“Campaign Furniture” is off to the printer, and I have the color proofs sitting at my feet. We’re working on getting the cover to our liking (it’s still rough so be still your sharp tongues) and we have been reaching out to our retailers to see if they would like to carry this title.
When the book is released in early March, here are the retailers that have (so far) signed on:
Also, if you don’t read my blog at Popular Woodworking Magazine, you might be interested in this entry on the Douro chair. The first person to get me access to an original Douro chair gets the first autographed copy of “Campaign Furniture.”
I cannot thank Sean and Simon Clarke of Christopher Clarke Antiques Ltd. enough for their assistance with “Campaign Furniture.” While many antiques dealers are hesitant to help woodworking writers with information or photographs, the Clarkes allowed me to visit their store and were happy to help.
If you cannot go to Stow-on-the-Wold and visit the brothers’ storefront, the next best thing is to visit the Clarke’s web site, campaignfurniture.com, which is a gold mine of images and information (click on the “stock page” numbers at the top to start your journey).
I have compiled some of my best photographs into a high-resolution pdf for you to download. There are some good photos of the joinery on a chest and a few interesting chairs and tables, too.
Look at that moron. He’s obviously holding a Moxon-style saw (see plate 4, the unlabeled saw above the whetting block) and he is using a four-fingered grip. I mean, do you need to see another scrap of evidence that “the Schwarcz” is just a self-promoting pretender?
Just a journalist? Ha, he’s barely a boy.
Look, I’m willing to ignore the boy’s poor fashion choices. It was 1975, and the open-collared shirt and ox-blood cords are not his fault. But his fly is undone! It’s foreshadowing that he obviously wants to violate each and every woodworker on the planet with his misinformation on saws, planes and workbenches.
Speaking of workbenches, Master Schwarz, what the heck is up with that thing in the photo? Clearly you are willing to preach your French three-dimensional clamping surface crap while using a bench that clearly violates every single one of the principles in your two workbench books.
Hypocrite.
And look at the tool chest the little pretender has “built.” More like the “Entropist’s Tool Chest” if you ask me. Bet that thing fell apart in about five minutes. Hard to believe anyone has actually built the “chest from his “book” – everyone knows chests are built from poplar or oak, not pine.
And one more thing: That’s a plainishing hammer on the benchtop, not a joiner’s hammer. And I assume the Scotch tape on the bench was used in substitute for real joinery.
By now, most people in the world should be viewing the Lost Art Press web site we launched this afternoon. As with every new web site, there are plusses and minuses (mostly plusses, we hope). Here are some changes you should be aware of.
1. We now take American Express and Discover Card.
2. We now offer a discounted price when you purchase both a hardbound book and the pdf of that book.
3. We have switched over entirely to pdfs for all our digital books. Sorry, ePub and mobi, you aren’t suited for books that are graphics-heavy. All pdfs will be served directly by our new store (no more two-step download processes). If you ever have problems with a pdf, ePub or mobi file you purchased in the past, just e-mail us and we’ll help.
4. No more Captcha code crap-ola to contact us. You can get to us directly here. This means more spam for John and me, but I grew up eating spam (actually Underwood deviled ham).
5. You won’t have to create an account to buy something. However, if you do want an account to make future checkouts easier, you will need to create a new one in our new store. Sorry about that.
There are lots more little changes, but those are the highlights. The biggest change is one you won’t see for a while. This new store will allow us to have your orders filled by a local fulfillment house, which will be faster. And, if all goes well, the new store will pave the way for us to offer international shipping. (Though I promise you that buying our books from our international sellers will always cost less than getting it from us.)
Huge thanks to Ben Lowery, who helped us realize our vision – both graphical and functional. If you need some spot-on web site work from a guy who is also a woodworker, we cannot recommend anyone more highly.
The unlimited field which is open to inventors, and the boundless fertility of ideas which is constantly busy in filling this field, are both strikingly illustrated in the invention here represented. In working wood by carpenters and others, a great deal of labor is expended in sawing boards lengthwise—“ripping” them, as it is called—and this work requires not only a true eye and hand, but a certain measure of skill which is the result of long training. By this machine, the operation is performed by any boy, however inexperienced, or any workman, however unskillful. (more…)