Soon our storefront will be open at 407 Madison Ave.
Our new storefront was supposed to be open by Jan. 1, but it’s still not done because we are waiting on the cabinetry that was supposed to arrive before Christmas.
We are not gritching. Delays happen. But until we can get the new storefront at 407 Madison Ave. up and running, we have to suspend in-person retail sales. Here’s why.
Megan broke her ankle and is laid up at home for a bit. And right now we are moving operations to 407 Madison Ave. (the “Anthe” building, pronounced ANN-thee). So Kale and I are running back and forth between the workshop at Willard Street and Anthe. And we are not reliably in any one place right now.
Today our cabinetry vendor promised that our order would be loaded on a truck on Monday or Tuesday. If that happens, we will get the new storefront up and running by the end of the month. But until then, our in-person retail operation is on hold.
Apologies for this. And I hope we will have some good news soon.
Recently, Owen Madden started a book club, and he wants you to join.
A professional cabinetmaker from upstate New York, Madden works as shop foreman at Rowan Woodwork.
“At our shop, we have a monthly meetup, and I get to meet some of the most talented woodworkers and artists,” Madden says. “Most of the conversations anchor around something learned from a book, at which point I write down that book and add it to the endless queue. I found that the best nuggets of information come from the discussion and innovation around the text. Naturally, I wanted to create a more organized space for these conversations so I could garner as much as possible.”
Madden, whose past work ranges from historical preservation and replication to modern architectural millwork, says he enjoys the community aspect of woodworking, trading stories and techniques about the craft.
We at Lost Art Press love Madden’s idea and hope to support the club in the future with virtual visits from some of our authors during meetings.
“The first book was selfish,” Madden says. “Nancy is a hero of mine, and I find that book relates to anyone who wants to make great, lasting things that connect to the people we make them for.”
Here’s how the club works:
Madden will set up monthly meetings to discuss each book. Longer books may require a couple of meetings.
“I would love to have everyone involved in some sort of conversation, be it on Zoom, Discord or even in-person splinter groups in their own community,” Madden says. “It’s still so new the structure will probably build as we have some meetings.”
You can learn more about The Woodworker’s Book Club here. You can follow the club on Instagram here. And you can join the club’s Discord change here.
As for the next book?
“After this one, I’m going to do a poll and see,” Madden says. “I also think it would be cool if the guest moderator picked the next month’s book. It’s all fluid and new still, so we will just see what works and what doesn’t.”
Editor’s note: The third edition of “Cut & Dried” should arrive in February. You can sign up to be notified when it arrives here. In this post, author Richard Jones explains his update to Chapter 6.
Rombald’s Moor: The opening image to Chapter 6.
In 2021, I decided I ought to update “Cut & Dried,” and the third reprint of it at the end of 2024 was a good opportunity to do so. For a long time I had been aware of two ways to determine wood moisture content, i.e., the “dry basis” (db) and the “wet basis” (wb). In Section 6.6 Measuring Wood Moisture Content in the already printed book, I emphasised we woodworkers use only wood’s dry weight as the base weight to assess wood moisture content. This dry basis methodology wasn’t actually named in the book and nor was the alternative wet basis methodology named or described except the wet basis was hinted at in an exchange I had with a furniture student at the end of page 76 and into page 77.
However, since the last printing of “Cut & Dried” in 2019, things have evolved and environmental issues are ever more pressing. The drive is on to reduce carbon emissions, reduce particulates and pollutants etc. I am not here to proselytise on these issues but burning biomass fuel in the form of logs, wood chips, pellets etc. is one potential source of particulates and pollution. Many people and organisations around the world burn biomass fuel for heating homes, cooking, industrial boilers etc., and burning wet fuel is both inefficient and pollutant. The U.K. government, for example, created legislation to regulate the supply of biomass fuel, including setting the maximum moisture content levels for biomass fuel suppliers, and putting in place organisations to verify that such suppliers meet required government standards.
Crucially the authorised method of determining wood moisture content in the biomass fuel sector is the wet basis. It’s the case that the biomass fuel sector might be considered peripheral to us woodworkers with our focus on making things out of wood, and where we want to know its moisture content, but the biomass fuel sector, like use, require felled trees, so there is an environmental impact which deserves some discussion in “Cut & Dried.”
To illustrate the difference between dry basis and wet basis calculations for wood moisture content I’m including some text from the latest iteration of section 6.6 of “Cut & Dried,” but modified slightly for this blog post’s purposes.
A learner approached me with the following figures for a piece of wood both before and after oven-drying:
Wet Weight = 20 grammes
Oven-Dry Weight = 15 grammes
This learner questioned the calculated moisture content result. Using the formula already provided she calculated: ((20 – 15) / 15) X 100 = 33.3%MCdb. This learner, in trying to grasp the basis of the calculation, changed the formula to calculate thus: ((WW – ODW) / WW) X 100 giving the sum ((20 – 15) / 20) X 100 = 25%wb. We discussed the different results, i.e., 33.3 percent and 25 percent, and it is easy to mentally visualise a 5 gramme weight loss is a quarter of the 20 gramme wet weight of the sample, i.e., 25 percent. Similarly, it’s quickly apparent that a 5 gramme weight gain is one third (33.3 percent) of 15 grammes, the sample’s oven-dry weight. As soon as the learner understood the base line for the dry basis calculation is the dry weight of the wood, not the pre-dried wet weight, all was clear to her. She was then able to comprehend how, using the dry basis methodology of assessing wood moisture content wood MC figures such as 100 percent or greater were possible, e.g., wet weight, 200 grammes and oven-dry weight of 100 grammes.
This learner’s confusion had led her to unknowingly stumble upon the methodology for assessing wood moisture content referred to earlier, i.e., the “wet basis” (Forestry Commission, 2011). To calculate the wood moisture content percentage on the wet basis (wb) the formula given by The Forestry Commission (2011, p5) is:
“The MCwb = (the weight of water in a sample/ total initial weight of the sample) X 100.” MCwb as indicated earlier, means Moisture Content Wet Basis. Results are expressed as a percentage.
Further reading, if so desired, can be found at the following links:
We spent the last couple months of 2024 working hard on our building at 407 Madison Ave., an old woodworking tool factory that we are restoring as our fulfillment center, retail store and editorial offices.
In addition to the staff and sub-contractors, we brought in Zach Haynes of Haynes Carpentry to help do some of the difficult and detailed work. Zach finished up the drywall, helped get the offices separated from tool assembly and did a lot of work getting the storefront ready. Thanks Zach!
On Tuesday, I did this quick video tour of the building. Lots more work ahead this month. Our cabinets should arrive for the storefront (there’s no way I could build these in time or for the price we’re being charged). And work has already begun on fixing up the old factory bathroom on the second floor.
Right now, I can’t even show you a photo of the bathroom because I think it would break some laws it’s so scary.
“The Woodworker” is filled with solid gold, such as this description of mortising. The best way (in my book).
This week I’ve signed off on a new press run of our four-volume set of “The Woodworker: The Charles H. Hayward Years.” We ran out of stock last year, and reprinting the books became prohibitively expensive (thanks, inflation!). I didn’t want to charge people more than $200 for these foundational texts on handwork.
So we worked with our printer to come out with a new four-volume set at an affordable price. What did we change? Only the cover. These books will be softcover instead of hardcover. The text will be printed on the same #60 paper. The pages will still be gathered into signatures and sewn for durability. The book will still be printed on offset printing presses in Michigan – not some digital perfect-bound piece of impermanence.
The four books will be wrapped in #100 Mohawk Carnival, a gorgeous American-made paper, for the covers. And we’re going to have a special introductory offer. Here’s how the pricing will work:
The set of four should retail for $139. But for the first 30 days, you can buy the full set for $100 with free shipping.
These books make me hyperbole. We spent eight years culling these articles from hundreds of issues of the now-defunct magazine The Woodworker. These books cover all aspects of handwork, from getting started to making complex mouldings and curved barred-light doors. By hand.
The 1,500 pages of proofs I reviewed to get these books back in print.
These books are densely packed with thousands of hand drawings by Hayward. The four books comprise more than 1,500 pages of information. All organized so you can find it (here’s a list of the entries). I consider these books to be the backbone of my handwork library. When I have a question about a technique or a tool, these books are the first place I look.
We hope to have all four volumes in stock by the end of February. Save your pennies. These books are worth it.
