Lost Art Press

2 New Reviews of ‘By Hand & Eye’

Posted on by Lost Art Press

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This week I am in the “Land of Tolpin” – Port Townsend, Wash., which is where Jim Tolpin lives and works as a woodworker, instructor and writer.

Port Townsend is an odd little corner of the world in many ways, and it is unusual in that many of the woodworkers here are familiar with the concepts that Tolpin and George Walker introduce in “By Hand & Eye.”

The students here are adept with dividers and really do talk in terms of ratios instead of measurements. Yesterday when I was laying out the slope of a bevel on a tool chest, I was asked: what ratio is that? Not: What angle is that?

Interesting.

Now other woodworkers are discovering the ideas in the book and are starting to write about them on the Internet.

Blogger Bob Jones of The Christian Tool Cabinet blog called “By Hand & Eye” “The most original woodworking book in the last decade.” Read the full review here.

J. Norman Reid of Wood News Online says the book is a “unique combination of theory and practice that is destined to become a classic reference for woodworking design.”

Read his full review here.

“By Hand & Eye” is available in our store and our select retailers.

— Christopher Schwarz

Free shipping on Make a Joint Stool from a Tree

Posted on by john

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When we released “Make a Joint Stool from a Tree,” it was our most expensive book – and it was also the most expensive book for us to make. We heard from a fair number of readers that they were interested in the title, but that the price was too high.
 
To help encourage those people to experience this fantastic book, we are now offering free domestic shipping on “Make a Joint Stool from a Tree” – effective immediately and in perpetuity. If you have been on the fence about this title, we hope you’ll take a look.  To purchase it click here 

Only in Port Townsend

Posted on by Lost Art Press

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This morning I walked to a coffee shop in Port Townsend, Wash., to jolt myself awake. And as the barista handed me my cup he looked at my shirt.

“Is that ‘A’ for ‘anarchy?’” he asked.

“Why yes it is,” I replied, forgetting I was wearing an “Anarchist’s Tool Chest” shirt below my hoodie.

“It also could be for ‘anonymous,’” the barista added.

I wish.

The square on the cover of “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest,” is a cute little thing, and it shows up in surprising places, the wall of the Port Townsend School of Woodworking, Rwanda and in students’ tool boxes.

Yesterday, one of the students, Bill, pulled out a set of them that were graduated in size. All of them had different details and joinery. Very cool.

— Christopher Schwarz

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To See Good Workmen Handle Their Tools

Posted on by fitz

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I continued thus employed in my father’s business for two years, that is, till I was twelve years old; and my brother John, who was bred to that business, having left my father, married and set up for himself at Rhode Island: there was every appearance that I was destined to supply his place, and become a tallow-chandler.

But my dislike to the trade continuing, my father had apprehensions that if he did not put me to one more agreeable, I should break loose and go to sea, as my brother Josiah had done, to his great vexation. In consequence, he took me to walk with him and see joiners, bricklayers, turners, braziers, &c. at their work, that he might observe my inclination, and endeavour to fix it on some trade or profession that would keep me on land.

It has ever since been a pleasure to me to see good workmen handle their tools. And it has been often useful to me, to have learnt so much by it, as to be able to do some trifling jobs in the house when a workman was not at hand, and to construct little machines for my experiments at the moment when the intention of making these was warm in my mind.

My father determined at last for the cutler’s trade, and placed me for some days on trial with Samuel, son to my uncle Benjamin, who was bred to that trade in London, and had just established himself in Boston. But the sum he exacted as a fee for my apprenticeship displeased my father, and I was taken home again.

Benjamin Franklin (writing about his life in Boston circa 1718)

Memoirs of the Life and Writings of Benjamin Franklin (1771 to 1790)

—Jeff Burks

Only a Journalist

Posted on by Lost Art Press

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Whenever I teach a class, I insist on building the project with the students. No shortcuts. No asking assistants to do my chopping. No afterhours CNC.

I do this for several reasons.

1. I want to demonstrate that the techniques I use are genuine. It would be easy for me to say: Do this. And then nitpick the students as they try to do my bidding. Screw that. If I can’t build it in the time allowed, how can they?

2. It makes me a faster joiner. When I build the project alongside the students I have to push myself to build it to a high standard. I have to be much faster than they are. And I have to float around the room and assist them as I work. I have to be able to produce tight joints while totally distracted. I have to do it while I’m talking. Honestly, I should be paying the students for the training this gives me.

3. It shows the students that anyone can do this. One of the frequent criticisms of my work is that I am “just a journalist.” That I don’t have “traditional training.” And I am not a “professional woodworker.”

All that is true. I don’t deny it. And I don’t care.

If I can build this stuff without some paper certificate, then you can, too. You can build stuff to a much higher level than many professional woodworkers, many of whom have to rely on pocket screws and biscuits to make a living (and there is NOTHING wrong with that).

It is the amateur class that can afford to make furniture to a crazy high standard. So bring it. Whether you are “just a programmer,” “just a firefighter” or “just an engineer,” you can build stuff that will last “just 200 years.”

— Christopher Schwarz