastic series called “The Old School,” which ran in The Woodworker between the wars. Each “Old School” column was a first-person account of work in a hand-tool shop at a different trade. This particular column was on making coffins.

You can download a pdf of the article using the link below.

Coffin_maker

Also, reader Jeff Hanes sent me this link to a film by craftsman Jeremy Broun about Hayward’s influence on him as a craftsman and illustrator. It is well worth watching.

Tomorrow I am off to San Diego to teach a two-day seminar at the San Diego Fine Woodworkers Association. I have take the smart extremely stupid step of packing all of my tools and the wood for my project in my checked luggage. Along with my undies and minty floss.

Well, it couldn’t be worse than my performance in Detroit!

— Christopher Schwarz