This was taken during French Oak Roubo project for the Highland Woodworker show. I am disgustingly dirty, sweaty and wearing some nasty shorts.
Judging from the camera angle, it’s a good thing I didn’t wear a miniskirt to the shop that day.
— Christopher Schwarz
Our revised edition of Joseph Moxon’s “The Art of Joinery” is only a couple weeks away from going on press and will be released in November – just in time for the holidays.
“The Art of Joinery” was the first publication of Lost Art Press in 2008. That book has been out of print for several years now, and used copies are fetching obscene prices on eBay and Amazon. We originally sold the book for $17; we’ve seen it sell for $300.
The fully revised second edition will sell for about $21 (a significant savings over $300) and will be twice as thick. What’s in it?
1. The text from the first edition – a lightly edited adaptation of the original 17th-century text that made the odd grammar, spellings and sentence structure easier to digest.
2. Commentary. I’ve written about each section of the book, trying to amplify Moxon’s writings with photos and additional drawings from other sources (such as Randle Holme’s “Academy of Armory”) to put Moxon’s work in context and make it understandable to a woodworker. The revised edition will reflect a lot of things I’ve learned since 2008.
3. All the illustrations have been paired with their text explanations – no flipping back and forth between text and drawings.
4. The unedited and unchanged text, exactly as Moxon wrote it. We reset it in an historically appropriate font so you can get the real-deal old-school stuff.
5. A selection of plates from Andre Felebien’s earlier work, which Moxon might have copied for his work (you decide).
6. A complete index by Suzanne “Saucy Indexer” Ellison, who made the excellent index for “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest.”
The book is ahead of schedule at this point thanks to designer Linda Watts. I was planning on designing the book myself (which is what I do with my own work), but I realized that I had been ready to design the book for almost two months and had not done squat. So I called in Linda, who designed the entire book in about 10 days. Yay Linda!
So tonight I’m proofing Linda’s layout and we will have this to the printer in less than two weeks. We’ll have complete details and a pre-publication free-shipping offer in mid-October.
— Christopher Schwarz
4. OK, because I like you (most of you, anyway), I’m going to give you the dirt on where to eat in this town. Though Cincinnati seems like a sleepy mid-sized Midwestern city, it is actually a hotbed of fantastic food and drink. I’ve lived here since 1996 and have spent as much time investigating food as woodworking.
So if you want to eat yourself sick, here is my shortlist.
1. Eli’s BBQ. Crap. I let the pig out of the bag. I’ve spent most of my life in the South and so barbecue is more important than a blond-hair blue-eyed Jesus. Eli’s is the real deal. When you go, simply order the pulled pork sandwich with slaw. And get the jalapeno cheese grits. Bring your own beer (it’s OK). And when you are there, pull out one of the vinyl LPs and put it on. It’s all good.
2. Tacocracy. You need a car to get to this taco joint in Northside (one of the neighborhoods north of downtown), but holy mackerel is it worth the trip. The photo above says it all. It’s a taco filled with mac-and-cheese and braised beef.
3. Rookwood. This gem of a restaurant is high above the city in Mt. Adams. It is in the building used by Rookwood Pottery during the Arts & Crafts heyday. The food will kill you – chicken-fried bacon with chipotle honey – and you will die happy. Get the Grippos fries. Eat in a kiln. And ask for Rom – one of the mixologists who is also a hard-core woodworker.
4. Sotto. I so hate to give this to you. This is my favorite place in the world. Buried beneath the streets of downtown, this restaurant is where I have had the best three meals of my life (and I’ve eaten there only three times). Go. Eat what they recommend. Thank me later.
5. A Tavola. I’ve written about this place before. It’s the best pizza in the Tri-state. The owner, Jared Wayne, made all the furniture himself. Everything is as it should be.
And sign up for Woodworking in America, Oct. 18-20. There are 100 more wonderful places to eat in this town. We love our food.
— Christopher Schwarz
I thought I was through with teak after finishing up my latest campaign chest, but the woodpile had other ideas. After sorting through my stack of woods appropriate for campaign furniture, it was clear that a mondo piece of 26”-wide teak would be the perfect desktop for a William IV officer’s field desk.
It’s a cool desk – it folds flat thanks to its hinged aprons. And it’s simple to build – I should have it complete by this weekend. After months of dovetailing, a project with only four joints has its appeal.
When I’m not plowing through that teak, I’m sorting through the research materials I brought back from my trip to England. It is a weighty pile – so much that Delta Airlines almost charged me for overweight luggage.
In addition to tons of images and data, I brought back some fantastic 19th-century accounts by British officers of their adventures in India.
Here’s a taste of one from 1880:
More mosquitos. What a prize for the musquitoes was I a fine, fresh, ruddy griffin, full of wholesome blood, the result of sea-breezes and healthy chylification ! and, in good sooth, they did fall foul of me with the appetite of gluttons. Sleep ! bless your dear, simple heart, the thing was about as possible as for St. Lawrence to have reposed on his gridiron.
Proper bedtime reading.
— Christopher Schwarz
Instance of Human Effort.—Six Days’ Sawing
A Pair of sawyers, in the yard of Messrs. Paul, and Co., timber-merchants, Broad-street, Golden-square, executed the following quantity of labour in sixty working-hours, in six days, beginning about eight, a.m., on Monday, the 25th, and ending about four, p.m., on the following Saturday, the 30th of January, in the present year.
They sawed through an area of 3068 square feet of American Pine, along a line whose total length was 1726 feet. In doing this, they raised the saw 124,272 times, and as this tool weighed 30 lbs., they lifted an actual weight of 3,728,160 lbs. But this amount of labour was not more than one-third the actual exertion expended; for to overcome the friction, in pulling up the saw through the kerf, and forcing it down again through the wood, at least two thirds more was necessary; the total labour, therefore, was equal to lifting 11,184,480 lbs. to the height of the stroke, and as this was four feet, there was 44,737,020 lbs.= 19,958 tons. 18 cwt. raised one foot high, in 60 hours, which is 12,427 lbs. = 5 tons, 11 cwt. raised one foot high, per minute, by the two men, and 2 tons, 15½ cwt, per man, 1 foot high per minute.
(more…)