After many customer requests, we have made a run of our Bayside hats in black with khaki piping and khaki embroidery of our logo.
These hats are unstructured, cotton, made in the United States and adjustable with a steel clasp. They are $17 and are available in our store here.
Dark hats such as these are ideal for hiding sweat stains (eww). Of course, they also absorb heat and make some people sweat a bit more – so they are great for the fall and winter. (Boy, I really know how to sell stuff don’t I?)
I know it looks like John Hoffman and I have been lazy publishers this year. Here it is August and we’ve released only two products in 2014 – “Campaign Furniture” and “The Naked Woodworker.”
Are we drunk? Well, yes, but that’s not what is hampering productivity. We have been working on projects that have a long gestation period. Longer than a constipated elephant, apparently. Here is a quick update on stuff that is on the immediate horizon – before the end of the year.
1. “l’Art du Menuisier: The Book of Plates.” We haven’t discussed this project publicly, and I’ll write about it more in the next couple weeks. “The Book of Plates” contains all 383 plates from all of Andre Roubo’s masterwork printed full-size and on super-sexy #100 Mohawk Superfine paper, hardbound and beautiful. This huge book has been a technical challenge because we want it to have a $100 retail price and still be American-made and extremely high-quality. We have succeeded. Details to come. This book is in the capable design hands of Wesley Tanner (“To Make as Perfectly as Possible” deluxe and standard) right now.
2. “Calvin Cobb: Radio Woodworker! A Novel with Measured Drawings” by Roy Underhill. The book is complete and being designed by Linda Watts (“By Hand & Eye” and “The Art of Joinery”) right now. Look for this book in November and somewhere in the $27 price range.
3. “Windsor Fundamentals” (working title) by Peter Galbert. The text is complete. Pete is finishing up some drawings and photos. This book will go to the designer in about five weeks. We are going to try to get this out before the end of the year.
4. “The Woodworker – The Charles Hayward Years.” Work on this book began in 2007 and is finally coming to the end. This will be an enormous compilation of the writings and drawings of Charles Hayward, the single-best woodworking author of the 20th century. Much of this material was collected into his classic books (“Woodwork Joints,” “Cabinet Making for Beginners”). A lot of this work hasn’t been seen since the 1930s. We are scanning a few missing articles and then this book will go into design. We don’t have a release date.
There are lots of other books we are working on actively every day, from the second volume of Roubo, the book on H.O. Studley to “The Furniture of Necessity.” But the above titles are the next four in the pipeline.
“The Naked Woodworker” DVD and downloadable video are now available in the Lost Art Press store.
The video, hosted by Mike Siemsen, is an introduction to the world of hand-tool woodworking that begins with a tool kit comprised of only a 5-gallon bucket. It ends with completing a workbench that will allow you to start building serious furniture.
While that might sound like a long journey, it’s not. Siemsen, a life-long professional woodworker, has distilled the process of purchasing, setting up and using a basic set of hand tools down its most important essence. And he doesn’t waste a second of time or a penny of money in the process.
Here’s an overview of the 174-minute video:
1. Buy the tools. We followed Siemsen to a regional meeting of the Mid-West Tool Collectors Association where we picked through piles of tools all morning to separate the good user tools from the stuff that should be left to rust. Armed with a wad of $200 in small bills, Siemsen negotiated with the dealers to assemble a useable set of tools, everything from the saws and planes, to the files and saw vise needed to sharpen them up.
These principles can be used to buy tools online or at an antique mall.
2. Fix the tools. If you buy the right tools, they don’t require too much repair. But every old tool needs a little setting up. Using home-center equipment (a grinder, belt-sander paper and carpet tape), Mike fixed up and sharpened all the tools. He set up the planes. He sharpened the saws (and repaired their totes). And he got all the Auger bits in good order.
3. Build a sawbench. Before you can build a bench, you need a pair of sawbenches. So Siemens shows how to build a sawbench using nothing more than the basic tools, construction lumber and a couple of buckets.
4. Build a workbench. With the sawbenches complete, Siemsen builds a full-size Nicholson-style workbench using more construction lumber and the same set of tools. You don’t a single machine to make this bench, just Siemsen’s clever ideas and the tools you’ve fixed up.
The bench is designed to do all the tasks required in modern workshop, and it doesn’t take a month of Sundays to build. Siemsen built the entire bench – start to finish – in a single day. It might take you a few weekends.
The biggest surprise of the entire “Naked Woodworker” project is how affordable everything is. Siemsen spent a little more than $571 for everything, from the tools to the wood to the glue and screws. But he’s a good negotiator. We estimate almost anyone could do the same thing for no more than $760.
In addition to the two videos, “The Naked Woodworker” includes a detailed SketchUp drawing of the bench and a spreadsheet that details every tool, screw and stick of lumber purchased for the project.
This product is available in two formats: A two-DVD set that ships from our warehouse in Indiana for $22, or in digital format for $20. Customers who purchase the DVD will be able to download SketchUp drawing of the bench, a pdf of all the tools and materials used in the video after checkout.
Customers who purchase the digital product will download three documents: a SketchUp drawing of the bench, a pdf of all the tools and materials used in the video and login credentials to be able to watch the video on any device and download it onto any device – all in HD.
I had only 90 minutes in the shop today as we spent most of our daylight getting my daughter packed for college and taking her out for a rib dinner.
But during those 90 minutes I assembled the ends and added the stretchers. Everything went swimmingly until I fit the final stretcher. I planed the stretcher’s edge a stroke too many and so that one lap joint isn’t museum-quality.
The end assembly right before the final fitting of the stretcher. It is a little long here.
However, the joint is at the back of the bench and by the floor, so I guess I have more luck than brains today.
Tomorrow it’s off to college, and I’ll brood about that joint’s gap all the way home.
— Christopher Schwarz
P.S. “The Naked Woodworker” will be live in the store tomorrow evening.
The only thing difficult about building this workbench in two days is not building the whole thing in only one day.
I had only about four or five hours of shop time today because we’re packing up our oldest daughter to head off to college on Monday. Despite this, and going to three record stores and a pizza dinner (A Tavola, my favorite), I had to restrain myself from just building the whole workbench start to finish today.
This morning I broke down all the stock with a circular saw, jointed all the boards’ edges with a jointer plane and glued up the top. Then I ate a jelly doughnut.
I clipped the corners of the front and back aprons with a handsaw and then glued a 1×10 spacer to the inside of each apron. This spacer, which is an idea I swiped directly from “The Naked Woodworker,” is one of Mike Siemsen’s moments of pure genius on the DVD. The spacers add rigidity and set the location of the legs.
Then I removed the machine marks from the legs and drilled all the holes for the knockdown hardware. The surface-mounted tee-nuts are a snap to install. They press into a 31/64” pilot hole; prongs stop them from rotating. Then No. 6 x 1-1/4” screws make sure the tee-nuts never fall out when the wood shrinks. I was impressed by how easy these metal bits were to install.
And when I cinched up the legs to the aprons with 3/8” x 3” hex-head bolts and 3/8” x 1” washers, the assemblies were rock solid.
Note that the order of assembly here doesn’t appear logical at first. But I have a good reason for it. More on that tomorrow.
